Charleston

We meet again, Charleston! But this time I don't have an open fridge at my sister's house to raid, so must eat every single meal out! While Charleston is the town you want to be in if you're in such a predicament, I currently have no desire to eat out for a long time (by the time this posts, it'll be a different story).Charleston Place

We were in town for my boyfriend's business conference, so while he worked during the day and ate out at Charleston's finest with colleagues at night, I dined, for the most part, alone (suits and hoodies don't mix well). I did get to mooch a room at Charleston Place, one of Charleston's finest hotels, though. Score!After the distressing discovery upon arrival to town that I'd be at the brake shop the next day, we went to Social, a wine bar downtown, for some wine and, for me, champagne to celebrate the suckitude. Social is very dark, so the pics of the two salads we had before I realized my camera was on the wrong setting (my camera broke at Xmas, too, to add insult to injury) are nothing but blackness. The salads were great, the boy's fish was good, but there's not much vegetarian in the entree department. I ordered the coconut onion ring, fried quail egg, and cheddar sliders and accompanying truffled yukon chips without the meat, and that's how our server, also a vegetarian, said she eats hers. I would recommend Social heat or toast their buns, instead of sending them out cold, but our server was so sweet and down to earth, and talked to us like we were alive and she was alive, that I loved it all. Bad service can ruin a meal, and, likewise, good service can elevate food. Sweetwater Café is just across the street from Charleston Place, and since I din't have conference breakfast privileges, I popped over one morning for a side of grits and a side of fruit. The side of fruit was huge, and the side of grits was tiny! But together my bill was something like $5. Grits are white, but seasoned perfectly, and had nary a lump (you'd be kicked out of Charleston if your grits had lumps). The Sweetwater Café downtown has a slick diner vibe, while the Sweetwater location on James Island, which I've lunched at before, has a more rundown sandwich shop vibe. I've never been to the Summerville location.The last time I ate at Gaulart and Maliclet (a.k.a. Fast and French) was, I think, high school..maybe college. That should tell you something about the popularity of this French bistro run by real French people. The bread is still soft french bread, but I blame that on the 80's, and, you know, it's actually kind of hard to eat a sandwich on tough bread. The interior is narrow, and if you consider yourself obese, you're going to be very embarrassed when you try, and probably fail, to squeeze past the diners at the bar. All of the seating at either the bar or the couple of large round tables in the back is communal. The owner will tell you where to sit when you walk in the door, making Fast and French the ideal place for solo diners to grab a quick lunch. Order the lunch special of the day, and any drink, including a glass of wine, is free! While I didn't order the special, my open faced veggie croq' baguette with tomato, zucchini, and cheese and excellent chilled cucumber soup with a glass of house white was still under $10. Take that Parc!After lunch, I strolled outside of the historic downtown area with all the mansions and their perfectly appointed Charleston gardens, and was delighted to find this Charleston garden kept in the Southern African American tradition of swept yards. If you're interested in gardening or Southern African American traditions (who me?), this is a great book on the subject.After a taxi ride out to West Ashley to pick up my car from the brake shop, I figured I'd hit up one of my favorite Charleston eateries, The Glass Onion, for a big bowl of their "ridiculously good" banana pudding. The Glass Onion's banana pudding is homemade and ridiculously good, but has a bit much whipped cream, albeit homemade whip cream, than I care for, but I usually don't make banana pudding with whipped cream on top. The Glass Onion is my cup of tea, though. If I were to open a place of my own (or stalk a lunch spot), the Glass Onion with all their low brow Southern comfort foods made with local ingredients in a casual atmosphere would be it. They might as well just slap my name across their sign. For more Glass Onion, see this post.I met up with a couple of friend for dinner at FIG (Food Is Good). FIG has won many accolades with a changing menu of well executed dishes made with fresh, local ingredients. All you foodies will love FIG. Now, the menu is not veggie friendly. At my visit there was only one vegetarian item other than a salad on their small menu, but the chef will gladly alter dishes if at all possible, or make you a veggie plate. Don't confuse a veggie plate with the sides of veggies listed on the menu -- they're all cooked in meat juices, and, apparently, excellent. I had the sweet onion tart (the one veggie dish) and the Sea Island egg ravioli (how'd they get an egg in the center without the yolk breaking?) which was easily made vegetarian with the omission of some pork product garnish.We then moved over to Peninsula Grill for the biggest honkin' piece of the best coconut cake you've ever had. We split it between three people, and it was plenty. Did I mention that it's good? One friend made us leave FIG specifically for this cake, the other friend confessed to buying an entire coconut cake ($100!) from Peninsula Grille for the holidays, and a couple came in while we were at the bar to order a slice of coconut cake to go.Three Little Birds is a breakfast and lunch spot with veggie options that sits as an island in a strip mall parking lot behind the Earth Fare in West Ashley. My grilled squash and zucchini and too sweet bbq tempeh melt were just fine, but nothing earth shattering. Three Little Birds seems like a great place to grab lunch with your mom while out shopping, and the place was filled with just such people.Tired of dining out alone, I grabbed pad Thai to go from Basil, a fancy Thai restaurant that's immensely popular with the locals. Just like Savannah, Charleston was a virtual ghost town in the month of January, so many popular restaurants sat almost empty, but not Basil; they were packed! The noodles are thinner than the usual flat rice noodles you get at most places, and they let you specify spiciness (mild, medium, hot, or Thai hot). I went with medium, and it was much spicier than most pad Thai's. A touch more tang, and I would have been in love. Good stuff, but expensive.The boy actually joined me for breakfast the next day, and we went into Diana's (now Toast?) after ogling the menu and a passing couple blurted out to us that their biscuits are awesome. The biscuits were awesome -- some of the softest I've ever had. The plate of eggs and cheddar, grits and cheddar, and biscuit is actually the boy's. I just had a bowl of grits (not picture worthy), and, again they were white with nary a lump, but these needed to be seasoned at the table. There's a wide range of shrimp-this, and shrimp-that on the menu to be had, but we went basic.
For lunch I met up with Krista Beth, a reader of my blog that lives in Charleston (hi, Krista Beth!). Blog readers are some of the nicest people, and interesting, too. Krista Beth fosters rescued Pugs, and came this close to being on last season's Project Runway. I'm hoping she tries out again.

We met up at EVO (Extra Virgin Oven), a pizzaria in North Charleston's Park Circle area that speciallizes in simple, wood-fired pizzas using local, fresh ingredients. People in Charleston are digging on EVO, and it came recommend by Krista Beth and my sister. I ordered a small 8-inch pizza from the menu with pistachio pesto, goat cheese, créme fraiche, mozzarella, parmagiano-reggiano, and sea salt. The pizza's crust was thinnish and perfectly crispy, and the creme fraiche smothering the salty pesto and cheese base was quite different than any other pizza I've ever had. Go early, the place fills up!Butter bean lovin' boy ate this bowl of butter bean salad from the pizzeria Monza. Order these beans tossed with lemon, olive oil, and herbs plain or with your choice of tuna or shrimp. I picked quite a few beans from around the shrimp, and they were good. One could easily plate 1/5 of what was in this bowl on a large plate, charge the same price, but move it to a fancy restaurant, and totally be legit.I find it funny that Serious Eats just (when I wrote this post, not when it actually posted) wrote a post praising Mellow Mushroom, a pizza chain primarily in the Southeast that got it's start in Atlanta in the 70's, after I just ate there for the first time since the early 1990's. I had an extremely bad experience with a cheese pizza from a Mellow Mushroom in Atlanta, and have never been back. But Krista Beth recommended their avocado sandwich over our lunch at EVO, and I figured I should maybe drop by MM to give them another go after almost more than fifteen years.

I skipped the pizzas and the recommended avocado sandwich, and went with their tempeh hoagie, a warm sandwich with marinated tempeh, feta, grilled mushrooms, onions, peppers, pesto mayo, and sprouts on the side. Pretty good! I'd ask for extra pesto mayo next time. They've got a nice veggie sandwich selection with five on their menu: capri (mozzarella, tomato, basil); avocado; portabello and cheese; tofu; and tempeh. And, of course, there are the pizzas and salads. For my last meal in town I decided to arrive in style -- in an AstroTurf covered stretch Cadillac! That's right bitches! No, not really. This fine mobile just happened to be sitting outside my dining destination, and I had to snap a pic. Inside the coral pink facade of Alluette's Café you'll find a casual, but quaint, "holistic soul food" joint serving up fresh, local seafood, meats, and produce, but without any pork products anywhere. What this means is that Alluette's is vegan and vegetarian friendly (no hamhock in vegetables), and they even post largly on their blackboard that vegans are welcome (vegan cheese!). This is not a meat-and-three, but a cafe serving Southern food. And Alluette, the woman, is just as nice as could be (so is that guy in the picture). She'll come out and chat with you a bit before and after she gets cooking.I ordered the collard green sandwich and subbed a side of potato salad for french fries. Yep, collard green sandwich! Alluette asked me if I had ever heard of such a thing and I said no. I asked her the same, and she said no. We both agreed that it works, though. The sauteed greens and onions with a slice of cheese and fresh tomato makes for a drippy, but excellent sandwich. The mayo-based potato salad is a Southern picnic/holiday/reunion/funeral staple, and is right on.

I was informed that Alluette's is opening a new dinner spot on Calhoun St. soon (think I got that right), but will also be keeping their current location. Oh, and they said to hurry on back!

And then I was off to Wilmington/Philly with an undocumented, but awesome stop at Waffle House some where in between here and there.

Charleston Dog

My most exciting find from my trip is probably the most humble -- a hot dog cart serving veggie hot dogs! (I spared you the all-caps, but imagine the last part of the previous sentence was screamed in extreme excitement.)

If you are not familiar with my quest for hot dog street vendors that serve veggie hot dogs, let me refer you to this post. Sure, it's almost too easy to find veggie hot dogs in brick and mortar establishments, but it's a little more difficult (a lot more difficult) to find a veggie hot dog served up from a cart street side. (Don't even talk to me, people in the Northwest and Canada; I don't want to hear about your riches.)

My discovery of Charleston Dog at the corner of George and King Streets along the high end retail tourist drag of King Street in Charleston is only my second happening upon a hot dog cart serving veggie dogs. Technically, Charleston Dog is my first, since the cart in Lawrence, Kansas, served veggie bratwurst.

In talking with the chilaxed dude manning the cart, he told me that he suggested veggie dogs to the boss man because he thought they'd go over well in a liberal (?) town like Charleston. Thank you, guitar-playing, pro-veggie-dog dude! Charleston Dog also has a couple of other carts in town, but I didn't ask about their locations.What rocks even harder than veggie dogs on the street is the fact that you can get a bag of boiled peanuts! Only in South Carolina. And probably only in Charleston.I got my dog with a squirt of ketchup and coleslaw. The sweet, creamy coleslaw doesn't come from a Sysco box, but is made in Charleston Dog's kitchen. Awesomeness.

Southern Comfort

Ready for the most mind-blowingly awesome thing ever? Get this...sweet tea flavored vodka!!!

Firefly Vodka, a small distillery on Wadmalaw Island about thirty miles south of Charleston, South Carolina, has been making vodka out of the Southern native muscadine grape and infusing it with American tea from the Charleston Tea Plantation. Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka has only been on the market for a few months and is already the number one selling flavored vodka in South Carolina.

When I tasted the half vodka, half water, twist of lemon cocktail on the rocks for the first time, all I could say was, "Oh my god. Oh my god. It tastes just like tea. Oh, wow!" for about five minutes. Long Island Iced Tea tastes nothing like iced tea; Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka does.

This drink is scary good. Good because it tastes just like sweet tea (keep the vodka proportion half or less, and you cannot detect the alcohol). Scary because the 70 proof vodka goes down just like sweet tea; fast and smooth.

Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka is currently available in South Carolina, Nevada, New York, and Colorado, but will soon be rolled out in more states. I have absolutely no hope that the fascist Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board will make this vodka available, but keep your fingers crossed in Delaware and New Jersey.

We flew back with four bottles of the stuff. It's that good. And, no, you can't have any. Ok, I might give you a taste, but then go get your own bottle(s).

Banana Pudding Smackdown

Thanks to cooking with my Nanny (grandmother, not sitter) when I was young, banana pudding is one of my top favorite desserts. She made banana pudding by making pudding on the stove top first, and then pouring the pudding over layers of Nilla Wafers and sliced bananas. The homemade pudding is the key!

I rarely find banana pudding on dessert menus, and I only make banana pudding about once a year, so when I do find banana pudding, I'm all over it.

I ran into banana pudding at a bbq joint, a restaurant, and a grocery store while in Charleston, SC. Styles and tastes ran the gamut. Who won?A quick stop into Bessinger's Bar-B-Q on Hwy 17 to pick up some mustard bbq sauce, and I couldn't resist a container of banana pudding from their cooler. I enjoyed the dessert on the beach, because...what? pudding isn't a beach snack?

The banana flavored Jell-0-esque pudding is not ideal (the only banana flavoring in banana pudding should come from the bananas), but fills that cheap, junk food craving.
Fat Hen restaurant on John's Island has really good food...and a good wait to get in the door. There aren't a lot of veggie options, but what I did have was awesome. I quized our server on the banana pudding prep. Pudding homemade? Not banana flavored? Yup. Yup.

Awesome!! Just like homemade. I can't believe it didn't come in a larger mason jar (isn't that cute), and I had to share it with three other people. I hate sharing.
What's that? Banana pudding in the cooler at Piggly Wiggly? Got it. Lets go! You'd be suprised at how nice Piggly Wiggly is now a days. The ghetto Piggly Wiggly we shopped at for the first eleven years of my life was just that -- ghetto.

The pudding is Jell-O pudding-like. But it's not banana flavored, which is a big up. They also do this little trick of layering a bunch of wafers on the bottom so not all of the wafers get super soggy. Some one was thinking! Piggly Wiggly has a really good fast food version of banana pudding.

Recap:
Bessinger's - Not really
Fat Hen - Hells yes
Piggly Wiggly - Yes

Southern Beach Diet

Woo, buddy! I'm back and feelin' great. There's nothing a week-long pimento cheese and wine cleanse won't cure!

I'm doing my Charleston, SC vacation in three installments:

• Restaurant Food Porn
• Banana Pudding Smack Down
• The Most Mind-Blowingly Best Thing Ever
  

Let's start with the restaurant food porn, since it's the longest post. (Yeah, I'm making you wait for the freakin' fantastic deliciousness, because I'm afraid to tell you about it before I drop the goods into my safety deposit box.)

I ate out, on average, only about once a day, and, of course, that doesn't even scratch the surface of the good food available in and around Charleston. When not dining out, I thrived on pimento cheese sandwiches and leftover potato salad and coleslaw from the Fourth of July cookout. I ain't complainin'.

The Glass Onion, a new soul food restaurant in West Ashley, was our first stop after landing. The term soul food always gets me. To me, what people call soul food its just simple Southern food, and that's what I'd say The Glass Onion serves in their casual, order-at-the-counter restaurant.

If every bar and restaurant in Philly would add deviled eggs to their appetizer menu, I'd die and go to heaven. Of course, then I couldn't order them. At 75 cents apiece, I was tempted to order a dozen, but the two I did order were filled with perfectly tangy devilish-ness.

The Glass Onion's homemade, inch-thick, bread and butter pickles are amazing. So much so, that the counter person recommended them first when we asked for help with ordering a side.

Grilled Pimento Cheese sandwich with a side of homemade pickles. Gooey from the grilling, their pimento cheese is good, but a tad salty for me. Take away a pinch of salt, add a pinch of sugar, and call it good.

Boy ordered the mustard fried catfish po-boy. Good stuff.

Out of all the places we ate, you'd find me back at the Glass Onion first. It's my style of restaurant - my comfort food done well at a reasonable price in a relaxed atmosphere.

Next up is Al di La, a Northern Italian restaurant and bar in West Ashley. It was dark inside, so I didn't take pics of the beet salad, portabello pizza, and butter bean linguine that the three of us shared. The butter bean and handmade linguine ordered without the pancetta might have been the best thing I ate the entire trip.

I did snap a picture of our toast to the butter bean -- a most amazing, creamy little bean that is difficult to find outside of the South and, apparently, the UK. The boy had some butter beans in London and is in love. We somehow forgot to smuggle a bag of butter beans on to the plane, so if anyone out there knows where butter beans are hiding in Philly, let me know.

Since the bean-lovin' boy had never heard B-52's song Butter Bean, an ode to the buttery little bean, we played it for him. He doesn't get the B-52's, but it's still great.



I had lunch on the porch of Cru Cafe in downtown Charleston because my sister mentioned that they had the best macaroni and cheese. I'm there!

The menu only has a couple of veggie options. I got the butter lettuce salad with candied pears, walnuts, Gorgonzola, and honey sherry dressing salad. I was surprised to see it all shredded and already dressed. Shredded is kind of fun, but there was too much of the dressing that didn't quite jive with the other ingredients.

A couple of days after eating Cru Cafe's four cheese mac and cheese (Fontina, Parmesan, Mozzarella, and Pepper Jack), I saw their mac and cheese highlighted in an article about, I don't know, I think it was something like "The 50 Best Foodie Finds in Charleston." My verdict -- Not!

Is it good? Yes, you'll love it! My sister loves it, and she's a food snob. But this is what I call restaurant mac and cheese - a crock of baked shells (not macaroni! Cru used orecchietti) swimming in a cheese sauce (I like mine without sauce).

Next is Fleet Landing, a touristy seafood restaurant that sits on the water in downtown Charleston. Somehow, this makes my second trip to this restaurant in two years, but we went on the Fourth with a friend's family and their small children for the sole purpose of watching fireworks from the prime viewing location.

Fleet Landing does not have many veggie options, and their kitchen is not flexible. On a previous visit they refused to take an ingredient out of the dish that could have easily been taken out. This visit, they refused to deliver a bunless hot dog to one of the children, and the waiter reported that the kitchen yelled at him for asking about vegetarian accommodations. Like I said, we were there for the kids and the fireworks.

Pimento Cheese and crackers. Again, too salty.

Lettuce wedge with blue cheese dressing. It's hard to mess this up. Simple and nice.

The wood in the lower left corner is the edge of our bar table at Vickery's. Nice view!

Vickery's in Mt. Pleasant is another touristy restaurant and bar, but you can't beat the view while dining! And the food is actually not that bad.

I had the fried green tomato tower. This was really good with the salty feta cheese and tangy tomato sauce with basil.

The artichoke dip, pimento cheese, and tomato and feta topped bruschetta at Vickery's were good, too. When you hear bruschetta, you don't normally think artichoke dip and pimento cheese, but if you live in the South you'll get used to these bastardizations. The pimento cheese was very mayonnaise-y.

Our last lunch was at Boulevard Diner, a Southern foods diner in Mt. Pleasant. I went for the vegetable plate of sides, but be careful! Like most Southern restaurants serving up veggies, they're often seasoned with meat. Collards and most beans (green, butter, black eye, etc.) will usually have meat in them. Our server assured me that the stewed okra and tomatoes didn't have meat, but they did!

The squash and onions were right on! (If anyone know where to get yellow crookneck squash in Philly, let me know. The straight neck yellow zucchini-like squash around here is not the same!) The fried okra was good, but I really prefer okra stewed and slimy. The coleslaw and cornbread were decent, but nothing to write home about. On the whole, classic Southern sides done well.

The boy got a grouper cake with sides of sweet mashed potatoes (awesome! should have ordered that), fried okra, and cornbread.

Cupcake in downtown Charleston makes cute cupcakes like this red velvet cupper, but they're impossible to eat. Pretty, but not functional. I suggest you peel off the wrapper, grab all of the icing with the wrapper, then slather icing on cupcake as needed. Or how about icing the cupcake traditionally so it can be eaten normally?

Up next: Banana pudding smack down!