Char Restaurant

The Restaurant

Char Restaurant occupies the ground-floor corner of Highland Village in north Jackson, a level below BRAVO! Italian and around the corner from the city's most concentrated cluster of upscale retail. The dining room runs to about ninety covers across a generously spaced main floor, a glass-fronted private dining room for parties of eight to fourteen, and a long marble-topped bar that anchors the room's social half. Dark walnut floors, white-linen-topped tables, low-lit pendant fixtures, and brass accent work give the space the New Orleans steakhouse register that the original Char concept, a Mississippi capital relative of the Brennan's-influenced Gulf Coast steakhouse tradition, drew from when it opened in the early 2000s. Char has been a Jackson business-dinner staple for the better part of two decades.

The cooking centres on dry-aged American beef and Gulf seafood. The steak programme runs a hand-cut filet mignon, a bone-in ribeye, a New York strip, and a porterhouse for two on the heavier-end half of the menu, with a small selection of dry-aged cuts (a 28-day ribeye, a 35-day strip) for the customer who wants the steakhouse evening with a more serious provenance. The seafood half is Gulf-focused: a Gulf redfish with a crab-and-shrimp-imperial topping, a pan-seared trout amandine in the New Orleans Galatoire's tradition, a Gulf snapper Pontchartrain with a crab-and-shrimp meunière, a chargrilled oyster service that arrives in cast iron with garlic butter and Pecorino. Sides are classical and uncluttered: a creamed spinach, a hand-cut steakhouse fries, a lobster mac, a sautéed mushroom plate.

The bar programme is one of the better cocktail rooms in Jackson, with a barrel-aged Manhattan and an Old Fashioned built with regional Cathead Distillery bourbon that pull a serious regular following. The wine list runs about one hundred and sixty references with steakhouse-appropriate depth: reliable Napa Cabernet, a quiet Bordeaux section, a careful Italian programme, and a small but well-chosen by-the-glass list. Service is professional and unhurried in the way a long-running American steakhouse should run, captains who carve the porterhouse tableside, runners who know not to interrupt, a manager who handles a six-top of visiting executives with the ease of a room that has hosted Mississippi business dinners for twenty years. Reservations on weekends should be booked two weeks ahead; mid-week is usually available within a few days.