It’s not every restaurant that offers guests a perfect social media backdrop.
Neon Fig isn’t every restaurant.
As I walked into the downtown Aiken eatery, it got my attention immediately with an arresting bright pink and green checkerboard wall, adorned with vines, and a petite lime green table that begged us to come sit and take a photo.
We did, of course. But first things first.
My friend Tricia and I were up for a gab fest and girls’ night, with plenty of snacks to fuel us. As the hostess led us to our table, I couldn’t help but notice Neon Fig’s vibe of industrial meets feminine, with its exposed ceilings, dramatic laser-cut metal dividers, chandeliers, soft pink walls and enormous flower prints in bright yellows and pinks. The menu was just as unexpected.
It features small plates such as shoestring fries dressed with soy aioli and Japanese seasonings like bonito flakes (dried fish) and furikake (which includes dried fish, sesame seeds, sugar, salt, and chopped seaweed). There’s a section dedicated to greenery (love this term!) and soups, including a Caesar salad with gem lettuce and egg yolk jam or the day’s soup, which for us was a green tomato gazpacho with pickled shrimp and cucumber. Mains included a steak frites dressed up with a tomato compound butter, a burger with fig sherry drizzle, a harissa cauliflower with crispy chickpeas, salmon Oscar with smoky bearnaise, or chicken gnocchi in an arugula cream sauce. There are also wine flights, selections of bubbles/rose, white or red wine, beer, and an extensive cocktails list.
Tricia and I decided to do something a little different too and chose three small plates to share.
The first to arrive was the heirloom tomato burrata, featuring large sliced tomatoes topped with halved grape tomatoes dressed in a grainy pesto, with a generous spoonful of soft creamy burrata cheese and everything drizzled with balsamic vinegar. The tomatoes were cold and fresh—the grape tomatoes seemed to pop in your mouth, and each bite was sharp with the balsamic vinegar and the hearty pesto, merging beautifully with the creamy burrata. The toasted crostini was lovely too, like a big salty crouton.
The hoisin crunch ribs and the salmon chop chop arrived nearly at the same time, and it was hard to choose which to dive into first. But the ribs won out. Deeply coated in a mixture of hoisin sauce and other ingredients, the baby back ribs had a sweet, almost licorice flavor and were both crispy and fatty. And I kept going back again to sample the cucumbers, which had been marinated in rice wine, but also tasted spicy (likely thanks to the jalapeno slices in the dish), like a good cucumber kimchi.
The salmon chop chop was fun because it had an interactive element—a small vial of soy sauce that you could delicately spritz over the fish. The chopped salmon was dressed in a creamy aioli, with a tang from the scallions and perhaps just a touch of dill? When we had it, it was served on a rice paper crisp, which softened at bit with the salmon sitting atop it. It has now been changed to a scallion pancake, which I think may be a better choice.
Our light meal meant that we could get dessert, which we decided to walk to: Aiken’s longtime Flanigan’s Ice Cream, where I got a scoop of my favorite mint chip in a waffle cone—and it was non-dairy!
But first, we had to get our photo (which one of the hostesses nicely snapped for us, professionally holding the phone a little lower to get the best angle), and I promptly posted it with the words, “Always great fun, great conversations and great food!” That’s Neon Fig in a nutshell.
Reserve Your Spot
Neon Fig
110 Park Ave. SW, Aiken
Entrée cost: $18 to $40. Small plates are $7 to $16.
Flanigan’s Ice Cream
221 Barnwell Ave. NW, Aiken
facebook.com/FlanigansIceCream
Cost: $2 to $9
