I was introduced to many of these restaurants by serendipity. When I booked my travel on Expedia‘s site the usual prompt popped up to ask if I wanted to add excursions to my trip. One caught my eye – the Chef’s Tour of Charleston so I booked in. Beginning at 9:00 a.m. at the agent’s office – Bulldog Tours – a small group of us strolled to a number of restaurants where the chefs came out of their kitchens to tell us about whatever they wanted to talk about.

All of the restaurants described below are located in the French Quarter of Charleston.

Our convivial tourguide was Hoon Calhoun, a Charleston native going back many generations. He was quick to laugh and joke but his humor was neither corny nor raunchy. It was simply charming and evidence that he loves what he does.

Our first stop was on the second floor of Barbara Jean’s restaurant. There we were served a cup of grits with cheese, a frosted danish and a bottomless cup of coffee. Hoon provided the orientation about the crops that are indigenous to the Low Country of South Carolina and those that were imported. Corn was a major crop and export, thus the grits heritage.

We walked through the narrow streets of the French Quarter to Carolina’s Restaurant where chef Jill Mathias gave us a tour of her kitchen during which she explained how she put meals and menus together. The day we visited squash blossoms were in season and she described the appetizer she would create from them by filling them with herbs and goat cheese and then grilling them. She is phone contact with the fishermen who are her providers. They call from the sea before Noon to tell her what they caught that day and she prepares the daily specials from the catch. It’s a charming out-of-the-way location at Exchange and Prioleau and well worth the journey to get there. I returned for dinner and was bowled over by the explosion of tastes.

From there we walked to Magnolia’s where, it was said, Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King like to dine. They’re given a private entrance through the back of the restaurant to a secluded table in the back room. So they say. Executive Chef Don Drake, one of the founders of the restaurant, stood behind the bar to tell us, in his shy way, how he got into this business and trained to do it so well. Drake said he was formerly in the CIA, trained as an accountant because it was his father’s business, but knowing it wasn’t for him went to culinary school. He trained and cooked in Australia and Hawa’ii where he worked at Roy’s Hawa’iian. We tasted his shrimp and grits which were spectacular. I was finally getting why Southerners crave this food when they’re away from it.

This was another restaurant I returned to to enjoy the waiter, Roger, who referred to me as “my dear lady” and leaned in to ask me, “Are you happy?” and I suspected if the food wasn’t making me happy he’d figure out something to make me so. But I was. I enjoyed an arugula salad with bleu cheese, poached pear soaked in cardamon, and walnuts with ligonberry vinaigrette; seafood (lobster tail, sea scallops, shrimp) in a saffron sauce; and a raspberry sorbet. Magnolia’s cookbook is for sale there and these recipes are in it.

We went to the nearby Cypress restaurant, also started by Don Drake, but known for its charcuterie. A two-tiered restaurant the best seating on the second floor overlooks the open kitchen as if the diners are sitting in box seats at the theater. Chef Craig Diehl, who trained under Don Drake, sliced a plate of meats for us to sample. He also sliced tissue-thin pieces of lamb then torched them to create lamb bacon.

Our final stop was at Tristan. Chef Nate Whiting gave us a tour of his prep kitchen in back then we returned to the dining room where, again, the cooking is done live in front of the diners. Whiting’s sous chef talked jovially about what a tight team the chef’s crew is there. Whiting spent six years as chef at The Dining Room at Woodlands nearby and that training is evident in the sophistication of his meals. Because our guide Hoon Calhoun told us to, I returned there for Sunday brunch and enjoyed the lush French Toast Casserole.

Though we didn’t stop there, another restaurant locals told us we had to visit was Jestine’s Kitchen. When I walked by the line of diners was wrapped around the corner. This is down home Southern cooking where the locals eat. Another take-out recommendation of Hoon’s was the Dixie Supply Bakery and Cafe where he said no one should leave Charleston without eating one of their tomato pies or at least taking one home. I stopped by at 3:00 p.m. but it was already closed so it must be only a breakfast and lunch place.

The first performance I attended was Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” (Die Zauberflote) at the College of Charleston Sottile Theater. Steven Sloane conducted the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra and the Westminster Choir, and co-directed by Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser. Special call out to lighting designer Christophe Forey for conjuring a truly magical aesthetic.

Almost like the Empire State Building living in New York it seems like seeing a Mozart opera is something I could do any old week but haven’t. So this was an indulgence plus an obligation. It was an absolute delight. The Sottile Theater was beautiful, as one of the first productions of the Festival, the audience was energized, and one performer in particular stood out as fully entertaining and talented – Ruben Drole, baritone, who performed Papageno. I thought the chandeliers would collapse on the audience from the thunderous applause he received during curtain calls.

On Saturday night, at the Memminger Auditorium, I attended Kneehigh Theatre‘s production of “The Red Shoes,” faithful to Hans Christian Andersen‘s fairy tale. A bleak one, indeed, and not for children at all. I’d seen Kneehigh’s production of “Brief Encounter” at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn in 2009 and was utterly transported by it. Based in Cornwall, UK, this troupe doesn’t travel to New York often so I jumped on this opportunity.

This is a dark, dark story. The direction was very similar to “Brief Encounter” with abstract elements and a minimalist representative style so I could see the personality of both the director and theater troupe immediately.

I don’t know how this story has become a fetish for some; the movie is quite different, from what I’ve read about it.  In this performance The Girl goes to a butcher to have her feet cut off because she’s exhausted from the red shoes dancing her into an unstoppable fury. A woman seated in the row behind us got up to hurry out of the theater before the reveal, which wasn’t literal but close enough in our imaginations that the squeamish were right to flee.

The final performance I attended was also at the Memminger Theater. It was “Emilie,” which was a solo opera performance remarkably delivered by Elizabeth Futral. The one-woman performance is based on a sliver of time in the life of Emilie du Chatelet lover to and intellectual equal to Voltaire. Sung in French with English supertitles, this was a bravura performance by Futral but ultimately a bore. Composed by Finnish artist Kaija Saariaho with Amin Maalouf as librettist, the score, the dissonant sounds, the subject of a woman scientist contemplating the life she’s about to bear into this world, all of it together was neither dramatic nor enlightening.

But this was the risk of seeing the unknown that I sought by attending a new arts festival.

The event will host a silent auction including incredible luxury trips, exciting adventures and items crafted by the students of ACBA! DJ Arthur Brouthers will have the crowd dancing to beats while guests enjoy an open bar and a delicious repast Sponsored and prepared by Good Food Catering.

Other sponsors for the event include Bulldog Tours, Stylee PR & Marketing, Banks Creative, Carr Properties, Event Works, PDA, Sunshine House, Flyway, TCC of SC and Nature’s Calling.

Tickets are $55.00 in advance and $65.00 at the door. To purchase tickets please call 843-577-5245 or visit www.buildingartscollege.us.

The American College of the Building Arts educates and trains artisans in the traditional building arts to foster exceptional craftsmanship and encourage the preservation, enrichment, and understanding of the worlds’ architectural heritage through a liberal arts education. The Red Party raises awareness for its mission, and emphasizes the need for educated artisans in America. All proceeds from the event will help support the education of ACBA’s students.

I must admit that I have lived in Charleston for the past 21 years and some of the attractions that I am going to tell you about I will have experienced for the first time myself. I know that maybe hard to believe, but when you have five siblings you don’t get to do experience everything because it is gets to be too expensive.

So I am going back to see everything again or for the first time, and spending some wonderful quality time with my husband. And I am loving the chance to be able to share my experiences with someone else.

My husband and I decided to wake up one Saturday morning and pack in has many downtown attractions has possible which was quite fun except for the 90* degree weather. So I am going to start off my talk of downtown by telling you about the places that we went to see.

We started out our day by visiting the South Carolina Aquarium. I must be honest we really wanted to go see the penguins that have on exhibit. The aquarium is a great place to visit if you have small children because they would have a great time, but I have to admit that it is a bit over priced for the quality. Our favorite part ended up being able to tour the Sea Turtle hospital that they have down below. You do have to pay an extra $10.00, but that goes directly to the care and rescue of the turtles. It was an interesting tour to take, and in my opinion worth every penny.

After the aquarium we had some time to kill before we had to be at the next location for our tour so we decided to check out the military museum. If you are a war veteran or absolutely love war stuff that would be the only way that I would suggest this museum. I can admit that I didn’t pay to go into this location due to a special pass that I had, but I don’t believe that it would worth paying over $5.00 in admission. The whole idea of us going into this museum was to kill some time and that it did. It was just not the most enjoyable part of our day.

Next we may our way down to take a boat tour of the Charleston Harbor. It was an ok tour, and no I would not recommend it to someone who has never been to Charleston before. Here is why half the time I was really sure of where the places that he was taking about where in relation to where we were on the boat. Some of the places that he was talking about you couldn’t necessarily see from the boat, and for someone who has never been I think that it would be confusing for them more so than it was for myself and my husband. It was an enjoyable boat ride and we did get to catch a glimpse of some dolphins. It is a great boat ride to get some great photographs if you are a photographer.

Our last attraction for the night for to take a tour called the Dirty Side of Charleston. If you thought the day wasn’t the greatest from what I have written thus far this was the worst part of the evening. This tour was supposed to talk about all the negatives of Charleston that you don’t hear about on the normal tours that are done. We walked more than the guide talked and we didn’t really learn all that much. It was a complete waste of time.

I know that it seems like I have said nothing but negative things about our day downtown, but we did have a great time together. I just wouldn’t necessarily recommend this particular attractions to anyone of my guest.

Next time I promise it will be more postive, but I always think that it is good to hear the negatives as well.

Now off you go and off I go…

1.  Bulldog Tour Building
2. Dixie Supply Bakery & Cafe
3. Charleston Cooks!
4. Lucas Belgium Chocolates
5. The Spice and Tea Exchange
6. Market Street Sweets
7. Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q 

 1. Bulldog Tours

All 12-individuals on the tour met at the Bulldog Tour office space off of Market Street (the tour has a max capacity of 12). Every participant is handed a goodie bag with some brochures, water bottle and Bulldog coozie.

2. Dixie Supply Bakery & Cafe

Our first stop was Dixie Supply Bakery and Cafe where we sampled stone-ground grits and sweet potato cornbread. The cafe seemed like it was a local secret, it didn’t look as fancy or new as some of the other restaurants along the downtown area and in size, it was fairly small. Our 12-people troupe pretty much took up most of the restaurant. However, their grits were my first attempt at stone-ground grits and they were yummy! My only exposure to grits before had been when Tricia and Dawn cooked them for me for dinner and I believe they use the instant kind. See, my knowledge of Southern food is very limited and if I didn’t have Tricia or Dawn, I would not have been introduced to all of these delicious cuisines!

I was surprised at how hearty both samples were, but maybe it is also since we also had lunch prior to the tour. It had said on the website to eat before the tour because the samples would not equal a full meal. However, I would strongly suggest not to eat too much before venturing on any culinary tour. It makes you not enjoy the foods completely because you feel like you will burst.

Below is the Dixie Stone-Ground Grits recipe that was included in our tour guide and it is not difficult. I haven’t given it a try yet but it is on my “To Cook” list. I’m currently working on my grits addiction and letting my body suffer through withdrawal for a little bit before I introduce them back into my diet.

Dixie Stone-Ground Grits

INGREDIENTS

• 8 oz. Stone-ground Grits (not quick grits or instant grits)
• 16 oz. Heavy cream
• 16 oz. Water
• 4 oz. Butter

DIRECTIONS

1. Bring water, cream and butter to a boil and swirl in grits.
2. Reduce to a simmer and stir intermittently to keep grits from sticking. Cook for 30 minutes.
3. Add more butter and salt and pepper to taste.
4. Serve warm.

3. Charleston Cooks!

After Dixie Supply Bakery & Cafe, we walked a couple blocks to Charlotte Cooks!, a “maverick kitchen store”. The store, which also holds cooking demonstrations, is owned by Maverick Southern Kitchens, a company that also owns some of the restaurants next to the kitchen supply store, such as High Cotton and Slightly North of Broad (SNOB). While we were in the store, in the classroom, there was a cooking presentation going on which all the patrons can view. There are cameras that project what the chef is doing on flat screen TVs to the class and there was a good amount of students for a Friday afternoon.

Inside the store, there are all sorts of wondrous products, from cookbooks about Charleston cuisine to cake pans (not Wilton, yikes!) and picnic baskets and aprons. There were even several doggie cookbooks and cookie cutters in the shape of little dog bones. A woman on our culinary tour purchased said so book and cutters and was planning on making dog treats to sell at her stand at a flea market.

The last snapshot is of a benne wafer. This Charleston favorite is a thin cookie, made with tasty toasted sesame and is sold at Charlotte Cooks! In a little guide we received in our tour goody bag, it was noted that benne seeds is just another name for sesame seeds and nowhere else but in the South Carolina low country are they referred as such.

On Sunday, Tricia and I went back to purchase a 1-lb bag of stone-ground grits. We’re lucky we stopped ourselves at just that and didn’t go crazy like we did with our e-bay cake pan obsession otherwise I would be blogging in debtor’s prison now!

4. Lucas Belgian Chocolates

Surprisingly, I could not find a website for this cute chocolate shop. Since I was a little distracted with taking pictures of the pretty little desserts, I failed to listen to the history of the store. I know that originally, it supplied only Belgian chocolates. But, alas, the Americans complained and wanted bigger and fancier creations. Therefore, there are two cases of sweets, treats from Belgian and then other confections that are made in Charleston. Obviously, the bigger sized chocolates were the ones made locally, while the Belgian chocolates looked like they were the runts of the family. We went through a taste test, sampling chocolate chips with different cocoa percentage. The odd thing everyone on the tour realized was that even though some chocolates had a higher cocoa concentration, it did not make it more bitter. To me, the chip we sampled with a 73% cocoa was more bitter than the chocolate that was 74%. We also learned that the different hints of flavor (from coffee to fruity) was all due to the ground that the chocolate was planted at since nothing artificial was added to them. I want to now be a sommelier, but for chocolate!

5. The Spice and Tea Exchange

The Spice and Tea Exchange is a store that we probably would not have stopped in if we were wandering the city by ourselves. However, it was very interesting to see. The store is filled with an endless supply of spices and teas. The front wall (the one where we are posing next to) has custom blends of spices. These spices would work well as rubs or in dips. They had some free samples where the spices were just mixed with sour cream or olive oil and vinigar to create some super simple and delicious dips.

In the middle picture, there was a tower of various sugars – from fruit varieties (blueberry sugar)  to the exotic (green chile sugar). I have to say that I never knew there were that many different types of sugars or salts. I found that the most interesting item was the salt blocks. I just looked up some information and found out that these salt blocks (also called salt plates and bricks) are from the salt deposits buried beneath the Himalayas. They are perfect for serving and cooking. Our tour guide said that this is one of her recent cooking endeavors and that you can heat the block in the oven and then cook your meats and vegetable right on the salt block. Our first concern was that the cooking would taste, well, rather salty. But we were told that it adds just a hint of seasoning but not overbearing. This is definitely a cooking technique that I would like to investigate further. Unfortunately, the only sites that I could find information on was online retailers selling their wares (Dean & Deluca and The Meadow). I’m not ready to invest the $25-50 for a block yet but would like to see a demonstration or taste some foods cooked on it.

6. Market Street Sweets 

 Market Street Sweets…I am still dreaming about their peanut butter chocolate fudge…yummy. Market Street Sweets is a sister confectioners shop to River Street Sweets in Savannah. Mostly everything in the store is made fresh, thus the heaps of sugar located at the back of the store! We were able to sample bear claws, caramel and peanut butter chocolate fudge as well as take home a full serving of their World Famous Praline. Tricia doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth and I am not entirely found of sticky foods but you can definitely taste that caramel was melt-in-your-mouth fresh. They offer to ship items with no shipping & handling fee so I went back Monday to order my family a tin of the assorted favorites for $29.95. The collection included the World Famous Pralines, Assorted Chocolate Bear Claws, Glazed Pecans and Chocolate Pecans. I know how much my mother adores nuts so I figured it would be a perfect memento for my family in Chicago of my Southern adventure.

 7. Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q

The last stop on the culinary tour was Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q where we experienced collard greens, low country barbecue and a cheddar biscuit. It was funny to look over at my traveling companions and see that they scarfed the collard greens down before I even finished my second bite of the barbecue.  Not surprising at this point, the first time I had collard greens was when Tricia prepared it for a holiday celebration. These had a little more tang than I was used to for a green vegetable so I was not a huge fan. I’m not a barbecue expert so I was not able to distinguish the difference between this and the barbecue that they serve at a local chain in the Charlotte region, Macs. They tasted very similar to me.

Although Tabasco sauce is not thrilling or exciting by any means, Dawn was fascinated that it was such a big bottle. So, I naturally had to take a picture of it, standing next to a more normal size bottle (however, Dawn thinks that even that bottle is larger than normal).

Sadly, our tour guide’s name escapes my memory but I got us to take a picture with her because she was a great tour guide. She was very knowledgeable and sweet, with plenty of good samples to hand out, and even sometimes sneaking extras into our bags to take home for later. She talked about the “babe” in the poster behind us a lot during our stop at Jim ‘N Nick’s and made sure that she was in background of our picture. Apparently, the model had been fully nude when she posed for this poster in the 1920s. However, due to the conservative nature back then, they had penciled a bikini on her body to hide her nether-regions. History buffs know that the swimsuit was included to the picture afterwards because bikinis were not yet invented in the ’20s.