ENROUTE TV   ENROUTE FM   MEDIA KIT   AIR CANADA   LINKS   WRITERS'   GUIDELINES	TRUE GRITS Finding authentic low-country cuisine in Charleston requires endurance, fortitude and a love of the south's favourite mushy grain. Text: CHARLENE ROOKE IN CHARLESTON, S.C., A CITY FAMED FOR ITS FOUR star restaurants as much as its cobblestone streets, my first meal is at one of its most celebrated tables. The Charleston Grill puts a contemporary spin on traditional South Carolina Low-Country cuisine, which my local dining companion describes in simple terms: Generous. Humble ingredients. Comforting. Sharing. And, above all, seafood. The meal is all that and beautiful, too. A foamy demitasse of shrimp and lobster bisque starts the meal; a matching white chocolate cup of crunchy praline mousse and espresso brulee cream ends it. In between are a couple of amusebouches, an appetizer of Maine lobster tempura over lemon grits with fried miniature green tomatoes, then smoky porkstudded collard greens siding a delicious grouper filet. Fattened and happy, I wander back through the quiet marble lobby of the Charleston Place hotel and down Meeting Street to the waterfront. The Battery, a row of twinkling antebellum homes and gardens, crystallizes my first impression of Charleston: a balance of upscale gentility and historic authenticity that pleases history buffs and honeymooners, foodies and arts fans alike. But first impressions can deceive. The next day I head for the Charleston Museum, past Marion Square where local vendors are setting up booths for the annual Spoleto Festival of the arts. Expecting America's first museum to be a stately heritage building, I'm surprised to find a plain, dark brown bunker. Outside, a replica of the Civil War sub the H.L. Hunley should tempt gawkers, but the museum is nearly empty even though its galleries hold curiosities like copper slave tags amid an opulent display of silver. Likewise, at the Fort Sumter National Monument (commemorating the site where the Civil War started), the free exhibits are sparsely populated. Yet just down the harbour the South Carolina Aquarium, a modern building crowned by an open-air atrium and flanked by an IMAX theatre, is packed with families and schoolchildren. In the tony King Street shopping district, tourists bypass funky boutiques but crowd Williams-Sonoma, Victoria's Secret and Saks Fifth Avenue. It seems that the faux-historic horse-drawn carriages and building facades are more popular than the real thing. I begin to wonder if the ubiquitous Low-Country menus are also a facade. After eating at a few more restaurants, I start to notice an awful lot of foie gras, goat cheese and other exotic imports. Truffled grits? I've come to Charleston for authentic Low-Country food, but I find mostly contemporary fusion cuisine. With the exception of a few regional dishes and local ingredients, I could be eating in any North American city. Sitting at Hyman's oyster bar nursing a cold bottle of Palmetto Ale, I ask the bartender why the menu boasts "fresh Canadian sea scallops." He shrugs, more concerned with the newspaper crossword than the authenticity of the cuisine. An oyster-slurping guy on the next stool conspiratorially offers, "They don't realize how good the local stuff is." While gobbling a half-dozen bivalves, a soft-shell crab, a cup of she-crab soup (made with the roe of a female crustacean) and warm bread pudding, he establishes himself as a Tennessee-born California chef. He points me to a nearby restaurant where a young chef is serving "good, simple, well-prepared food." The next morning I take his advice and head for Hominy Grill, forgoing the route past the medical college to walk through the Radcliffeborough neighbourhood. The typical "single houses" (one room wide and three storeys high) here are humbler than homes downtown, which are now priced out of the reach of most locals. While the visitor centre hums just a few blocks away, here I feel conspicuous. As I walk by a knot of African-American men, one of them coos, "Girl, you on the wrong side." It's disconcerting to realize that just off the tourist map, modern urban tensions are simmering. The welcome is warmer at Hominy Grill, where the waitress waves me through the tin-roofed dining room (a former barbershop, complete with painted poles) to the leafy patio. I open the day's Post and Courier and discover that this little soul food joint has been named one of the city's top 20 restaurants. My breakfast is a gut-busting "mile-high" biscuit slathered in cream mushroom gravy salted with crisp country ham, sided by a ramekin of grits - my new favourite food. Here the boiled grains of coarse-ground corn are almost syrupy, although grits are good every which way: fluffy like rice or thick like pudding, cooked in stock or cream, with cheddar or blue cheese, sausage or ham, seafood or brown gravy, and plenty of butter. At lunchtime, I again avoid the white-tablecloth restaurants of East Bay Street to eat at the unassuming Jestine's Kitchen, where a dish of crunchy, vinegary sliced cucumbers arrive with the pitcher of sugary, lemony iced tea. Clippings on the wall say the café's recipes come from the late Jestine Matthews, who was raised on a nearby plantation by freed-slave parents. I suspect it will be a homey feed when I see macaroni and cheese listed under "vegetables" with the fried green tomatoes, black-eyed peas and okra. I'm sure of it when I unfurl my napkin, a terry-cloth towel. The daily special is a spicy shrimp creole that seems to belong on a Louisiana menu. But I remind myself that the original Charles Town British settlement built its economy on rice (and later indigo) plantations long before cotton was king. Rice entered North American cooking through South Carolina, as did many of the African influences on Southern cuisine - yams, hot peppers, beans - that arrived via the Charleston slave port. In the shops that line Market Street, I see local specialties like Carolina Gold Rice, American Classic Tea and Boykin stone-ground grits in small, precious packages. I ask Aïda Rogers, an editor at South Carolina's Sandlapper magazine, about these so-called heirloom foods. "The first time I heard that term, I thought 'What are they talking about?'" she laughs. "It's like this Low-Country shrimp and grits craze - it's only about 10 years old." Rogers writes a magazine column called Stop Where the Parking Lot's Full, a survey of eateries recommended by regular folks. She says that a beachside oyster roast or a pulled-pork sandwich is more typical South Carolina fare than the fancy food in Charleston dining rooms. So Low-Country cuisine is only about 10 years old? No, but in 1992 local author John Martin Taylor published Hoppin' John's Lowcountry Cooking. Dismayed by the decline of Low- Country staples like the bean and rice dish hoppin' John, he resurrected their venerable "receipts" (Southern for recipes) and helped a Low-Country cooking revival take root. Alongside Taylor's cookbooks you'll find glossy volumes by Low-Country chefs like Louis Osteen and Marvin Woods. I ask about Low-Country food when I meet up with Steve Hoffius, a local writer and historian who has promised a tour of the area and an authentic seafood lunch. Hoffius is writing a book about the Charleston earthquake of 1886 - a catastrophe that, like Hurricane Hugo in 1989, turned out to be a catalyst for civic rebirth. Insurance money flowed into Charleston after Hugo, allowing many hotels and restaurants to rebuild bigger and better. Hoffius theorizes that the legendary Southern fortitude for surviving everything from Civil War to natural disaster is now being applied to preserving Low- Country cuisine. "There was a break with the local cooking tradition, and now we're trying to reconstruct it." We drive over the Cooper River Bridge toward the village of Mount Pleasant, stopping at Momma Brown's to share a barbecue sandwich and some hush puppies (deep-fried cornmeal fritters). Mindful of my seafood craving, Hoffius asks where the locals eat. "Honey, this is it," drawls the cashier, an Emmylou Harris look-alike who gestures at the so-called meat-and-three buffet of barbecue, fried chicken, mysterious vegetables and iceberg wedges. Someone recommends The Shanty, which turns out to be a pleasantly beachy open shack where we enjoy chunky crab cakes and pickled shrimp brined with capers, onions and ribbons of cucumber. I spend Saturday at the beach, like the rest of Charleston. Calling itself "the edge of America," Folly Beach is a funky mix of bikers and beach bars. The Folly Beach Crab Shack seems like a good place to try Frogmore stew (steamed corn, potatoes and seafood), served quick and dirty with holes in the middle of the picnic tables for dumping your peanut and crab shells. I gawk at the catches of the day on the pier and watch college kids engage in competitive suntanning. But I'm really just killing time until dinner, at a place Hoffius recommended called The Wreck. Located where the shrimp boats dock on Shem Creek, the former bait locker is named for a boat wrecked by Hurricane Hugo, the Richard and Charlene - the name alone makes it irresistible to me. It takes some searching to find it (there's no sign, just a wooden fish), so when I arrive shortly after opening there's already a 30-minute wait. I join the locals enjoying cans of beer out on the sunny dock. When I'm finally ushered inside, it's three crude booths and a dozen paper-covered tables. I imitate other diners peeling and salting soft-boiled peanuts while debating the "Charlene-size" (regular) or "Richard-size" (large) portions of fried seafood on the photocopied menu. I get the biggest platter: scallops the size of a baby's fists, juicy shrimp, oysters like I've never tasted. They're screaming hot and crispy, and biting into the liquid centre of one is like capturing a mouthful of pure ocean - infinitely more delicious than it sounds. Nothing could be finer: the freshest possible seafood, the lightest dusting of cornmeal and the briefest acquaintance with heat. I almost order a second platter, until I consider the growing queue out on the dock. Then I realize I can always come back. Because while the food fads will surely change across the bridge in Charleston, places like The Wreck will always be there. ----- CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA Old south meets new money in this gentrified destination. Get a taste of the laid-back culture and cuisine to feel like a real "sandlapper." WHERE TO STAY CHARLESTON PLACE This Orient-Express luxury hotel is within strolling distance of the entire historic district. Incredible glassroofed pool and decadent spa treatments. 205 Meeting St., 843-724-8410 www.charlestonplacehotel.com THE INN AT MIDDLETON PLACE Thirty minutes down the oak-canopied Ashley River Road, find a Frank Lloyd Wright-style architectural gem. The adjacent plantation has the oldest landscaped gardens in the United States. 4290 Ashley River Rd., 843-543-4774 www.middletonplace.org WHERE TO EAT CHARLESTON GRILL Chef Bob Waggoner and this Mobil four-star restaurant are known for Low-Country cuisine with a French accent – think grits with goat cheese. Live jazz nightly. 224 King St., 843-577-4522 ANSON Locals say the delicious she-crab soup is the best in town. (Shake in lots of golden sherry.) Soft-shell crabs and flounder are crispy-perfect. 12 Anson St., 843-577-0551 HOMINY GRILL and/et JESTINE’S KITCHEN Robust eats in the Southern tradition, with incredible biscuits and fried chicken at the former, tasty boiled shrimp and fried green tomatoes at the latter. 207 Rutledge Ave., 843-937-0930 251 Meeting St., 843-722-7224 THE WRECK Cooper River Bridge to Coleman Boulevard in Mount Pleasant, right on Live Oak Drive, left on Haddrell Street – directions required; seafood to die for. 106 Haddrell Point, 843-577-4522 For more information on Low-Country food, visit: www.hoppinjohns.com WHAT TO DO HISTORY Civil War buffs can take a twohour boat tour from the City Marina to Fort Sumter or watch the ongoing conservation of the 1863 sub the H.L. Hunley, hauled from Charleston Harbor in 2000 in an operation financed by novelist Clive Cussler. Fort Sumter Tours, 843-722-1691 Warren Lasch Conservation Center, 843-722-2333 www.hunley.org FOLLY BEACH A 300-metre fishing pier and an eclectic people-watching beach. Check out a shag club, a vestige of the 1960s dance craze born on the South Carolina shore. Islander Shag Club, 13 Center St., 843-588-9095 KING STREET SHOPPING Visit an earthfriendly boutique for purses made out of old tires; an exquisite antique store for 20thcentury French art deco; and an irreverent gourmet shop for white mugs that say "fred." Worthwhile 268 King St., 843-723-4418 www.shopworthwhile.com Dailey-Grommé Twentieth Century 192 King St., 843-853-2299 www.daileygromme.com fred 237 King St., 843-723-5699 www.fredstore.com INFORMATION Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau 1-800-774-0006 www.charlestoncvb.com HOW TO GET THERE Air Canada offers non-stop weekend service from Toronto to Charleston (Friday to Sunday). Air Canada is the only carrier offering service between Canada and Charleston.
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