W.A. Frost & Co.

Rating:

He may be just 23, but Derik Moran is already an old hand in the kitchen.

The Nick and Eddie chef got his first cooking job at age 11, flipping burgers in a beer joint. By 18 he was head chef for a high-end resort in northern Wisconsin. After stints at Porter & Frye and Trattoria Tosca, he's been running the show at Nick and Eddie since August, working 18/7 with just a two-man crew. Camping out in the kitchen is more than paying off.

Those labors are all evident in a salad Moran calls Mississippi Greens, a glorious $7 testament to his appeals-to-all-senses cooking style. A salad so pretty that one glimpse of it would have sent Renoir rushing to his easel, it's a striking blend of delicate micro-greens and garden-fresh herbs dressed in a ranch-inspired buttermilk dressing and finished with bits of Moran's fantastic house-made bacon.

Much of what he's doing on his muy-affordable menu (entrees average $15) could be described as contemporary comfort food. Pot roast, mac-and-cheese, fish and chips, steak and potatoes, they're all here, but in lighter, brighter versions. The item he can probably never retire from his constantly shifting roster is a variation on chicken and dumpling soup. In Moran's capable hands, the chicken is cured in its own fat and then rendered until the meat falls off the bone and the skin is tantalizingly crisp, then served in an herb-flecked broth brimming with crunchy carrots and onions and pillowy pan-seared gnocchi. It's definitely a dish I'm adding to my Potential Last Meals list.

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