Going to Charleston, SC!

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that enjoys cooking.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

GotGarlic

Chef Extraordinaire
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
28,109
Location
Southeastern Virginia
DH and I are planning a trip to Charleston, SC, in October. Probably just a long weekend, but I'm hoping to add on a day or two. I'm looking at AirBNBs to stay at. Looking for suggestions on sights and eats y'all might recommend.

One thing I know we want to do is the combination Charleston Harbor Tour, Palmetto Carriage Works carriage ride and Boone Hall Plantation tour: https://www.charlestonharbortours.c...ur-Charleston-Harbor-Carriage-Plantation-Tour

We were watching "The Chef and the Farmer" last night and Vivian did a dinner at a restaurant called High Cotton during a food and wine festival. DH suggested eating there. Maybe for brunch! [emoji38] It's pricy!
High Cotton | Charleston, SC

What else do you think we should do?
 
Ooh, +1 Kayelle
We went there the day after Christmas in 2013
with our nephews wife (we just call her our niece),
and their 2 boys. We all had a great time, just loved it.
In fact, just the other day DH and I were talking about how
we could fit Charleston in again on our next road trip!

I too posted about our visit to that lovely city on my blog:
https://mykitcheninthemiddleofthedesert.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/continuing-our-christmas-vacation/

We stayed just outside of the main portion of town,
across the Ashley River,
and was alot less expensive!
And driving around the downtown, historic part of town
was not friendly, nor was parking.
I would highly recommend the free trolley service.

I can't recall the Italian restaurant that we went to on
our first night and did not blog about it, mostly `cuz it
was not very good in either food nor service.
 
LOVE Charleston, GG. I hope you and DH enjoy it immensely.

We've eaten at Poogan's Porch twice. Both times the food was excellent. I was going to suggest it to a less expensive alternative to High Cotton (just for fun, I found out that there is 75% cotton in a dollar bill...), but it seems like ol' Poogan got smart to the price range of other restaurants in the area and are now right around market price. Still a wonderful, delicious place to eat, even if it's only a shared app and a drink. Too many good food options, so little time and money...
 
LOVE Charleston, GG. I hope you and DH enjoy it immensely.

We've eaten at Poogan's Porch twice. Both times the food was excellent. I was going to suggest it to a less expensive alternative to High Cotton (just for fun, I found out that there is 75% cotton in a dollar bill...), but it seems like ol' Poogan got smart to the price range of other restaurants in the area and are now right around market price. Still a wonderful, delicious place to eat, even if it's only a shared app and a drink. Too many good food options, so little time and money...


Opinions always vary CG, but this is what we wrote in our 2009 trip story.
Dinner that night was at a restaurant called Poogan’s Porch, which was named after a dog that used
to live there. It was a very unmemorable meal. The best things about it were the biscuits and dessert!
We're not hard to please and it's rare we give a negative restaurant report. Maybe they were just having a bad night.
 
"A bad night". Kayelle, Himself said you must have been there when the good chef was off*, and we're both sorry you didn't have a good experience. We've been there twice - the first time not too long after you, in 2012. While the food was delicious, our server acted as if he wanted to be anywhere else but at work. Still, we enjoyed the food so much we vowed to return.

We last went for our 40th wedding anniversary. Because of our first experience, I called to make a reservation and a request. I told the host that we loved the food but not our server; could we please have an attentive server, since this was our anniversary date. He said he would be happy to help, and told me to ask for him when we arrived. This was my review of that dinner in 2014:

Wonderful evening and dinner tonight. We went for our anniversary and were treated like royalty. The foods were perfectly prepared. The host, Louis, welcomed us like dear old friends. Our attentive and gracious server, Sarah, treated us as if we were her only table - but we weren't. We could not have asked for anything more. Thank you again Sarah, Louis, and Poogan's Porch.

*Granted, the high-end restaurants should have ALL good chefs, but we aren't in charge of restaurants. ;)
 
Thanks for the suggestions and stories. Fun reading [emoji2]

Kayelle, what was it about the restaurant that you didn't like?


GG, neither one of us can remember what we chose from the menu at Poogan's Porch, only that we were not impressed with the food. I guess that confirms just how "unmemorable" it was. As I said, we are not hard to please but we did expect to be impressed given all the high end hype of the place. The service was fine and it was really charming with it's ambiance.
I checked out your link for High Cotton and I agree their brunch menu looks wonderful.:yum:
 
Last edited:
OK, after thinking a bit about this, I tried to remember places we might have visited when we were there in the past. I know we went out to Charleston Tea Plantation on Wadmalaw Island. Bigelow owns it now, but it was still a nice tour - Himself suggested we take the trolley tour through the tea plants. It was interesting, but I think Himself liked it more than I did since he knew less about how tea is grown and harvested than I do. ;) If you do go there, you'll be traveling along SR 700. Right along the way, on Johns Island, is the Angel Oak Tree. It is old (at least 400-500 years old, although some people claim it is much much older), and huge, and amazing. When we were there, there was a small building that had a number of women displaying and selling their sweetgrass baskets. Next time we go, I'm making sure I have some $$ set aside to buy one. Like Nantucket baskets, they aren't cheap but they are works of art.

We enjoyed just walking around the Battery, going up and down the streets to look at all the old houses - back before my feet started crabbing all the time. Driving along that route would work, too. :) We also drove around a lot looking to see if we could find a tea shop. A fictional tea shop. I thought that with a mystery series based in Charleston, someone would have opened a tea shop by now. :LOL: If you have time and interest before leaving, you might want to read a few books (in order) in Laura Child's "Tea Shop Mystery" book series.

When we go on vacation, especially if it's someplace new, we like to explore the local cuisine. Our first time down we ate at a now-closed restaurant that was in Mount Pleasant, a prime location for low country-Gullah-Geechee food. This was before Gullah cuisine started becoming a "thing". It appears that it is now gaining some traction, as this list at Yelp shows. You would probably have to go one by one to each restaurant's website to see if they have anything of interest, but two names I have seen with recommendations elsewhere are Bertha's Kitchen and Hannibal's Kitchen. Not sure I'd want to each somewhere the chef is named Hannibal, though...:ermm: :ohmy: If you're interested in that regional cuisine and culture, this website might be helpful:
U.S. Gullah/Geechee Corridor
and this article might be of interest:
Here's why we believe Gullah Geechee cuisine is the next big thing in Southern Food
I'm currently reading a library book about the baskets and culture. It's interesting. Just in case you're curious what the book it, it's "Sweetgrass Baskets and the Gullah Tradition" by Joyce V. Coakley.

Lastly, this might be of no interest, no use, and not helpful. However, it's a clever marketing and tourist-y thing dreamed up and operated by someone who knows an opportunity when it comes around:
GeecheeEats Food Shuttle
Unfortunately, the typeset is hard to read, and there are spelling and/or grammar errors. You have been warned. :mrgreen:


Now I wanna visit Charleston and eat soul food...
 
OK, after thinking a bit about this, I tried to remember places we might have visited when we were there in the past. I know we went out to Charleston Tea Plantation on Wadmalaw Island. Bigelow owns it now, but it was still a nice tour - Himself suggested we take the trolley tour through the tea plants. It was interesting, but I think Himself liked it more than I did since he knew less about how tea is grown and harvested than I do. ;) If you do go there, you'll be traveling along SR 700. Right along the way, on Johns Island, is the Angel Oak Tree. It is old (at least 400-500 years old, although some people claim it is much much older), and huge, and amazing. When we were there, there was a small building that had a number of women displaying and selling their sweetgrass baskets. Next time we go, I'm making sure I have some $$ set aside to buy one. Like Nantucket baskets, they aren't cheap but they are works of art.

We enjoyed just walking around the Battery, going up and down the streets to look at all the old houses - back before my feet started crabbing all the time. Driving along that route would work, too. [emoji2] We also drove around a lot looking to see if we could find a tea shop. A fictional tea shop. I thought that with a mystery series based in Charleston, someone would have opened a tea shop by now. [emoji38] If you have time and interest before leaving, you might want to read a few books (in order) in Laura Child's "Tea Shop Mystery" book series.

When we go on vacation, especially if it's someplace new, we like to explore the local cuisine. Our first time down we ate at a now-closed restaurant that was in Mount Pleasant, a prime location for low country-Gullah-Geechee food. This was before Gullah cuisine started becoming a "thing". It appears that it is now gaining some traction, as this list at Yelp shows. You would probably have to go one by one to each restaurant's website to see if they have anything of interest, but two names I have seen with recommendations elsewhere are Bertha's Kitchen and Hannibal's Kitchen. Not sure I'd want to each somewhere the chef is named Hannibal, though...:ermm: :ohmy: If you're interested in that regional cuisine and culture, this website might be helpful:
U.S. Gullah/Geechee Corridor
and this article might be of interest:
Here's why we believe Gullah Geechee cuisine is the next big thing in Southern Food
I'm currently reading a library book about the baskets and culture. It's interesting. Just in case you're curious what the book it, it's "Sweetgrass Baskets and the Gullah Tradition" by Joyce V. Coakley.

Lastly, this might be of no interest, no use, and not helpful. However, it's a clever marketing and tourist-y thing dreamed up and operated by someone who knows an opportunity when it comes around:
GeecheeEats Food Shuttle
Unfortunately, the typeset is hard to read, and there are spelling and/or grammar errors. You have been warned. :mrgreen:


Now I wanna visit Charleston and eat soul food...
Thanks for all the information and links, CG. I got caught up in hurricane preparations and put vacation planning on hold for a while [emoji2] Now that that's past, I can start looking into it again.

One thing I need to do is find out whether there's a place to rent an electric scooter. With the neuropathy in my feet, there's no way I can wander the old neighborhoods without one, but we love looking at old houses, too.

And about that hard-to-read website, I copy and paste the text to an Evernote note without the formatting. Trick I learned a long time ago.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.
 
Last edited:
Bring S.C.U.B.A. gear!

59b71a0c155d4.image.jpg
 

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom