Ask Rachael Pack how business is going at So. Fox, the new restaurant she and her husband, chef Myles Moody, opened next door to Kinship Butcher & Sundry on July 2, and she’ll forget all about the numbers. Instead, she’ll tell you about the butcher shop regulars who walk in for a hug. She knows all their names. She knows their spouses’ names. She even knows their dogs’ names. That’s not typical for a restaurant that’s only been open a matter of weeks. But then again, So. Fox isn’t your typical new restaurant.
The Butcher Shop Came First, Just Not on Purpose
Moody and Pack met in New York, cooking and running the wine program, respectively, at two Michelin-starred Scandinavian restaurant, Aska. The couple started dreaming up an exit plan from their one-bedroom basement in Fort Greene with three concepts: a fine-dining restaurant, an upscale neighborhood spot, and a butcher shop. The plan was to open in that order. When the world shut down, plans changed.
The butcher shop came first because it was an essential business. In hindsight, Kinship became the connective tissue for future expansion. It’s where they met farmers like Woodland Gardens and Châtel Farms, and it’s where the relationships now feeding So. Fox, including Pack Hospitality’s own organic Under Acre Farm in Ormewood, took root.
“How much storytelling can we do with a to-go sandwich?” Moody says of Kinship. “How much can we do when storytelling is the center of the restaurant—that’s the same ethos and approach, but in a different medium.”
What’s on the Plate
So. Fox is a Southern restaurant that subverts expectations. Rather than serving predictable meat-and-threes and shrimp and grits, Moody’s menu lets Southern ingredients tell their own story: ribbons of summer squash lounge on a cloud of herbed farmer’s cheese and sweet corn dumplings evoke the memory of a seafood boil with a velvety seafood sauce of lump blue crab and gulf bottarga.
The menu is printed daily to best reflect what’s coming from the farms, though it may not always be served in familiar ways. “We’re using collard greens, local seafood, and Southern produce because that’s what surrounds us,” Moody says, “but maybe the collards are raw, fermented, or preserved instead of braised.”
What’s in the Glass
Pack crafted her wine list the same way Moody built the menu: around small producers she actually believes in, with a bias towards low-intervention bottles that still taste like somewhere specific. Most importantly, she wanted it to be approachable.
“I’m carrying everything that Arnot-Roberts makes, so you can see the breadth of what he does—his artistry—on one page,” Pack offers as an example of her methodology. “There’s so many wine words out there, and it’s very intimidating. I wanted to give everyone a little extra room.”…