The Resy Guide to the New Classic Dishes of Charleston

The dish: Pickled shrimp

Edmund’s Oast didn’t just remove pickled shrimp from its menu in 2017: It retired the beloved dish, giving it the kind of sendoff associated with star forwards’ jersey numbers. And just to make sure the separation was final, the restaurant tweeted the recipe, giving every home cook with a jar of Duke’s mayonnaise and a pound of decent shrimp a shot at replicating opening chef Andy Henderson’s weirdly Nordic ode to Lowcountry bounty.

Then along came March 2020, and Edmund’s grasped for its pivot. Pickled shrimp joined the curbside pickup lineup,alongside chef Bob Cook’s fried chicken and mac-and-peas, an emerging New Classic in its own right. Even without the communal tables and old fashioneds that were once part of the Edmund’s Oast fun, Charlestonians could taste the promise of restaurants in the pickled fennel, onion, peppers and shrimp atop toasted rye.

The dish: Lowcountry egg rolls

Magnolias chef Donald Barickman in the 1990s knew the cooking style then proudly referred to as “Asian Fusion” was making a massive splash on the West Coast, but was puzzled by how to apply its precepts to Southern ingredients. Recipes for his first attempts could have doubled as packing lists for a culinary time capsule: He experimented with grilled chicken breasts, ginger-soy glaze, and blackening spices before hitting on the combination of collard greens and tasso ham in an egg-roll wrapper.

“One appetizer that, inexplicably, is found all over Charleston is the Southern egg roll,” The New York Times’ Bryan Miller noted in 1995 after trying Barickman’s influential dish, served with peach chutney and spicy mustard.

Southern egg rolls are harder to find in the Charleston area these days, but there’s a standout version on the menu at Gillie’s. Chef Sean Mendes’ soul rolls are stuffed with pulled pork, red rice, collards, and pimento cheese, and then deep fried. No wasabi mousse required.

The drink: Gamechanger

Even in the age of frosé, Charleston drinkers’ affections for Home Team’s Gamechanger haven’t cooled.

The Gamechanger is a Painkiller by another name, a modification insisted upon by trademark holder Pusser’s Rum. Made with two fruit juices, two kinds of rums and coconut cream, the frozen drink evokes the beach, and all the responsibilities which come with a stay on it.

In other words, it’s designed to get folks drunk. “Want to get a Gamechanger?” is Charleston-speak for “I think we’re done for the day.”

“Grandmas love them, and newly-minted-21-year-olds love them,” one of the Home Team’s operating partners told the Aspen Times-Weekly: When the Charleston restaurant opened its Colorado branch, it pitched the cocktail as an antidote to ski injuries. But there’s no parallel promotional campaign in South Carolina, where drinkers already order more Gamechangers than anything else on either side of Home Team’s menu.

The dish: Butter bean salad

Best of luck to the legume fan seeking an al dente bean in the Lowcountry come August. Once farmers start selling cupfuls of shelled butter beans in zip-sealed plastic bags, home cooks whisk them off to stewpots for simmering with ham hocks.

Monza takes a totally different approach. One of the first downtown Charleston restaurants to make a big deal about its salads, the pizzeria is locally famed for its butter bean salad, a study in acid and crunch. Just in case diners don’t pick up on the freshness telegraphed by the beans, they’re mixed with celery slices and dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and the right amount of salt.

It’s worth springing for the optional shrimp; a glass of Gavi isn’t a bad add either.

The dish: Tomato tarte tatin

It’s a testament to the greatness of FIG that several its dishes could be classified as contemporary classics without inciting much debate: Chicken liver pâté, nine-vegetable salad and ricotta gnocchi all belong in the category of dishes that fervent fans have to have every few weeks.

Still, tomato tarte tatin is the most precious of the bunch, if only because it’s the most fleeting. The stunning dish, which sits at the exact intersection of chef Jason Stanhope’s reverence for local ingredients and meticulous French technique, is only served when Johns Island tomatoes are red and ripe.

“It debuted in 2009, before any James Beard awards,” the restaurant explained via social media on the tarte’s tenth anniversary. “It is tried and true.”

The dish: Whipped feta

One reliable indicator that a dish has attained classic status is its appearance on a t-shirt. Butcher & Bee sells a heather gray shirt with the slogan “Whip it good,” and everyone in town knows what that means.

For the uninitiated, the phrase refers to feta and cream cheeses blended in a stand mixer; seasoned with basil and topped with fermented raw honey from Beaufort, S.C. The dish perfectly encapsulates Butcher & Bee’s Middle Eastern and meatless leanings, but there isn’t a pita seller from here to Haifa who wouldn’t like to see the preparation catch on everywhere: It’s a dip so dialed in that people plan trips back to Charleston just to order it again.

The drink: Dirty green tomato martini

When the pandemic forced The Grocery to live up to its name and sell pantry items, a $5 pint of green tomato brine was among them. Chef Kevin Johnson’s reliably fantastic restaurant has been selling martinis made with the medium for his green tomato pickles since the day it opened in 2011.

As a committed supporter of local farmers, Johnson yearly ends up with more green tomatoes than he can serve while still fresh. Eaters can toast his buying habits and preservation skills in one go, with a martini that’s saltier and spicier than the sad standard dirty martini, soiled by olive juice that’s been languishing in a bar caddy. Brightened by jalapeños and vinegar, The Grocery’s version is the perfect extension of summertime.

The dish: Pig ear wraps

To veer into personal history for a quick minute, when I first moved to Charleston, I was a popular speaker on the synagogue circuit. (Such is the inevitable consequence of writing a graduate thesis on the relationship between Jews and Chinese food.) At the end of every talk, someone would approach me to offer a review of Husk, always centered on the same exaggerated description: There was pork fat on the table. There was pork fat on the chairs. There was pork fat smeared all over the curtains and the servers’ uniforms.

While almost none of those self-appointed critics observed religious dietary restrictions, it’s true that the restaurant, conceived by chef Sean Brock, offers an eye-popping amount of pork. And because it’s so impressively prepared, most people aren’t complaining. Better to use that kvetching time to savor the signature lettuce wraps, a Korean-inspired celebration of pig skin and cartilage, fried crisp, and glazed with teriyaki sauce.

The dish: Mama’s Specialty

Charleston doesn’t really have a soup season: It tends to get rain in dramatic gusts, rather than the drizzly northern kind that goes with gray skies and broth on the stove.

But the exception to Charleston’s soup abstention is the hearty chicken soup at Santi’s, sold as “Mama’s Specialty.” Chef Santiago Zavalza based it on a dish that his mother made when he was growing up in Jalisco, adding enough vegetables to stretch a single chicken. Served with a pair of beef-filed tortillas, the soup is capable of comforting, whatever the weather.