Chef Nick Teague has been quietly making his mark on the kitchen at Engine Room in Mystic, for nearly a year. A native of North Carolina’s Outer Banks with stints at Washington D.C.’s Michelinstarred Roses Luxury and the celebrated Dabney, Teague came to Mystic by way of the nearby Oyster Club, where he spent five formative years alongside chef Renee Touponce. At Engine Room, he’s been working closely with original executive chef and partner Chris Vanasse (the man who built the restaurant’s foundation over more than a decade) to shepherd the next chapter of what the restaurant can be. We sat down with him to talk cornmeal, kitchen culture, and why he thinks the farms are really the ones writing his menus.

Engine Room has been around since 2013, but you’ve been making changes. Where are those most visible on the menu?

You’ll see some significant changes in our entrees. More vegetables. Engine Room has historically been a very meat-centric restaurant, and I love that about it, but we have so many incredible small produce farms around here. I think New England has one of the greatest growing seasons anywhere, precisely because it’s so short. Asparagus and tomatoes and strawberries here just taste that much more alive when you get them. I want people to look at the menu and know those products are being highlighted in the best way possible.

Tell us about how your background is showing up in your cooking.

I was born in the mountains, in Hickory, basically Asheville’s backyard, then moved to the Outer Banks when I was seven. I grew up mostly on Topsail Island, a small barrier island outside of Wilmington. And honestly, North Carolina didn’t really influence my cooking until very recently. It’s taken me a long time to connect those roots to what I do.

I’ve been cooking for ten years, and I think I’m in my prime right now. At this stage in my career, I’m starting to think more about home. I work long hours, missing family, and in constant recipe testing, I’ve been thinking about what I grew up eating. That’s the food I’m really focused on, bringing Southern ingredients I find beautiful and special, and sprinkling them into the Engine Room menu. Not just ingredients, but techniques. The way we do barbecue, the way we cook corn, the way we eat oysters.

Which Southern techniques are making it onto the plate?

There’s a little town called Ayden in eastern North Carolina that’s credited with some of the best barbecue in the world. The Jones family there do something unusual: they smoke in open pits but leave the skin on the pig. Over a long cook, the skin becomes a crispy crackling. And instead of pulling the pork, they chop it on a board with two cleavers, so you get these little bits of chicharrón throughout the whole thing. We’re doing that now, putting chicharrón on top of our pulled pork sandwich. Little details like that are what I love.

Then there’s a technique from the Low Country, where they coat one side of a piece of protein in cornmeal and cook it cornmeal-side down, so it forms a shell. The crust goes beautifully golden, like the crispiest fried cornbread, while the top stays protected and juicy. That’s what we’re doing with our fish of the day right now, using yellowfin tuna. But it works with any fish coming out of these waters.

Cornmeal seems to be a real thread for you.

I’m obsessed with it. The cornmeal I get from Anson Mills in South Carolina smells sweet, like the field. People think I’m a nerd because I’ll just stand in the kitchen smelling the bag. But it genuinely brings me back home.

Oddly enough, there’s remarkable cornmeal right here. Davis Farm cornmeal is a true Stonington institution, one of those legacy products that’s been part of this community’s identity for generations. And it produces cornmeal that’s just as good as anything from down south. We split it 50/50 with Anson Mills for our fish crust. The main difference is color; Davis Farm is white cornmeal, and the southern variety is a more vibrant yellow with a bit more sweetness. But we use Davis Farm in everything else: hush puppies, grits. We go through about 50 pounds of it a week in hush puppies alone.

The grits feel especially personal. Growing up, whenever I was having a bad day, my mom would make me a bowl of Quaker Oats grits. Not the coarse kind, the fine, white corn. It goes so silky and gelatinous that it’s basically just a vehicle for butter. Davis Farm’s grind replicates that texture exactly, but it tastes even better. That’s what we’re using under our smoked pork belly right now.

Is Engine Room a Southern restaurant now?

No, and I want to be clear about that. Engine Room is a comfort food restaurant at its core. It’s a family restaurant. A place where anyone can walk in pretty much any time of day and get a meal that genuinely satisfies them.

Chris Vanasse built something really meaningful here. The bones of this place, the commitment to locally sourced, honest American comfort food, the relationship with the community, the original identity: that’s all Chris. What we’re doing together is building on that foundation and asking what the next layer looks like. It’s a collaboration, not a reinvention.

I like to joke that I’m not really writing the menus. The farms are writing the menus. I build dishes around what the Farmers Collaborative in Rhode Island is harvesting, what Pete at Stone Acres Farm has, what Dan Wood at Whitegate Farm is sending. That idea comes partly from Edna Lewis, the great Southern cook and one of the first Black women chefs to write a cookbook. Her whole philosophy was that you eat what the farm is giving you. It’s deeply Southern, but it works perfectly with our four distinct New England seasons

You came up through Roses Luxury and the Dabney in D.C. What did those experiences give you?

They couldn’t have been more different from each other. Roses was where I learned that you could have very high standards while also being a genuinely good person and having fun. The food was impeccable, but the environment was warm. That stuck with me.

The Dabney was a different kind of education. Standards were high and you had to earn your place. I earned my way from cold-side plating to the hearth, and eventually to hot-side plating, right up until COVID sent us all home. But what the Dabney really gave me was a love for purveyor loyalty. I saw so many farmers walk through that back door, and those relationships have shaped my whole cooking philosophy. Befriend your farmers and everyone who comes through the back door is your friend. You get cool, niche things that other people might not get.

And then Oyster Club and now working alongside Chris to move Engine Room forward.

DC started the fire, and Oyster Club forged me into what I am now. Working with Renee Touponce for five years, we created hundreds of dishes together, everyone tasted and agreed upon not just by us but by the whole kitchen team.

Working with Chris has been a natural extension of that. He knows the guests, he knows the rhythm of this building, he knows what Engine Room means to this community. Together we’ve taken everything he built and figured out how to evolve it without losing what made people fall in love with it. What I’m bringing from Oyster Club is the culture of care around every single plate. I want my team to know they’re just as involved in the process as I am. I chase them around with a tasting spoon because I genuinely care what they think.

What do you want a guest to feel after eating your food here?

Engine Room has always been a place where people feel genuinely welcomed, and that’s something Chris built into the DNA of this restaurant from day one. What I want to add is a sense that the same care extends all the way into the kitchen, into every plate that goes out. That the food itself carries the same warmth the dining room always has. This place already feels like home to the people who come here. I just want them to taste that too, maybe with a little cornmeal, a little smoke, and a really good bowl of grits.

Engine Room is located at 14 Holmes Street in Mystic. IG @engineroomct