food – Page 2

King Street Crawl

July 30, 2017July 30, 2017 Posted in Charleston, Restaurants, WineLeave a comment

Earlier this year, we spent an incredible week eating and drinking our way through Bilbao and San Sebastián, Spain. In the Basque Country, pintxos (Basque for tapas), rather than traditional meals, rule the restaurant scene. It’s very common to hit up several spots in the course of an evening, having one or two pintxos and glasses of wine at each before moving on to the next stop. Our nightly pintxos crawls were the highlights of our trip, enabling us to try a huge variety of restaurants and food in a limited amount of time – essential in a foodie mecca like San Sebastián.

Here in Charleston, we have a similar embarrassment of culinary riches. There are so many incredible restaurants in town, but with a three-year-old and two full work schedules, our time is fairly limited. So on our most recent date night, we decided to turn our evening into a pintxos crawl. We picked three favorite Upper King restaurants we hadn’t visited in a while, ordered small plates and wines by the glass at each, and then capped off our evening with a refreshing dessert at a new-to-us popsicle shop. It was a great – and delicious – change of pace (and palate)!

Stop #1: The Ordinary

With temperatures in the nineties and humidity to match, we knew we wanted to start our evening with something (or several somethings) COLD. The Ordinary – with its raw bar and impressive wine list – fit the bill perfectly. With two glasses of white firmly in hand (Muscadet for Nina and Chenin Blanc for Tyler, both French), we began picking our bartender’s brain on the evening’s oyster selection. With her advice, we went with an even dozen, divided equally (and in increasing order of potency) among Single Ladies from South Carolina, Savage Blondes from Prince Edward Island and Pemaquids from Maine. The local oysters were great, reminding us of the Ace Basin Blades we enjoy as much as possible during the “R” months (i.e., the typical South Carolina oyster season). The Savage Blondes, though noticeably smaller, offered a bit more salinity. Our favorites were definitely the Pemaquids, which had a nice heft and a good punch of saltiness. House-made horseradish, cocktail sauce, red wine mignonette and a seasonal cantaloupe mignonette accompanied the platter; each was delicious and enhanced the oysters in its own way.

Clockwise from top: Single Ladies, Savage Blondes, Pemaquids

The Ordinary is one of our favorite spots to kick off an evening out, though it’s worth noting that the pleasures here don’t come cheap – our order came to $66 before tip, so we chose to continue on to for our second (and third) courses. That said, the oysters and wine were exactly the refreshing, light start to our crawl we’d wanted, and we definitely plan to return soon.

Stop #2: The Grocery

After a thirty-second walk across King Street, we grabbed seats at The Grocery’s bar and ordered two more glasses of wine (a Spanish Granatxa for Tyler and a Californian rosé blend for Nina). We arrived right at the end of happy hour pricing for bar snacks, so we quickly ordered the shishito peppers and the burrata. The shishito peppers came exactly as we’d hoped, in the classic Spanish preparation: blistered on a screaming hot skillet, then liberally seasoned with quality olive oil and flaky salt. Needless to say, it didn’t take us long to reduce them to a pile of oil-stained pepper stems. The burrata dish came with a golf ball sized mound of the cream-laden cheese, surrounded by sauteed lunchbox peppers, black currants, slivered almonds and a simple herb salad. Toasted garlic bread served as a useful, delicious accompaniment and was quickly devoured after being slathered with cheese and heaped with the pepper mixture. We debated putting in an order for a second portion but instead decided to make our way southward along King Street.

Stop #3: Indaco

We again headed back across King Street to Indaco, which we were surprised to see was nearly full to capacity at 8:00 on a summer Wednesday evening. We quickly snagged the last two seats at the bar and ordered our final round of wine (a Vespolina from the Piedmont for Nina and a Nero d’Avola/Merlot/Syrah/Cab Franc blend from Sicily for Tyler). Indaco offers up a creative menu most akin to a classic Italian trattoria, with antipasti, pastas and wood-fired pizzas filling the menu. We don’t come here often (as we mentioned, so many restaurants, so little time!), but we’re always impressed when we do.

We originally planned to share a pasta dish, but after perusing the menu, we called an audible and went with the polpette and a grilled corn pizza. The polpette (Italian for meatballs) came out first and were nothing shy of fantastic. The meatballs were straight out of a nonna’s kitchen: slow braised in a San Marzano tomato sauce with a big hit of rosemary and a healthy dusting of Pecorino Romano. This was hearty and comforting fare, lacking only a few slices of bread to sop up the incredible sauce.

Shortly thereafter, the pizza emerged from the wood oven with a bubbling and blistered crust, studded with grilled corn and sliced shishito peppers and covered in a thick blanket of mozzarella and Taleggio cheese. The unexpected preparation of the shishitos was delicious; their slightly acidic bite and heat perfectly counterbalanced the richness of the cheese, and the roasted corn added a nice, sweet crunch. Even after so many previous plates, we had no issue devouring the entire, generously-sized pie.

Stop #4: Crooked Crown

After five dishes at three restaurants, we chose to end our evening with a quick, fun dessert. Crooked Crown, the brick-and-mortar outpost King of Pops (a local favorite popsicle cart), offers both alcoholic and non-alcoholic pops, cocktails with pops (next time!) and a small, rotating food menu. We went with boozy popsicles: watermelon mojito and apple cider. Light and refreshing, with both sweet and tart flavors and a noticeable but not overpowering punch of alcohol, they were the perfect accompaniment on our short walk back to the car through the humid Charleston air.

Our pintxos crawl may have been more substantial and expensive than a similar jaunt through San Sebastián, but it was a great way to re-acquaint ourselves with a few of Upper King’s great restaurants. Even better, thanks to Charleston’s restaurant density, we were able to do maximal eating with minimal walking! We’ll definitely be trying it again soon – donde vamos la próxima vez?

Info:

The Ordinary website
544 King Street, Charleston, SC
Open for dinner Tuesday-Sunday; closed Monday

The Grocery website
4 Cannon Street, Charleston, SC
Open for dinner Tuesday-Sunday and Sunday brunch; closed Monday

Indaco website
526 King Street, Charleston, SC
Open for dinner daily

Crooked Crown website
21 Spring Street, Charleston, SC
Open daily; hours vary by season

Dum Spiro Spero

July 10, 2017July 10, 2017 Posted in Charleston, RestaurantsLeave a comment

In our last post, we talked a bit about the geographical expansion of Charleston’s restaurant scene over the past few years, so we thought we’d feature another of our favorite off-the-beaten path spots: Spero. The look and feel of this under-the-radar restaurant (and we mean “under” literally – it sits in an unassuming strip mall in the shadow of the Ravenel Bridge) are incredibly casual, but its food is seriously good.

We first tried Spero not long after it opened in 2015. We’d planned a quick date night and promised our babysitter we wouldn’t be long. Cut to three hours later and a text asking when we’d be home – the food was so good and shareable and reasonably priced, we just kept ordering more. And more. And more. Since then, we’ve visited Spero every few months, sampled their market-driven menu in all seasons and come away raving every single time. Our most recent visit last week was no exception – the summer menu was refreshing and adventurous, the $4 happy hour Sauvignon blanc was tart and delicious, and the entire staff couldn’t have been nicer to us (our son is still talking about “Mr. Rob” and his high-fives).

Spero’s menu focuses on small plates (per the menu, “share it, don’t share it. it’s your food, do what you want”) but also offers a selection of larger sandwiches and a few entrees (or “big shares”). We’re often tempted to order ALL of the small plates, which would bust our guts but not our wallets – on last week’s menu, the 9 small plates tallied under $75 total. We typically restrain ourselves and choose the bread flight, 3-4 small plates and a sandwich.

Let’s start with the bread flight ($6.50). Oh, the bread flight. We’ve eaten a lot of food in Charleston, and to be honest we can only think of one dish (the gnocchi at F.I.G.) that we talk about more. This is probably the best restaurant bread in Charleston. Order it and you’ll be treated to three different, homemade breads or rolls, each served with its own specially-paired butter. On our most recent visit, we had a schmaltz biscuit with maple butter, cornbread with burnt honey miso butter and a sourdough pretzel roll with ham and mustard butter. Each was fantastic, but for us, anything paired with Spero’s fantastic ham and mustard butter takes the proverbial cake. This is always our first order, no matter what the day’s breads are. (You can also order each bread individually, but really, why limit yourself like that??)

L-R: cornbread, pretzel roll, schmaltz biscuit

Our favorite strategy at Spero is to order a lot of smaller things to share, and our first plate after the bread was the roasted beets ($7.50). This is not the beet salad you can find on any menu in town. These beets were roasted to soft perfection and paired with bleu cheese, buttermilk and a raspberry sauce. We’re not usually big bleu cheese fans, but its funk nicely balanced the sweetness of the raspberry sauce.

Beets, berries, buttermilk, bleu cheese, battlestar galactica

Next up was the simply named “Radish” dish ($7), which was definitely the most interesting plate of the night and would not be out of place on the menus of the finest-dining restaurants in Charleston. Raw, roasted and pickled radishes were served with rosettes of tahini butter and anchovy bread crumbs. We’ve never even thought about including radishes when roasting vegetables, but they were so good we may have to start. The light dusting of anchovy-infused breadcrumbs gave the whole dish a fantastic extra boost of umami.

The North African-spiced chicken sausage was one of the two meat dishes we ordered and came with middlins rice, pickled raisins and mint ($9). The punch from the berbere in the sausage was nicely offset by the sweetness of the raisins and the creaminess of the rice. This was perhaps the simplest dish we ordered, but simplicity of this level is hard to execute this well.

Chicken sausage with middlins rice, pickled raisins and mint

To complement the small plate selection, Spero offers several sandwiches that are fairly substantial and perfect to split. This time, we broke from our standard order of the lamb barbacoa sandwich and opted to split the “Not Fried” chicken ($9.25) instead. “Mojo-ish” chicken, tasso ham, sauerkraut and roasted red peppers on a toasted honey roll was a delicious combo, though we both agreed that it did not eclipse the lamb.

At this point, we were stuffed, but we had promised our tiny human dessert. In his opinion, there’s no finer option than Spero’s milk and cookies: two chocolate chip cookies served on a silver platter with a goblet of cold milk. (Parental pro tip: the cookies are made fresh to order, so request them when your last course is served to avoid a long wait and a lot of whining.) Warm and gooey, the cookies were a perfect, comforting end to an adventurous meal.

What’s not to love about a place that looks like a dive bar, makes fine-dining-quality food and serves Miller High Life in champagne flutes and milk and cookies on a silver platter? Spero takes its food seriously, but it has fun with it. Beneath the colorful bird mural that dominates the restaurant’s decor is the phrase Dum Spiro Spero, which means, “While I breathe, I hope.” (Probably not-so-coincidentally, this is also South Carolina’s state motto – thanks, Google!) You can sure that while we breathe, we’ll hope that Spero keeps wowing us with its inventive, delicious food and boundless hospitality. Until next time!

Quick Bites: The Harbinger

July 5, 2017July 5, 2017 Posted in Charleston, Quick Bites, Restaurants2 Comments

In the past few years, the food scene in Charleston has evolved tremendously. Some of that evolution has been culinary (like an increased focus on locally-sourced ingredients and a proliferation of barbecue restaurants), but the most noticeable change has been a geographic one. When we first moved here, downtown Charleston’s restaurant scene was heavily concentrated on East Bay Street and the southernmost blocks of Upper King Street; you could pick one of these areas and restaurant-hop to your heart’s content, but options elsewhere were limited and somewhat isolated.

Today, good restaurants stretch across the peninsula (and over the bridges!), with frequent openings in areas that just a couple of years ago were well beyond even the fringes of the traditional dining districts. From the beloved Park Café and the forthcoming Herd Provisions by Hampton Park to the always-packed Edmund’s Oast and Butcher and Bee (among others) in NoMo, delicious options abound wherever you find yourself in the city. On King Street, “restaurant row” has been expanding steadily northward into the North Central neighborhood with the addition of hotspots like Leon’s Oyster Shop, Little Jack’s Tavern and Workshop. A few weeks ago, The Harbinger Café & Bakery joined North Central’s ranks, and its name perfectly encapsulates the promise of this new food frontier.

The Harbinger has a half-French, half-hipster feel, with blue-and-white dishware, handmade coffee mugs, and pleasantly muted farmhouse decor. It’s feminine but not frilly, and its food strikes an equally appealing balance. The menu is seasonal and local-minded, and a list of the restaurant’s numerous local suppliers is proudly and prominently displayed on a mirror in the front room. The order counter is a feast for the eyes: it’s covered in a rotating selection of beautiful baked goods, savory tartines and inventive salads, all of which can be enjoyed à la carte or combined into a more substantial meal. The coffee options range from the standard fare to creative offerings like honey and maple lattés, and a small cold case offers drinks and to-go items. There’s also a small wine and beer selection for the Harbinger’s weeknight happy hour.

We’ve now made two lunchtime visits to The Harbinger to try several of the dishes on offer, with the tartines being particular favorites. The “Oh Snap” tartine featured broccoli pesto, sugar snap pea salad, pink radishes, sumac sprinkle and microgreens on Carolina gold rice sourdough from local Root Baking Company. The vibrant pesto and sweet peas were nicely balanced with the slight sharpness of the lemony sumac, all perched on a thick slice of sourdough from (in our opinion) Charleston’s best bread producer.

The “Garden Party” tartine was our resounding favorite, with sweet onion and snap peas paired with bright cherry tomatoes bursting with summery flavor. A thick smear of rich herbed aioli paired well with the fresh, seasonal veggies topping the same fantastic bread.

Our most recent visit found us enjoying the “Local Lunchbox” tartine and its thick slices of local yellow tomatoes, bell peppers and chives under a layer of sweet potato cilantro hummus. Despite its heft, it was light enough that we nearly ordered a second.

The Harbinger also offers a number of house-made pastries and cookies, which never fail to catch the eye of our three-year-old. He usually enjoys the “Best Friend” cookie, a riff on a classic chocolate chip cookie with three types of chocolate, pearl sugar and Bulls Bay sea salt; it makes us think of a mashup between a chocolate chip cookie and an Oreo in the best possible way. As parents, we particularly like that the cookies are big enough that our kid doesn’t ask for a second one, but not so big that he’s bouncing off the walls after finishing it (well, no more so than usual). We’d show you a picture, but on both visits he devoured his “special treat” as soon as we placed it in his hot little hands – you’ll just have to head to the Harbinger and try one (or more) for yourself!

Info:
The Harbinger Café & Bakery website
1107 King Street, Charleston, SC 29403
Monday-Friday: 7am-7pm; Saturday-Sunday: 8am-3pm

Une soirée française à Charleston

June 25, 2017June 27, 2017 Posted in Charleston, Restaurants, WineLeave a comment

It’s no secret that we are both Francophiles – we met during our junior year abroad in France, speak the language and adore French food and wine. We’re always looking to indulge our inner Frenchies, and the recent opening of both a new French restaurant and a new French film here in Charleston seemed like the perfect opportunity to get a babysitter and head out on the town for a soirée française.

When we first moved to Charleston, we quickly fell in love with La Fourchette, a little French bistro on King Street, and were devastated when it suddenly closed in 2013. Our emotions swung 180 degrees last spring when we heard that La Fourchette’s owner would be opening a new restaurant on Cannon Street (in place of the shuttered Lana, whose chef has now launched Kairos Greek Kitchen, which has quickly become one of our favorite kid-friendly spots). So when Goulette finally opened a few weeks ago, we knew we had to try it tout de suite! And while Goulette is not as classically French as La Fourchette was, we were thrilled to find all the components of a great French meal among its menu offerings.

Soups and salads comprise the bulk of Goulette’s appetizers, but we opted to split the shrimp roll to start. The shrimp roll was surprisingly large and a great first course to share. A mound of local Charleston shrimp were nestled inside a toasted, top-split brioche roll, dressed in a creamy sauce with just the right amount of dill and a drizzle of lobster oil. It was also accompanied by the house salade verte, which provided a light counterpoint to the richness of the roll. Despite its size, we never felt that the roll was too rich or heavy, even on a 90 degree Charleston day. Our waitress told us that it is Goulette’s most popular appetizer, and we can vouch that it is a great choice to start your meal.

Goulette’s entree selection is meat-heavy but eclectic, offering French classics alongside pulled pork, fish and chips and grilled shrimp. Prices range from $16 for the pulled pork up to $26 for the duck confit and lamb chops, and each of the grilled items can be paired with a sauce (basquaise, green peppercorn, coq au vin, gorgonzola or mushroom cream), offered à la carte for an additional $3 or $3.50.

As former devotees of the steak frites at La Fourchette, we gravitated toward the French fare: hanger steak and duck leg confit, both served with heaping portions of fries and more salade verte. The crispy duck confit (spiced with orange zest, coriander, clove and allspice) was good, but the hanger steak was truly great. The steak arrived cooked to a perfect medium rare and was served with a dusting of garlic, parsley and (we think) Paremsan cheese. Tyler opted to include the green peppercorn sauce, which was good but not great; it had a spice note we couldn’t nail down that was slightly overpowering. We both agreed that we have never encountered hanger steak that tender before. While one of the more expensive options on the menu at $25, it was $25 very well spent (though we do wish the sauces were included at that price point). We were also thrilled to find the fries unchanged from the La Fourchette days: double fried in duck fat and completely ducking delicious.

Goulette’s wine list is relatively short but well-cultivated. It is heavily French, but there were many selections from both the old and new worlds as well as a small by-the-glass selection. Prices were reasonable, topping out around $80, with the vast majority of bottles under $50. We settled on the 2012 premier cru from the “Les Vergelesses” vineyard in Savigny-les-Beaune. 2012 was a good vintage for Burgundy, and the wine met our high expectations – it was structured enough to complement the steak and duck, but its relatively light body and low alcohol content prevented it from overwhelming the shrimp roll. The first sip was much more tannic than we anticipated, but the wine quickly softened in the glass, showing notes of raspberry, cherries and rosemary with just a touch of Burgundy barnyard funk.

We finished our meal with an order of profiteroles, a classic French bistro dessert. Four puffs of choux pastry filled with vanilla bean ice cream, drowning in a dark chocolate sauce, were tough to pass up. The pastry was light with a slight crunch, clearly indicating that they were house-made and not pulled from a freezer. The Belgian chocolate sauce had a great depth of flavor – rich but not overly so, with a a pleasant bitterness that made us wonder if some fresh coffee had been added. It was the perfect coda to a meal that stayed true to the French philosophy of focusing on good ingredients prepared well.

Pleasantly but not overwhelmingly full, we said au revoir to our friendly Belgian waitress and headed to The Terrace, Charleston’s only indie movie theater, to continue our French-food-focused evening with a screening of Paris Can Wait. The movie centers on Anne (Diane Lane), an American woman being driven from the French Riviera to Paris by her husband’s French colleague, Jacques (Arnaud Viard), after an ear infection prevents her from flying. What should be a seven-hour drive turns into a multi-day adventure as quirky, food-obsessed Jacques leads Anne on a gastronomic tour through Provence, Lyon and Burgundy.

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The plot is fairly slight – Anne’s at a bit of a crossroads in her life, having closed her business but now catering to her busy movie-producer husband, and Jacques is overtly but not aggressively flirtatious – and the real appeal (for us, anyway) was in the amazing meals, fabulous wine and beautiful landscapes that form the backbone of the film. Non-Francophiles and non-foodies would likely find the culinary focus and meandering pace of the movie, as well as the lack of subtitles on all of the French dialogue, frustrating. For us, though, it was like taking a delightful, delicious 90-minute vacation – so much so that, despite our meal at Goulette and our current lack of vacation time, we found ourselves slightly hungry and Googling Paris airfare prices on our drive home. Paris may have to wait, but we’re glad Charleston’s French food and cultural offerings are strong enough to transport us there, even if only for the evening.

Restaurant Info:

Goulette
98 Cannon Street, Charleston, SC
Open for dinner; opening soon for lunch
No Internet presence that we can find!