Husk, chef Sean Brock’s restaurant built around ingredients from the South, opened to the public Monday night in a restored 1890s house at 76 Queen St.

Brock, who also runs the kitchen at McCrady’s, said the staff was aiming high for its first night.

“My major concern is that we’re ambitious, that we think we can do 150 guests tonight,” Brock said, according to The Post and Courier. “It’s like air traffic control.”

The opening followed five nights of soft openings last week for a few hundred VIPs and friends, the newspaper reported. In August, the restaurant had targeted a Nov. 1 opening.

“I wake up nervous every day,” Brock said. “Nervous is good. Nervous means you’re alert.”

Who paid for it

Private investors led by Blackbaud founder Tony Bakker have put nearly $3.5 million into Husk, The Post and Courier reported. That includes $1.25 million for the property, bought in February 2009, with much of the rest going to a top-to-bottom renovation of the dilapidated buildings.

Other investors include real estate developer Anthony McAlister, oral surgeon Kevin Riker and former Blackbaud executives Gary Thornhill, Tim Smith and Nigel Cooper, the newspaper reported in August.

A restaurant wasn’t necessarily the plan when the group bought the property, said David Howard, Husk’s managing partner.

“First of all, it was really a real estate transaction, an investment in real estate,” Howard told The Post and Courier in August. “Once they made that acquisition, then they tried to find the best use of the property.”

Bakker’s group already knew the restaurant business. It opened Queen Anne’s Revenge, a pirate-themed restaurant on Daniel Island, in 2001, bought McCrady’s in downtown Charleston about five years later and opened the Buccaneer at 5 Faber St. in December 2008, according to the newspaper.

Howard, a chef and veteran restaurateur who opened Chicago’s Steak and Seafood in Atlanta, formed Neighborhood Dining Group to run the restaurants. The company oversees McCrady’s, the Buccaneer, Queen Anne’s Revenge and Chicago’s, The Post and Courier reported.

“Every element of this concept is extreme,” Howard said. “It would’ve been a lot easier to do a steakhouse.”

Two old buildings

The restaurant fills the white two-story house with wide front porches at 76 Queen St. It was built in 1893 and was once home to the Graham family, the newspaper reported. It also once housed the Gibbes Art Gallery School.

The bar, which welcomed its first guests Friday, is next door at 74 Queen St. That brick building was rebuilt in 1874 with bricks salvaged from a house likely destroyed in the great fire of 1861, according to The Post and Courier. Howard said it was near collapse.

Workers repointed the brick, reinforced joists, restored the old double-hung windows and refinished reclaimed chestnut floors. Keeping the bar’s rough-hewn ceiling boards exposed added $25,000 for insulation, the newspaper reported. A wood-burning oven anchors the new kitchen, which takes up almost half of the main house’s ground floor.

The city’s Board of Architectural Review required that the stucco face of 74 Queen be restored to match the building’s original appearance. Howard had wanted to leave the brick exposed.

“I think the challenge of the historic building has been more significant than I anticipated,” Howard said.

Project manager John Paparozzi said the work was done in six months but could have used eight or nine.

The menu

Brock has vowed, with few exceptions, to use ingredients only from the South, and the kitchen will write a new menu every day, The Post and Courier reported. He may use chickens from Keegan-Filion Farm in Walterboro or leeks from Sidi Limehouse on Johns Island. Travis Grimes is chef de cuisine.

Brock, the reigning James Beard Foundation Best Chef Southeast, will stay on as McCrady’s chef and split his time between the two restaurants, the newspaper reported in August.

“It’s a daily collection of pantry and fresh supplies that are representative of our culture and our history,” Brock said then. “And tell stories. It’s almost like the chefs are pushed aside a little bit and the producers take center stage.”

Building in a downturn

Howard said in August that the investors kept going because design work was well underway. He also said construction costs are more favorable in a weak economy because contractors compete harder for work.

“Nobody anticipated the downturn in the economy was going to last,” Howard said. “On the other side, it’s good to position yourself so when the economy comes back you’re in a position to offset the leaner years.”

Opening night ran mostly smoothly. By about 8 p.m., the only setback was a computer problem that listed some appetizers as entrees on kitchen orders, the newspaper reported.

Diner Ken Seeger said the menu “was a really interesting twist on country food.”