South Carolina

• Charleston

  The marshy coastal lowlands of South Carolina and Georgia, known as the Lowcountry, is an area as distinct in cuisine as it is in geography, and Charleston, the Holy City—called so for its preponderance of churches—puts you smack in the middle of it all. It is a place where the history is long and difficult, marked by a slew of natural disasters, the devastation of the Civil War (which started here, at Fort Sumter), and decades of postwar decay and poverty—hard to imagine in the glorious, impeccably restored Charleston of today. Its story cannot be told without recounting that era of United States’ history during which the slave trade dominated the South; it is from those slaves—about 40% of which entered the U.S. through Charleston Harbor, many from West Africa—that many aspects of the region’s cuisine were born, from masterful deep-frying and one-pot cooking to the rice that’s come to define the area, which Africans brought and cultivated here.

  Fortunately, 150-plus years after the end of slavery, the Gullahs, direct ancestors of those rice-plantation slaves who continue to reside in the Lowcountry, have kept their unique culture alive, via storytelling and handicrafts, an English creole language (similar to the Krio spoken in Sierra Leone, where many of the rice-growing slaves are thought to have come from), a strong sense of community, and, of course, food. There were other cultural culinary influences in and around Charleston—from the English settlers, the French Huguenots and  Sephardic Jews who came later, the West Indian slaves who preceded the Africans—but the African connection in the kitchen is by far the most obvious.

  What else besides this immediate link to West Africa makes so-called Lowcountry cuisine different from that of the rest of the South? Geography and ingredients, both native and imported (mostly from Africa): Local seafood like shrimp, fish, oysters, and crab figures prominently, but also tomatoes, okra, collard greens,  sweet potato, grits and rice, chicken and (snout-to-tail) pork, sesame seeds, black-eyed peas and field peas. Unfortunately, some deep-Lowcountry dishes no longer exist on restaurant menus in and around Charleston—you’d be hard-pressed to find hobotee, a curried-beef casserole, outside of a cookbook or a home kitchen these days—while others, such as she-crab soup and benne wafers, seem to be just about everywhere. In between are dishes like shrimp bog and Huguenot torte, not very prevalent but still trackable, for now.

  Hopefully they too don’t disappear from restaurants, where visitors can readily appreciate them. Because just as much history can be found in a cup of okra soup as in those elegant 200-year-old homes with the soaring piazzas—but you can eat only one of them.

  The marshy coastal lowlands of South Carolina and Georgia, known as the Lowcountry, is an area as distinct in cuisine as it is in geography, and Charleston, the Holy City—called so for its preponderance of churches—puts you smack in the middle of it all. It is a place where the history is long and difficult, marked by a slew of natural disasters, the devastation of the Civil War (which started here, at…   Read more

   

  Find local foods in Charleston.

  Frogmore stew, Lowcountry boil

  Huguenot torte

  Hoppin' John

  She-crab soup

  Lowcountry soul food

• User Content

Below is user-submitted content for this region. Have something to contribute? Upload your regional-food photo or food memory.

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  Chicken Bog

  Charleston
  genxer711
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  Punch

  Charleston
  lsr
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  Chicken liver pate

  Charleston
  lsr
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  Cheddar grits

  Charleston
  lsr

• Blog Posts

• Win 'The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen'!

  This giveaway has ended. Thanks to all who participated!   Today’s giveaway is a fantastic cookbook, but it’s much more than that: It is history, rich storytelling, a love letter to the South, an education in Lowcountry…   Read more

• One Shot From…Charleston, South Carolina

  This new photo series calls on a handful of locals of a city we’re covering to tell us, in one photo—not necessarily of food—what that city means to them. First up, in honor of EYW’s Charleston Food Week, is Charleston,…   Read more

• EYW's Charleston Food Week: What to Eat in the Holy City + a Giveaway!

  Our destination spotlight on Charleston features some of our favorite Lowcountry dishes, but that’s not all: Stay tuned this week for a slew of fun Charlestonian giveaways across all our social media channels—follow #EYWCharleston to…   Read more