Jargon

The tabletops are salvaged 1950s bowling-alley lanes from Indiana. Before Jargon, the building on Haywood Road was Schultz Shoe Shop. Sean Piper, a former film-industry grip, gutted it down to the facade in 2017, paying cash with savings and a loan from his father; his wife Shelley set the floor in a mosaic that’s still there. It opened that May, after two preview dinners, to forty-nine seats and a menu of about sixteen dishes. Mexican glass pendants hang as chandeliers over the dining room and bar. The chairs are 1960s vintage and the booths are high-topped. The water glasses are upcycled by hand from recycled wine bottles, 300 of them — none quite match, since each one started life as something different. A heated courtyard sits out back; past it, a fifth room, the Argot Room, is held for private dinners only. The wine list has carried a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence since 2025 under wine director Andrew Bradford: 150 selections, 300 bottles in inventory, weighted toward California and France, still $25 corkage if you’d rather bring your own. The current cocktail list holds eight drinks between $14 and $18, among them the Slowpoke — barrel-aged reposado tequila, mezcal, Strega, Genepy, dry vermouth — the Ice Breaker, Knob Creek Bonded Bourbon and tawny port set inside a smoked ice ball, and the Thin Man Martini, an olive-oil-washed Chemist gin against a blue-cheese-stuffed olive. Sit at the chef’s counter to watch the kitchen work, or take the courtyard if the weather’s cooperating and let the Slowpoke be the reason you stay.