Lucky Rooster restaurant closed for 3 weeks. Here’s what’s next for the Hilton Head favorite
Hilton Head Island’s Lucky Rooster Kitchen and Bar has had a busy December even though the restaurant didn’t serve customers for most of it.
Instead, the 6-year-old business, located at 841 William Hilton Parkway, closed Dec. 1 for a “refresh,” according to a news release. It reopened on Dec. 21.
The changes are extensive, with slate blue paint throughout, new flooring, improved lighting and more comfortable booths. The day before the reopening, the site was filled with tradesmen and restaurant employees getting the restaurant ready.
“The walls and the tables are in the same spots, but that’s about all that’s the same,” said owner and chef Clayton Rollison.
A standing bar replaces an infrequently used banquette in the bar area. A colorful painting by Amos Hummel now greets customers as they enter the restaurant, and photographs by Kathryn Ramseur framed with bright white mats pop against the dark blue dining room walls.
Rollison said his goal was to elevate customers’ dining experience with a modern look while still keeping the restaurant comfortable and fun enough for them to want to be there.
“One of our biggest issues was always the food and the dining room were a bit disconnected. It was a little too country barnyard, not refined enough,” he said.
The restaurant bills itself as an American bistro with a Southern soul. Rollison said his menu still will be driven by seasonal ingredients, but diners can expect a few changes — throwbacks, in a way. The winter menu includes some favorites from the restaurant’s earlier years.
Rollison said he wanted to take the old and new and bridge them together.
Among the starters is Octopus a la Plancha with giant white been ragout, peppers, garlic and olives ($16) and “Nashville Hot” fried quail served with a waffle and sunny-side-up egg ($17).
The once-popular 40-ounce Cowboy Ribeye ($92) makes a return to the menu and comes with a choice of Southern sides like pimento mac and cheese and collard greens. The venison chili ($26) with Geechee Boy Mills Guinea Flint corn grits is perfect for the cooler winter weather.
Seafood options include shrimp and crab rice ($27) or pan-seared scallops with brown butter ($33).
One bottle in a glass-fronted wooden box stands out on a shelf behind the freshly restocked bar. The bottle of Buffalo Trace bourbon — one of 400 from the distillery’s six millionth barrel — will be raffled off at a February event during the Hilton Head Seafood Festival. All proceeds will go to the Literacy Center of Hilton Head, one of 10,000 charities that applied for a bottle from the distillery.
The recent renovations follow work done earlier in the year on the restaurant’s patio, which was complete in time for a viewing party of Rollison’s winning appearance on Food Network’s “Guy’s Grocery Games.”
Earlier this year, the chef opened a second restaurant, Lucky Rooster Market Street, at 1 North Forest Beach Drive in Coligny Plaza.
Lucky Rooster Kitchen and Bar is open daily at 5 p.m. The restaurant serves until 9 p.m., and the bar stays open later. It will be closed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day but will be open late with live music, special menu features and a midnight toast on New Year’s Eve.
