Coastal Cuisine

A new location celebrates a family legacy that changed Hilton Head Island cuisine.

Earl Nightingale has worn a lot of hats in his time as a restaurateur. Along with his son Alex as well as the rest of his family, he's raised places like ELA’S, The Pearl in Bluffton and Roadhouse in Beaufort to legendary status in tho Lowcountry's culinary community. But he's not just the front of the house "face of the company." You'll find him doing everything from hammering in nails to helping plate dishes in his operation.

He's been a lot of things. During the opening of Celeste, however, he became something that those who know him might not have thought possible: He became speechless.

"This restaurant was named ... " he began before a lump in his throat choked off the speech he'd been giving to the assembled crowd, "This restaurant was named for (my wife's) mother."

Nightingale first met his wife in New Orleans, and shortly after he met Celeste, the French Cajun matriarch of the family. A whiz in the kitchen, she quickly welcomed Earl with open arms. “She was just a great Southern cook,” he said. “When I first met my wife, her mother was in tho kitchen cooking and she kept speaking in this French creole language. I asked my wife, 'What is she saying? Is she talking about me?'"

Nightingale needn't have worried. “She was just telling us what she needed from the store,” he said with a laugh.

As Celeste’s name is on the wall, her namesake restaurant will carry some of her Cajun influence to a menu that should sound very familiar to anyone who has dined at Ela's or The Pearl.

“All of our restaurants do a higher-end caliber of dish we call coastal cuisine. You can never get away from scallops, grouper, steamed lobster, and or course our steaks" said Nightingale. “But we are going to have five or six dishes that carry a little bit of that Cajun creole influence, Jambalaya, Crawfish étouffée, New Orleans-style BBQ shrimp (head on, in a rich red sauce)...“

The decor also carries hints of New Orleans through wrought iron accents, but the rest is the same upscale coastal chic that have made Nightingale's other restaurants such a hit.

“I like to look at a restaurant as a whole sensory experience—it all has to come together,” he said. With Ela's we have the water view, so we just wanted the inside of Celeste to have enough of those visual pearls.”

And it certainly did, with walls of crisp white shiplap encircling dining that doesn't feel overtly contemporary or pretentious, but embraces the upscale. To one end of the massive footprint, a gargantuan bar serves up a litany of craft cocktails and boasts a side stage for live music. At the heart of the dining room, a glass-walled wine cellar offers private dining as well as a showcase for some of the fantastic wines on offer.

"We have a standard we use in all of our restaurants. John (Wasem, Nightingale's son-in-law) does all of our selections, " said Nightingale. "But this will be different from Ela’s or The Pearl because there will be a few more French wines as a nod to the French Cajun influence."

It's a stunning space, made all the more fascinating when one remembers, that this had previously been the north end Outback Steakhouse, which shuttered before Hurricane Matthew and never reopened. Looking at Celeste now, it’s hard to believe that before this transformation it had sat derelict for six years.

“The building was in surprisingly good shape—we did have to put a now roof on ... but all the air conditioning units, the walk-in fridge and the drainage system worked," he said. “It troubled our heart to see such a nice facility in a great location sit vacant for so long.”

When the Old Fort Pub closed, Nightingale saw a gap in the market for high-end dining on the north end and seized the opportunity. And thus began five solid months of painting, repairing, creating and beautifying. And Nightingale, far from being just the guy who gets to give speeches at the opening, was in there nearly every day working away to see his vision brought to life.

“This is really just a nice hobby for us," he said with a laugh. "We get excited about serving and making sure people just have a good experience. We just enjoy what we do.”

Something tells us Celeste would be proud of what what’s been created in her name.