Four Moons Restaurant GM Ryan Groeschel and Executive Chef David Quintana

LowcountryBizSC:
What are the origins of the restaurant Four Moons in Orangeburg?

Ryan Groeschel:
Four Moons is owned by the Tourville family of Orangeburg, SC.  Frank Tourville Sr. is the owner of Zeus, a local advanced manufacturing company that specializes in Teflon extrusions. After founding Buck Ridge Plantation, in 1996, a contemporary lodge to host weddings and special events here in Orangeburg, the Tourvilles wanted to bring fine dining with quality service to the region. Four Moons is a restaurant, a bar, and an adjacent wine and gourmet shop. Michael Tourville, Frank’s son, who has more than twenty years of sales, marketing, and hospitality experience, is the managing partner, and I am the general manager.

LowcountryBizSC:
What is your education and background?

Ryan Groeschel:
I was born in Wisconsin, but my family moved to Charleston in 1990.  I graduated from the College of Charleston in 1998 with a Bachelor of Science in Sociology. I discovered a love for food and restaurants at an early age.  When I was fifteen, I worked at a small, family-run Italian bistro in Marietta, Georgia and I have spent my entire professional career in the restaurant business.  I was most recently employed at the Peninsula Grill in Charleston.

I have been fortunate in this industry to have worked for many great restaurants and inspiring mentors.  Over the years, I slowly and steadily developed a love of wine and in 2003, I decided to pass the certification for the level of the Court of Master Sommeliers.

LowcountryBizSC:
Are there any simple rules for pairing food with wine?

Ryan Groeschel:
We love to pair a glass of wine for each of 3, 4 or even 5 course meals. We also love to educate our customers by offering flights of wine – smaller glasses of a variety of wines so that customers can easily compare. In my opinion, however, the best point of departure for recommending wines is not traditional pairings, but rather personal preference. Normally I would pair a white wine with fish, but if the customer prefers red wine, then that is fine! A good sommelier should be able to work within your preferred type of grape and suggest an appropriate wine for whatever you are eating. This may lead to some untraditional pairings, but why ruin a good meal with something you don’t like? 

LowcountryBizSC:
Do you have any special new wines that you like?

Ryan Groeschel:
We are currently serving a white Spanish wine called an Albarino that is a great value.  It is made from the same grape that they use to make sherry, a fortified wine; it’s crisp, refreshing, lively, and affordable.

LowcountryBizSC:
Does South Carolina have the potential to develop a wine industry?

Ryan Groeschel:
To grow good grapes you need warm days and cool nights.  The amount of fog in a region is a good indicator of a region ability to produce good grapes. There are not a lot of regions in South Carolina that fit that bill.  Also, the enemy of a good grape growing region is heat and humidity, so in general, South Carolina is not an ideal location for a wine industry.

LowcountryBizSC:
Are there some underrated wine growing regions in the United States?

Ryan Groeschel:
In my opinion, we are too California-centric and France-centric when it comes to domestic and international wines. Unlikely areas such as the Finger Lakes in New York are gaining respectability as wine regions. We just offered a Bulgarian wine on our wine list that was incredible. I encourage people to broaden their horizons.

LowcountryBizSC:
Describe the ambience of the restaurant.

Ryan Groeschel:
We wanted to create the feel of a big city restaurant in small city South Carolina. Dan Sweeney, the architect who owns Stumphouse, a Charleston-based design firm, has created an otherworldly atmosphere.  The bar is urban, chic with floating ceilings; the restaurant carries on some of the same elements as the bar, but is brighter.  The focal point of the restaurant is the glass chandelier that hangs in the middle of the restaurant. The chandelier is a stunning, cobalt blue blown glass sculpture, made of 366 pieces of blown glass. As many of our discerning business clientele want privacy, we have created a nice balance between open and enclosed tables.

LowcountryBizSC:
The restaurant has won some awards.  Talk a little about your accomplishments thus far.

Ryan Groeschel:
We are one of only sixteen AAA Four Diamond restaurants in South Carolina and the only one in the Midlands. I would put us up against the top restaurants in Charleston and Atlanta, but I invite people to come in and try us out for themselves. Our goal is to create something interesting and unique for our customers. In our pursuit of perfection, we seek to offer the best food, wine and service. We want to be progressive, but still offer our customers familiarity.

We also offer a shuttle service to the restaurant called the Lunar Shuttle where we off customers round trip service to and from the restaurant in our 10-passenger luxury van. 

LowcountryBizSC:
What are the challenges as you look to establish a top notch restaurant in Orangeburg?

Ryan Groeschel:
Staffing a restaurant in a small town such as Orangeburg is a challenge because we do not have the pool of talent that you typically find in a restaurant city such as Charleston. Good service is a result of nice people with a good attitude and a willingness to learn. We have implemented a training program for servers, line cooks, servers’ assistants, and we are proud of the professional service that we have achieved at the restaurant.

LowcountryBizSC:
What are your influences as a chef?

David Quintana:
I was part of the 3rd graduating class from the Charlotte-located College of Culinary Arts at Johnson and Wales University in Charlotte. (It was previously located in Charleston). I have worked in the restaurant business for 12 years starting in country clubs, moving to corporate cuisine, and eventually to the smaller, privately-owned 75 seat restaurants. 

LowcountryBizSC:
Who are some of your influences in the kitchen? What makes a successful chef?

David Quintana:
I have read about the great American chefs of our time – Thomas Keller and Charlie Trotter – and learned cooking techniques, presentation skills, and ingredients that I never thought possible with food. I staged at wd-50 in New York and also McCrady’s in Charleston. Sean Brock at McCrady’s is a real inspiration for me. 

LowcountryBizSC:
What are a few of the popular styles of cooking that you employ? 

David Quintana:
There have been two major movements that have influenced cooking over the past decade or so: sous vide and molecular gastronomy. Sous vide is a style of slow cooking food in its own juices at a controlled temperature. It has been around since the 1970’s, but is now increasingly coming into the mainstream, and even into households.  If you have ever cooked asparagus in boiling water and noticed how green the water gets, you understand that much of the nutritional value of the vegetable is lost during the process.  Cooking asparagus through this sous vide process retains 100% of its color and flavor. 

One can really push the boundaries of a menu by embracing the use of molecular gastronomy, the movement where food is broken down into its sub atomic state. With molecular gastronomy, you can do some pretty cool and shocking things with food.  At Moto in Chicago, for example, they have at times offered the menu itself as an appetizer! We look to continue to use both of these cooking techniques in moderation as we expand into more local, seasonal foods.

LowcountryBizSC:
What is one thing that people might find most surprising about the job of a chef at a restaurant like Four Moons?

David Quintana:
Sometimes I wish people knew how long and how much effort goes into the smallest of things on the menu.  The lobster stock that we use for our popular Lobster Mac & Cheese takes two days to prepare. Now a fixture on our menu, our version of the traditional mac and cheese dish is a roasted garlic and mascarpone orzo pasta with lobster, caviar and truffle oil. It’s one of those dishes that we have tried to take off the menu a couple of times, but our customers won’t let us!

LowcountryBizSC:
What are the challenges for you as a chef?

David Quintana:
The challenge for a chef is often the limitation to creative freedom that can be set by your clientele, your owners, or your concept as a restaurant. The best restaurants are the ones that are backed by great people with a passion for food, and that is exactly the situation that we have here at Four Moons. The Tourville family is solidly behind this restaurant. We already work with local farms, such as Anson Mills and Split Creek Farms as well as numerous others, but as we look to incorporate more local ingredients in our menu, the challenge is finding the time to go out and establish connections with these South Carolina farmers. 

It’s hard to rise above the ordinary in any restaurant.  You have to love what you do in order to be successful as a chef.  The restaurant business involves longs days and is physically demanding, but you have to push yourself and stay on top of your game in this industry in order to survive. There is an inherent irony with cooking – chefs want to shine, to stand out, yet when it comes to recipes, it has all been done before. There’s only so many ways that you can cook shrimp and grits.

To me, one of the key traits of a successful chef is his ability to surround himself with a talented team. I view the teamwork in the kitchen as critical to the success of a restaurant.  It’s not so much about a successful chef, but rather a successful kitchen.  The kitchen should be a miniature culinary school where everybody shares ideas, learns together and tries to push things to the next level. That’s how you rise above the ordinary.

To go to Four Moons website click here.