“Staffing is everything,” Dano Heinze said. “The team is everything to us.”
If you go
These days, the Heinzes have a better grasp of how to describe their restaurant. It’s a locally driven neo-bistro with a menu that shifts with the seasons.
Reservations are available up to 30 days in advance, starting at noon. The restaurant also has seven first-come, first-served bar seats that, since the Michelin star announcement, are filling up faster than ever before.
“I would say we’re at maximum capacity almost every night now, which is the best,” Bethany said, adding that they make an effort to accommodate walk-ins without disrupting those who reserved seats.
An escargot, tarragon and Gruyère dish is served at Vern’s restaurant in downtown Charleston on Feb. 24, 2023.
File/Staff
Once at a table or the bar, start by ordering a glass of wine from Bethany’s expansive list, which features everything from sparkling to orange, white, rosé and red bottles. Wine in hand, the next step is perusing Dano Heinze’s dinner menu.
The beauty of what he created lies in the fact that diners can lead their own experience, meaning they could hypothetically come back the next night and create an entirely different one.
Vern’s caters to a wide range of dining experiences, with small plates, salads, pastas, seafood and hearty cuts of meat, such as wagyu beef sourced from a Kentucky farm or the lamb saddle Heize was preparing the day of our recent interview.
The menu changes frequently, but some staples have endured since the restaurant opened.
Chief among them is the escargot, a saucy small plate of snails coated in Gruyère. Tear off pieces of Vern’s house-made sourdough and dip the dill-flecked flatbread in the mollusk’s buttery surroundings.
Vern’s roasted spring chicken is another highlight. Birds are brined for 24 hours, dried, then pan-roasted in a cast-iron skillet. The chicken is finished in the oven, carved to order and placed on top of a brown butter jus that’s anchored by chicken stock that takes 36 hours to produce.
Dining and Cooking