Runner-Up Best New Restaurant 2024
Words by CAROLINE HATCHETT
Photography by JASON B. JAMES
Produced by MORRIGAN MAZA, GOOD CULTURE CREATIVE
SITTING AT THE COUNTER of Strange Bird, sipping iced tea and dunking a birria burger into a cup of chile-laden consommé, I thought I had the restaurant figured out. Its menu — complete with fried chicken tacos, refried butter beans and churro crumble-topped banana pudding — clearly spoke some transcendent form of Southern-accented Spanglish.
But labels don’t stick too easily to Strange Bird, the retro diner owned by Brandon Carter of FARM Hospitality Group. It’s a deliciously restless restaurant that keeps inventing new reasons to return.
Strange Bird started as an airstream food truck in 2019 and marked Carter’s first foray into Savannah. The original idea, he says, was to preview his forthcoming fine-dining restaurant, Common Thread. Carter’s team smoked meats and gradually added burgers, chicken sandwiches, tacos and burritos to the menu. “The name Strange Bird gave us creative license to do whatever we felt like doing that day,” says Carter.
The mobile trailer was a lifeline for the group during the pandemic, and its success warranted a permanent home for Strange Bird inside the former chrome and green Streamliner Diner on the corner of Barnard and Henry streets. Now, on any given day of the week there, you’ll find city workers tucked into one of the few vinyl-upholstered booths, a suited lawyer with a briefcase at his feet and Tropicalia in hand, and twenty-somethings filming queso fundido as it lands on their table — topped with pico de gallo and chorizo, bubbling wildly on a sizzle platter.
At first glance, Strange Bird is all simple pleasures, marrying foods and flavors South Georgians understand, and sharing them at affordable prices in a nostalgic setting. But what makes Strange Bird great is that it taps into the wider ecosystem of the FARM group and the imaginations of its co-chefs de cuisine, Daniel Aranza and Felipe Vera.
Two whole pigs, for example, arrive at the group’s Bluffton commissary each week. The loins might go on the hearth at Common Thread, but the hams get processed into chorizo verde for Strange Bird tacos. One of Aranza and Vera’s summer specials, aka a “strange plate,” was a katsu sando meets torta with pork chop milanesa stacked onto milk bread with pickled jalapeños, guacamole, red onions and cotija cheese. The same peak season watermelon and cantaloupe that anchor salads at FARM get blended into Strange Bird’s refreshing agua frescas.
“Strange Bird is grounded in how we cook from scratch, source our ingredients, and all those fundamentals that are a common denominator throughout the group,” says Carter.
Chefs from Carter’s five restaurants also converge at Strange Bird for pop-ups. Diners can expect a reprise of an intra-group ramen collaboration, and Carter hinted at an omakase-themed menu for the fall. Aranza and Vera will also host Juan Stevenson, formerly of Late Air, for an Indonesian-through-the-lens-of-Strange-Bird dinner series. But whether it’s for a pop-up or their own menu, Strange Birds’ chefs are inspired by their own hunger. They cook what they want to eat, says Aranza. “That fuels our passion and makes us want to keep putting out great, delicious dishes.”
This past summer, and despite its popularity, Aranza and Vera overhauled Strange Bird’s menu, shelving some of their hit-making taco fillings to make way for fresh ideas. Korean-style bulgogi replaced barbacoa. The shrimp are now fried, and pibil-style pork got nixed for a mojo treatment. They also added chimichangas smothered in queso, plus one glaringly unlikely dish: Thai-inspired laab with crispy chicken or shrimp, scallion pancake, red onion, cabbage, soft herbs, jalapeño and peanuts.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Restaurants have to be focused,’” says Carter. “But why? Why do we have to cook just Mexican food or do barbecue? The three of us kind of all agree that if the food is delicious, and if we’re inspired by something, why wouldn’t we do it?”
Caroline Hatchett is a South Georgia-born food writer who lives in New York City. Her work appears in Garden & Gun, The Bitter Southerner, The Washington Post and Food & Wine.
