Charleston Serves Up More Than 300 Years of Flavor—and Every Bite Tells a Story

In this special four-part series, join Unpacked host Aislyn Greene as she travels to ⁠Charleston, South Carolina⁠, to unpack the city’s deeper currents.

This week: Dive fork-first into Charleston⁠‘s legendary food scene, where history and flavor collide. From the resurrection of she-crab soup to the recreation of a groundbreaking 1865 dinner that celebrated equality, discover how Charleston’s culinary landscape tells the story of African, Native American, and European influences—one delicious dish at a time.

Transcript

Chef Kevin Mitchell:If you are here five nights, you can go to five different restaurants and have five different renditions of shrimp and grits, probably 30—just depends, I mean. But the base of the dish is always there: shrimp and grits.

Aislyn Greene, host: This is Chef Kevin Mitchell.

Kevin: I am, one, chef instructor at the Culinary Institute of Charleston. I’m here in Charleston, South Carolina. I am, [two], a food historian, an author, and a television host.

Aislyn: Kevin is an expert in all things southern cuisine, and he’s been living and working in the Charleston food scene for many years. So I knew I needed to meet up with him on my last visit to the city so I could learn about his multihyphenate adventures—more on that soon—what’s really good to eat in Charleston these days, including where to find the best shrimp and grits; and to explore the deeper meaning behind some of Charleston’s most iconic flavors.

I’m Aislyn Greene, and in this Unpacked Mini, it is all about the food. This is the second episode in a special four-part Unpacked series that explores Charleston’s deeper currents. Last week we unpacked its outdoor adventure and waterways. And this week my only advice is to not listen hungry.

Kevin’s culinary journey started very young when he was six years old in New Jersey.

Kevin: My grandmother would allow my other three brothers to go outside and play, and she would make me stay in the house and started teaching me how to cook and like do laundry and iron clothes all at the age of six.

So ne day I asked her, I was like, “Grandma, I want to know, why can’t I go outside and be with my brothers and my friends and hang out?” I’m like, “I’m six years old.” And she sat me down and said, “You know, one day I’m not gonna be here. Your mother’s not gonna be here to prepare your meals and to do your laundry, and things like that. So need to learn how to do it. But still my rebuttal to her was, “What about the other three?” So I really believe she saw something in me that would lead me into the career in food that I’ve, yeah, enjoyed ever since.

Aislyn: His career started at a French restaurant where he worked his way up from dishwasher to sous chef, and eventually he found himself at the Culinary Institute of America. After that, he hopped around quite a bit until he received a life-changing phone call.

Kevin: A friend of mine called me and said, “Hey, what do you think about teaching?” I was kinda like, “Well, I don’t think I’ve got like the bug outta my system yet. I really like being in restaurants.” You know, it was the whole kind of the rush of it and the, the sensuality of being in a restaurant and being a chef and running kitchens, and he’s like, “Look, just go check this place out.” And it happened to be where I am now, the Culinary Institute of Charleston.

Aislyn: It’s an amazing school. And at that time, they were specifically looking for a Black chef like Kevin to teach.

Kevin: The enrollment of African Americans in that culinary school was well over 40 percent. So I think in their eyes they needed to have someone that looked like those students.

And I came for a tour. I toured the North campus where my office is. I toured the downtown campus and I actually met up with some students and, yeah, I fell in love with the city of Charleston. I’m a huge history buff. So just kind of researching and understanding the history of Charleston, you know, the good and the bad of Charleston, specifically the food. ’Cause at that point, the food scene was really starting to kind of bubble here in Charleston.

Aislyn: This was in December of 2008. And Kevin says he just fell in love with the city, as it’s so easy to do, and he’s been here ever since. In addition to teaching, Kevin has made a career writing books, including one that had a really cool historic Charleston event attached to it.

Kevin: So in 2015, I was approached by David [S. Shields], my co-author, with a story of a gentleman who was a former slave here in Charleston, who owned a restaurant, who hosted a dinner of blacks and whites at the end of the Civil War as a way to celebrate equality and reconciliation and of course the end of the Civil War. So doing that opened up this door where I was like, I really want to understand where these people and their lives, and you know, formerly enslaved people who go on to become the great Black caterers of this city.

Aislyn: Kevin, along with a team of incredible organizers, hosted a meal in 2015 called Nat Fuller’s Feast. They wanted to celebrate Nat Fuller, who in 1865 was a newly freed African American cook, and he hosted a dinner to celebrate emancipation and the end of the Civil War. It was a brilliant and visionary meal.

Kevin: So I think what’s really great is Nat comes from this lineage of great caterers and chefs, and you know, what he was able to do by hosting that dinner at the end of the Civil War was really powerful for me and also for me to stand in his shoes 150 years later and prepare food that he would have prepared back in the 1860s and 1865.

Initially, I was like, “How in the hell am I going to [do this]?” It actually took us almost a year to the date for us to actually put the whole dinner together, and actually when we did it was April 19th, 2015. The one beautiful thing was the reception was held at the actual building of his restaurant, which is now an art gallery now, and the owners were more than happy to allow us to use that space as a place for us to do the reception.

Aislyn: Kevin and his team took every step they could to make the dinner accurate to how it would’ve been back then.

Kevin: Guests in 1865 were escorted to the dinner by the 65th regiment, so we had these enactors do the same thing. And what we were able to do was we, we were able to get the City of Charleston to close off two or three blocks from where the restaurant was to where Sean Brock was at McCrady’s at the time, where the guests were able to walk in the street and streets are blocked off.

And I won’t say it almost didn’t happen, but during reception, the sky opened up, it was pouring rain. And I was like, “We’re gonna have to walk [in that],” you know, I was like, “I hope everyone has an umbrella.” ’Cause there was really no call for rain that day. It was a beautiful day when we woke up. But I think what was so great was just as we were getting everyone together to make the move, it stopped raining. I wrote this in a piece after the dinner, like what my thoughts were standing in his shoes and you know, and the piece I decided to write.

I wrote a letter to Nat Fuller, so Chef Kevin Mitchell 2015, writing a letter to this great man in 1865 and talked about the pressure I was under, or I felt that I was under and talked about his inspiration on me, learning his story. And the fact that it was raining, I just equated it with him crying and soon as we were just about to kinda walk out to get everyone out onto the street, it just stopped raining and just, I mean, the sun, it was coming out again, and it was just a, it was a beautiful moment.

Aislyn: It was an incredible meal with historically accurate recipes. Everything from Carolina gold rice and vegetables to platters of venison and seafood, and even a very controversial dish: turtle soup.

Kevin: Even to this day, Michael Twitty—he’s a good friend of mine—anytime that we talk, he still is like, “I cannot believe you had me eating turtle soup.” I’m like, “Michael, that was in 2015. Like, give it up buddy. I love you, but give it up.”

But um, and at that time that was like the biggest dinner, the biggest meal, the most important meal I had cooked in my career.

Aislyn: Since that very successful first dinner, Kevin and his wife have created a series called Chef Scholar Dinners, and they’ve gone on to host many more meals that honor historical figures.

Kevin: The next Chef Scholar dinner series is gonna be April 15th. The chef we’re honoring is gonna be Patrick Clark. I never post the menu, so I want the guests to be surprised. And then the tickets are bought basically through Eventbrite, so we set up an Eventbrite and it’s first come, first serve. Sixteen tickets are gobbled up and then they, they go really fast.

Aislyn: It’s pretty hard to snag a seat. But if you follow Kevin and his wife on Instagram, there’s a chance you could experience this one-of-a-kind dining here in Charleston. We’ll include the link in the show notes. But if you can’t get tickets, no big deal because there are many incredible places to eat in this city spanning a wide range of local influences.

Kevin: I think the food of Charleston, I mean it definitely stems from the influences of the African-American, the Native American and the European, the English, somewhat of the French. I mean, you know, at one point there were loads and loads of French restaurants here in the city of Charleston. And I think that’s mainly due to people leaving France during the French Revolution and coming and then opening up French restaurants here.

But also, you know, we always have to talk about the Gullah Geechee influence in, in the food, those people coming from or being brought here from West Africa, bringing of course their ways of cooking and their customs and traditions. If you are here five nights, you can go to five different restaurants and have five different renditions of shrimp and grids, right? You can probably find 30. Just depends. I mean, but the base of the dish is always there, shrimp and grits.

Once again, this influence from the Gullah Geechee, you know, culture, you know, but coming from a dish from Africa. These rice dishes have one thing in common. Well, a couple things. It’s rice and there’s some type of tomato product in it. But if you kind of look at the timeline or the lineage, it’s, if you’re here in Charleston, it’s red rice. You go back, [it’s] jollof, you go back, it’s chechen.

Aislyn: Because you can’t talk about southern cuisine without talking about the Gullah Geechee.

Kevin: If you talk specifically about Gullah, those are descendants of people that were brought here from West Africa, so you’re gonna find those elements in Southern food. Yeah. And me specifically, because I’m all into the ingredients. The ingredients are for me is what makes it important, you know, and also just making sure that, you know, I’m a huge proponent of getting as much local as you possibly can.

Aislyn: Kevin is so into ingredients that he actually co-hosts a TV show about just that.

Kevin: It’s called the Savers of Flavor, and it’s a show where Dave and I travel the South, try to save the flavor of Southern food. So we go out and find people who believe they are growing an heirloom ingredient that has disappeared from the culinary landscape in Southern food as well.

Aislyn: Well, after all of this talk about food, I think it’s finally time to eat some. So after the break, join me at one of the city’s most iconic southern restaurants.

Server: This is gonna be our jambalaya, one of our famous dishes. That was a little tassel ham, some shrimp, uh, peppers, and a famous red rice and some butter.

Aislyn: It’s just before sunset on a warm October night, and I’m sitting in a garden courtyard, surrounded by happy green plants and even happier diners. I’m at 82 Queen, a historic French Quarter restaurant that has served up the flavors of Charleston since 1982.

There are market lights in the courtyard and incredible smells wafting by. I’m on my way to see a performance by the Gullah Collective, but can hardly stand to rush because the combination of ambiance and food is so magical. I start with the restaurant’s signature dish.

Aislyn in restaurant: The she-crab soup is phenomenal with that little hit of sherry on top, on the bit of crab. Wow. Wow. So good.

82 Queen is a family business started by Steve Kish and two others, and it’s now run by his sons, Jonathan Kish, the CEO, and Patrick Kish, the COO. And I got to speak with Jonathan before my meal to learn about the history of this landmark restaurant.

Jonathan Kish, 82 Queen: We’ve been around since 1982. So we were the first fine dining lowcountry restaurant in Charleston, which probably means the world ’cause it wasn’t a thing back in 1982, prior to 1982.

I mean, lowcountry food was not fine dining food. It was food for the peasants, if you will. And so it was kind of just home food. And so try to look at elevating that into something that the masses can enjoy in, in a nicer setting.

Aislyn: What is low country cuisine?

Jonathan: So first we’ll define what is the lowcountry.

So if you’re looking between Myrtle Beach to Savannah and then about 50 miles inland, that’s the lowcountry. And let’s call that simply because most of it is below sea level, so Charleston is centered right in the middle of all of that.

Aislyn: That geography also means there is a wealth of local ingredients.

Jonathan: And so then you look at what do we have abundance. We’ve got a lot of seafood. We had a lot of pork, we had a lot of rice. And so a lot of dishes are based around those things. And then also a lot of corn. So you’ll hear about grits and you know, we, we make a lot of grits.

Aislyn: But it’s important to understand that while lowcountry cuisine falls under the umbrella of Southern cooking, it’s its own thing.

Jonathan: When I think of Southern as a broad generalization, you know, I think of fried food and I think of barbecue and, and I think of, you know, stuff like that versus lowcountry cuisine is really focused on seafood. It’s really focused on pork because that was abundant in the area. It’s really focused on our little produce of our area.And so it’s just way more specialized.

And then you bring in the African influence from when they came over and you know, they were cooking for everybody and they brought produce too. So they brought collards over, they brought okra over. So there’s things that weren’t indigenous to the area that came to us, um, you know, via that route, you know, albeit a bad reason it came here, it created some great cuisine.

Aislyn: So in 1982, you said? So what was the reception at that time and what were you doing that was so different?

Jonathan: Well, it helped that we were only one of five fine dining restaurants in Charleston, which is kind of unfathomable to think of now. So in Charleston, I think there’s about 700 restaurants in the city [now].

So at the time we were one of five. So there was, you know, it’s kind of, kind of hard not to be good at that time. Um, but it, it overwhelmingly was the most popular restaurant in the city, you know, at the time ’cause it was something different. It kind of broke the mold of like, you’ve got your steakhouse, you’ve got your French cuisine, and that was it. And so this is now something different that people can go try and, and it was just a little, you know, fun in that regard.

Aislyn: The food might have been unusual for fine dining back then, but now the menu at 82 Queen is a staple of the Charleston food landscape.

Jonathan: So she-crab soup, uh, I don’t know if everybody knows the history of it, but it was a, if, if you go back to the President Taft, uh, and he visited Charleston and they asked the butler to make a soup for him and he, he invented on the spot she-crab soup.

Um, it died, you know, after that. And so it was one of those dishes, you know, in 1982 [we were] kinda looking in the history books of Charleston, what are classic dishes? And you know, president Taft when he was here, he stayed two houses down. And so it’s like, you know, unique to this street. And so we brought she-crab soup onto the menu in 1982.

And, um, we have sold millions of gallons of it at this point. I think we’ve—every award you can win in the city, we’ve won for it, uh, for which it probably created because of us, but. But now you can find sheet crab soup on probably 70 menus in town. I mean, it’s, it’s everywhere.

Aislyn: I hear about it so much, but, so you guys actually brought it back.

Jonathan: We brought it back, yeah. So yeah, so we’ve, you know, our recipe, it’s super simple. I mean, it’s, you know, back to French thought. And so it’s a veloute base, kinda like a bisque. And so add crab and add the crab row to it. Turn it into she-crab soup and, and a fair amount of sherry. And of course we have shrimp and grits.

So the normal preparation for shrimp and grits, I like to joke, it’s fat on, fat on fat and, you know, get your grits that, you know, you’re cooking with butter and cream. So, I mean, they’re, they’re fatty and then you’re making a gravy to put your shrimp in so there’s more fat in there.

And so what we do is we do ours with barbecue shrimp grits so we have a, uh, we have a barbecue sauce that’s got a fair amount of acid in it. And so the acid actually cuts the richness of the grits. And so, I mean, I’m biased as can be, but I think it’s better than most.

Aislyn: Their shrimp and grits are so good, in fact that…

Jonathan: We tried to change the shrimp and grits once and I think we got death grits.

Aislyn: The menu aside, a big part of the appeal of 82 Queen is the setting, which is gorgeous and a story in its own right.

Jonathan: The beauty of it for those, and you can’t see it right now, I know that, but for those who who come and see it is the courtyard. So between 1982 and 1984 and a half, um, there’s this large courtyard area. It might be one of the largest in downtown Charleston. There’s about 70 seats out there, so there’s a greenhouse, um, as well.

So a nice covered area. And that’s really like, that was the calling card of 82 Queen for a long time, is like, come see the outside area. You walk through a nice little alleyway to get, get to it, and then you opens up to the big courtyard and then you realize you have 8,000 square feet of buildings around you too.

The Queen Street, the sleepy little street, and it shouldn’t be that busy. But you’ve got us here, so you’ve got, you know, 82 Queen, Husk, and Poogan’s Porch, kind of three of the lowcountry staples right here. And so we collectively on the street, we call it Lowcountry Road.

Aislyn: It’ll come as perhaps no surprise that Jonathan sees Charleston as a foundational food city.

Jonathan: I mean, I, again, I’m biased, but I mean, I think Charleston has, is kind of the vanguard of culinary in the country

Aislyn: And the people he works with here, well, they agree. People like Lamont Ferrebee, 82 Queen’s executive sous chef.

Lamont Ferrebee, chef: So I originally did an internship at the Charleston Place under Michelle Weaver. Uh, and I fell in love with the city during that process. I tell people of this story a lot. When I was first here for my internship, I went to Publix, grabbed a couple things and I was at in the line and the cashier was asking me, what did I plan on cooking with all the ingredients that I had.

And I just never had that kind of conversation anywhere else. So I was like, I need to be somewhere where food is celebrated and appreciated. So, yeah, that was one, honestly, one of the main reasons I decided to come here.

Aislyn: Lamont is from San Diego, but he says a lot of the dishes here still remind him of home

Lamont: Things like, uh, black, I peas, my grandma always made sure there was some black I peas in the house, so, uh, cornbread, shrimp and grits, fish and grits.

You know, we, we ate a lot of the same things just because of my family history. So it’s nice to put those things together now, being here, it’s honestly, it’s just beautiful being a part of a lineage like this, like the historic lineage of restaurants, just to be able to tell that story, so, I mean, honestly, that’s probably one of the most fulfilling parts of being here.

Aislyn: And speaking of fulfilling, I practically rolled out of the restaurant happily packed the gills with jambalaya, shrimp and grits, she-crab soup and that most iconic of southern desserts..

Server: Here’s the pecan pie for you. Enjoy!

Aislyn: And that my friends is just a taste of Charleston’s food scene. There is so much to try there that’s both traditional and innovative. I personally can’t wait to go back and have another serving of those shrimp and grits. But check out the show notes for a complete list of my recommended restaurants, cafes, bars, coffee shops, all that fun stuff.

This has been a special episode of Unpacked. Be sure to join us next week for an exploration of the music and cultural events available in Charleston. We’ll see you then.