Rye - Mckinney, TX

Rye is a little, tucked away restaurant on the downtown McKinney square.  It's easy to miss but make sure you don't.  It is a new gem that needs to stick around.
I'll start with the negative... The ambiance.  It's not bad. It's not good.  It's just nice.  (Into the Woods fans can start humming now) The front station where you wait to be seated is clearly marked and so close to the doorway, you are likely to run into it if you aren't careful.  The inside is a reclaimed wood/exposed brick theme.  It looks like HGTV barfed in the room.  I really liked look for a few years then everyone started doing it.  Now, national chains have picked up the trend and it's time to find something else.
All that aside, our waiter was very cordial if not a bit talkative.  He sat me and my friend, Red, at a table right next to another patron.  A bit awkward but it's better than Paris, France where you sit in your neighbor's lap.
I ordered a McKinney Mule to start the evening.  Rye brews their own ginger beer and they make a Moscow Mule with this ginger beer.  A good ginger beer should embrace the ginger, shun the sugar, and leave you a little breathless from the burn.  A good Moscow Mule should make you forget most of your evening and influence you to make bad life choices.  This one did both.  I'll not go into detail on the latter but the former had all the pungency of a great ginger beer and the lime/mint undertones were perfectly balanced.  Kudos to the mixologist for using copper instead of mason jars.  You can go either way in the "barn chic" atmosphere but the mason jars are hard to drink out of. Plus, my mom canned a lot when I was a child and every time I see a mason jar, I taste tomato.
Appetizer was a corn bread with white cheddar, green chiles, and a honey butter.  The texture was outstanding: fluffy without being crumbly.  A lot of corn breads are too dry or too wet.  If you're dumping a can of creamed corn in your mix, that's cheating.  this had a great crunchy outer layer and the honey butter was delightful except for the layer of salt.  As I've mentioned before, I'm sensitive to salt so the littlest bit makes me grimace.  I imagine most people would think it's fine.  The cheese in the corn bread is salty as is the corn bread itself.  The extra layer on the butter was not needed.  I would also like to have more green chiles in the bread.  I was expecting more heat.  It's like taking a gulp of ice cold water only to find out it's luke warm prune juice.

For entree, the waiter talked me into the Bucatini Carbonara. If you ever want to impress people or just be pretentious (*raises hand) make a dish of spaghetti with an eggy cream sauce, add bacon and peas and call it Bucatini Carbonara.  However, if you want a mind blowing version of this dish, get to Rye.  Their version comes with peas, bacon, egg, and grated grana padana... I'm not sure what a grana padana is but it is: 1. Fun to say and 2. Delicious.  The bucatini was cooked to perfection.  Since bucatini is basically a thick spaghetti with a hole in the middle, you run the risk of carrying lots of extra liquid from the pot to the dish.  This was not so.  The noodles had a firm bite to them and were evenly coated with the Carbonara mixture was perfection as well.  The bacon and peas were appropriately crisp and plump adding a fun texture to the dish.  The sauce was evenly coated and had such a delicate flavor to it, I almost forgot it was there.  It seemed to add a fantastic neutral background to the stronger flavors of the dish but also heightened the egginess of the pasta.  Perhaps that was the egg heightening the egginess of the pasta... whatever heightened the egginess, it was noticed and I give them points.  I also give them points for their grana padana.  In a world filled with pepper jack and Five Cheese blend, a good grana padana was appreciated.  I will need to ask a cheese person about this if I'm ever in a cheese shop and not hurling from the stench.  I hope a Latin song writer makes a great Samba from the words Grana Padana.

It's a tiny place with standard decore.  The waiter was nice and appropriately attentive.  He assumed we liked the food (and he was right).  The food and drink was outstanding.  I will be definitely be back to try some more menu items.  If you come here, get ready to pay.  It's a tad expensive.

I give Rye a 9 out of 10.

Happy Eating, y'all.