Fort Bar & Grill opens ... with a $90 steak!

Mushroom and Swiss smashburger (photo by Parween Sultany Mascari)

New sports bar takes over former Barkadas location in Fort Hill

After wrapping up a few weeks of training and a brief soft opening that ended this past Saturday, co-owner Martin Riggs confirmed The Fort Bar & Grill has officially opened its doors to the public for lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday starting this week.

Grilled fish sandwich (Parween Sultany Mascari)

The restaurant at 100 Cantley Dr. is located at the foot of Fort Hill in Charleston in the building that formerly housed the Barkadas Filipino restaurant.

Featuring a simple interior that largely resembles the former restaurant (minus the couch and décor) the new spot offers a deep-fried-forward menu of bar snacks and apps, plus a hearty lineup of smashburgers, sandwiches and salads you might expect to find at a casual neighborhood restaurant.

There are the usual fries, loaded potatoes and wings, both bone-in and boneless, plus fried cheeses, fried pickles, fried mushrooms, fried shrimp, fried cauliflower, fried peppers, fried poppers and fried mini corndogs.

What may surprise you, however, is they’ll also be serving high-end steaks that are hand-cut to order. Those include a 10-ounce filet for $45, a 20-ounce “cowboy cut” ribeye for $50 and a whopping 40-ounce “beast” called The Fort Worth Ribeye, ringing in at a lofty $90.

Side salad (Parween Sultany Mascari)

Steaks come with two sides (fries, onion rings, roasted or smashed potatoes, asparagus, Brussels sprouts or a salad) plus they can be topped with sauteed mushrooms, bleu cheese, shrimp or lobster tail for an extra $5-22.

There’s also a grilled salmon filet topped with Champagne dill cream sauce for $30, but it’s the restaurant’s lineup of smashburgers ranging from $14-19 that are expected to be big hits.

Served with a mound of house-cut fries, they come smothered with toppers like bleu cheese and bacon; bourbon bacon jam and cheese; BBQ sauce and jalapenos; mushrooms, onions and Swiss; fried eggs and more.

Although I haven’t sampled The Fort’s menu yet, I’ve received a few glowing reviews from readers on both the food and service, plus I did speak to the restaurant’s chef who assured me those hand-cut steaks are the real deal.

“Oh yeah,” Jackson Traylor told me, while taking a break from the kitchen on Saturday. “Every time someone orders a steak, I go back and cut it right off myself.”

I’ll probably be swayed to dive into those smashburgers first, but I definitely look forward to splurging on a nice steak and bottle of wine there in the near future.

• IF YOU GO: The Fort Bar & Grill at 100 Cantley Dr. in Charleston has set tentative hours of 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday-Saturday.

Bar 101 & Ichiban close downtown

Bar 101 and Ichiban both closed their doors last week – at least temporarily – joining downtown Charleston’s DT Prime, which has been closed for a few weeks now. The three Capitol Street restaurants are owned by David Andrews and Todd Moore, who had previously told me DT Prime was closed due to broken air conditioning.

Menu at The Fort Bar & Grill

Although a TV news report last week said Bar 101 and Ichiban were expected to reopen with Moore as the owner, the head chef and kitchen manager of those adjacent businesses, Evan Wilson, has already left to take a job at Fazio’s Italian Restaurant on Bullitt Street in Charleston.

That same TV report claimed that DT Prime was expected to eventually reopen under new ownership, but that has not been confirmed by reliable sources.

I did confidentially speak to other local restaurant owners who have expressed interest in the DT space, but they confirmed no agreement has been reached with the landlord due to significant improvements they say would have to be completed first as part of the deal.

I’ve asked Moore and Andrews to keep me updated on these developments, so I can help spread the word, but haven’t heard back from them yet. Stay tuned for continued updates on these three high-profile restaurants, which are all still dark at the moment.

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Steven Keith is a food writer and restaurant critic known as “The Food Guy” who writes a weekly column for the Charleston Gazette-Mail and has appeared in several state, regional and national culinary publications. Follow him online at www.wvfoodguy.com or on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. He can be reached at wvfoodguy@aol.com.