Fried and true: Das Box scores with two Asian standards

Never bury the lede: the fried rice at Das Box is the best restaurant dish I have eaten in Savannah in quite some time.

Perhaps a relative qualification is in order. I love fried rice. On the occasion that my wife has plans and I take an evening off in our kitchen, my absolute go-to is a to-go styro filled with fried rice. Usually pork and more often than not from Green Tea with a side order of glistening boneless spare ribs, I had heretofore not been altogether picky about provenance.

Henceforth, I will be.

What Das Box’s executive chef Nicholas Chambliss has concocted both uplifts and upholds the familiar, and each time we visit D.H. Bathon’s East Broad Street gastrolounge, I will be hard-pressed to order anything else― as long as my wife lets me steal some bites of her fried tofu skewers.

Such a rice guy

Chambliss modestly belied the singularity of his chef-made take on a strip-mall staple, what he called a “feel-good meal” that is “quick and easy” to put together.

“In the industry, you don’t always have time to sit down and have a meal,” he said, and fried rice is a dish he has often made “to grab a quick bite,” a comfort food that has also been a family-meal favorite.

“Everyone seems to enjoy it,” added Chambliss, late of the late Folklore.

He does not do his own dish delicious justice.

Properly unctuous, the recipe is loaded with almost as much veg as rice: thinner than julienned carrots and red cabbage, biased scallions, and ample edamame, all topped with slices of house-pickled Fresno chiles that still pack a punch ($10).

This is a fried rice that needs no protein. The only egg appears in the white Yum Yum sauce, Chambliss’s “twist” on a genuine Asian aioli whose pale pink tint comes courtesy of a Gochujang hint.

Tamari burnishes the rice and flavors the finish, and a dash of Korean chile flake makes it all just kicky enough. I confess that the whole umami thing is a pun-intended foreign culinary concept to me, but if anything is umami, it is this rice.

Oh, soy good

When Das Box originally opened, Chambliss had three protein skewers on offer ― chicken, pork, and shrimp ― but he and Bathon decided to move the shrimp to star in fritters instead ($16).

Nothing wrong with that.

After Chambliss fielded “so many requests for tofu,” he did some R&D and T&E, much to our collective delight.

“I played with a couple recipes until I got my own understanding of the flavor profile I was gunning for,” he explained.

Mission accomplished. Pressed-dried tofu is wet-dipped in a soy-based marinade that is then coated in a gluten-free combination of rice flour, cornstarch, and other seasonings before frying or grilling.

The kebablettes come atop what is anything but a toss-away tossed salad with a house-made citrus vinaigrette ($13).

The sizable portion of four faux-meaty skewers are kissed with chile crip and can be tossed in any of the eight scratch-made wing sauces, also available on the skewers, for a slight upcharge.

Do it. I will spot you the extra $1.50, especially if you choose the sweet Thai chili.

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Boom box

Looking up from the Das Box’s menu, you expect to see Brad Pitt finishing off a spring roll while waiting for George Clooney to slide onto the bar stool next to him, the red neon barback lights bouncing off the disco ball.

As Rusty and Danny discuss their next caper, alternating strains of Nick Lowe and Wu Tang and the occasional cue shot echo off concrete floors. The industrial interior feels more like East Atlanta Village than East Victorian District with actors’ eyes from Japanese posters of American movies peering down from the entirely black brick walls.

Opened on October 6, Das Box immediately elevated this stretch of East Broad between Gwinnett and Henry and begs others to follow in this Eastward Atlantafication. Not just because I am a teetotaler, I will freely admit that I am not cool enough to eat in a place this cool, but just like Over Yonder, the people working in the place make it clear that we all belong here.

Before Folklore closed, Chambliss and Bathon met through “mutual friends” and talked about the former’s helming up food operations at the latter’s new establishment, their early conversations about Bathon’s plan for Asian-American-fusion-forward fare.

Chambliss liked the idea, and Bathon gave his chef free rein of the menu, pitching in his own ideas here and there, which is actually how the tofu skewers came about. The rest of the dishes, ninety-percent of which are under $15 and shareable, are Chambliss’s creations.

“Before I moved to Savannah, I was at Sea Island, where I got to work with a lot of international cooks,” the Brunswick native said of where he picked up different tips and techniques, “taking bits and pieces and flavor profiles for my culinary journey.”

After coming to the 912 two years ago, Chambliss cooked at Common Thread prior to sous cheffing at Folklore. Very little of his previous professional output resembled the izakaya items he is now making at Das Box, but if he can cook up such fantastic fried rice and tofu, I will eat everything on his menu.

Right as we finished talking, Chambliss headed back into his kitchen to hand-cut the waffle chips. Because I have inhaled the fried rice three times already, those will be next.

Das Box (1006 E. Broad St.) is open Tuesday through Thursday (5 p.m. to midnight), Friday and Saturday (5 p.m. to 1 a.m.), and Sunday (5 p.m. to midnight).

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: At Das Box on East Broad, chef Nicholas Chambliss uplifts the familiar