Low Country, High Cuisine

In addition to all its other charms, Charleston is one of the nation's great eating towns, with a food culture to rival those of New York, New Orleans and San Francisco.

We ate at a couple of the renowned high-end restaurants that have been much written about lately, but also at neighborhood bakeries and wine bars like this one, which we just stumbled into while walking around one afternoon:


The wine selections were excellent and, while we didn't have any food here, the cheeses and charcuterie looked great as well. You know you're in a great food town where randomly chosen places like this turn out well.

What is Charleston cuisine? Heavy -- very heavy -- on corn and seafood. Shrimp and grits is the local dish, and many of the high-end places reinvent it in various ways, such as forming the grits into polenta-like squares. Hush puppies frequently show up in various guises. She-crab soup is another local specialty; it is basically a triple-cream crab bisque. None of this food is for the faint-hearted or small-waisted, even when accompanied by locavore, seasonal vegetables like the first ramps and pea shoots of spring. But it is good.

And at prices averaging about 30% less than you'd pay for food of similar quality in New York, even better.