Charleston Eating

Mrs. did a great job of recapping our Charleston adventures. But one of my favorite parts of vacation is finding new places to eat and enjoying a good meal, so here’s the good and the bad of our Charleston dining experience.

Breakfast

As Mrs. mentioned in her Charleston review we had free breakfast at our hotel, and I would recommend the Wentworth Mansion if for no other reason than the free breakfast. Each day they started us with a fruit plate and sweet rolls (along with our prerequisite hot tea), and then we had a choice for a main course. Mrs. was a big fan of their rice flour pancakes and I had several of their daily specials (blueberry pancakes, almond French toast, spinach and tomato omelet). A really nice way to start the day – I highly recommend a big free breakfast.

Lunch

Our lunches were less than exciting, but they did provide a couple of stories from the trip. On our first full day we went to Fort Sumter (as covered in Mrs.’ blog) and then the aquarium. Since the boat dropped us back off at 1:30 and we were right by the aquarium and didn’t want to have to come back, Mrs. did a quick search on her phone and discovered that the aquarium had a café (score!), so we decided to just eat there. After buying tickets we headed in and, stomachs growling, made our way directly for said café. Well, the Sea Turtle Café as it’s known turned out to be nothing more than a movie theater-like concession stand (I think it even had oversized boxes of candy) with a high school aged girl working behind the counter serving hot dogs and pizza (ugh). We were kind of stuck at that point, so we opted for the pizza, which best we could tell was just slices of a DiGiorno frozen pizza that had apparently been cooked several hours before. The lesson – don’t expect much from the “café” inside of a city aquarium.

Day two we spent all day at the plantations, so lunch was at Magnolia, which was the only one with a place to eat. This was a slight step up from the Sea Turtle Café (emphasis on slight), with a small wooden cabin serving as another concession stand of sorts. We each had a hot dog, a chocolate chip cookie and an iced tea. It really gave us a glimpse of how 18th plantation life was.

Sunday (day three) we finally had a sit down lunch, but Mrs. felt sick shortly after we ordered (it couldn’t have been the plantation hot dog, could it?), so we ended up getting to-go boxes and eating the rest of our lunch in the sun-room at our hotel with complimentary sweet teas (not too bad).

On Monday before we left for our flight we did go to a little Greek restaurant where we had gyros that were pretty good. It was a pleasant surprise, but alas, I don’t have the name of the place. I think it was on King Street if you’re in the neighborhood.

Dinner

Ok, the real reason for this post was to rank our dinner experiences. Planning ahead, we picked out these places and made all of our reservations before even leaving for Charleston. A first for us, but it worked out much better than wandering around a strange city, hungry, tired, and getting on each other’s nerves. We had four dinners and I’ll rank them in the order we’d recommend each establishment.

Blossom – We both agreed that this was the best meal we had in Charleston (although I’ll admit I never had a bad one). Mrs. really wanted a salad so she started with the iceberg wedge salad with blue cheese dressing and I ordered some fried calamari that we shared as well. For the main course Mrs. ordered the oven roasted mahi mahi, rice pirloo (something different for her to try) and shrimp (I ate those) and I went with the daily special of sea bass and root vegetables. The fish was perfectly cooked, if not a little over salted (a theme we found at all of the restaurants), and I although I don’t usually eat turnips and beets, they were surprisingly good. For dessert we got teas (surprise!) and a peanut butter blondie with ice cream. Definitely recommend Blossom if you’re in town.

Hall’s Chophouse – Our last dinner in Charleston was at a place Mrs. picked out, Hall’s Chophouse, a really nice steak place. We started with beefsteak tomatoes with sweet onions and basil vinaigrette (pretty average overall). And then of course we both went with steak for the main course (Mrs. – filet, Mr. – NY strip), with a side of mashed potatoes to share. I also kicked it up a notch and got my steak “Oscar style”, with crab, asparagus and hollandaise (hey, it was in honor of the Academy Awards later that night – or at least that’s what I told Mrs.). Alas, a huge meal like this left no room for us to try dessert (boo). One funny thing about dinner here is that it was a really friendly place, with the owner (or manager or something) Tommy Hall greeting us when we came in and asking if we wanted to have a drink at the bar before going to our table. And then the hostess was chatting us up on our way to our table and our waiter gave us his life story, and well everyone was friendly and southern and what not. But the best was after we paid and left our table and walked out the door I felt a presence moving quickly behind me and it was none other than Tommy Hall, who must have seen us leaving and ran out onto the sidewalk to say goodbye and make sure we had a good meal. So points to Halls for being welcoming and of course for a good (if not pricey) meal.

Magnolias – When I first picked this place out as a destination we were originally going to go on Saturday, but we couldn’t get a reservation (must be popular!), so we instead went on Thursday night. Perusing the menu prior to our trip I had picked out the fried chicken with mashed potatoes, cream corn, collard greens and biscuits and gravy (a big southern feast). But once we were there Mrs. also settled on that, so I went in a different direction (I don’t like to get the same thing) and ordered the Seafood (scallops, shrimp, and lobster claw meat) and Grits. Turns out I made the wise choice as Mrs. liked, but didn’t love her meal. I on the other hand really enjoyed mine and I even got to try fried spinach, which was served on top. We also ordered fried green tomatoes (when in the south) to start and finished the meal with teas and a peanut butter bread pudding with chocolate ice cream (the dessert was average). The moral here is if you’re in Charleston and heading to Magnolias, go with one of the seafood dishes.

Muse – And finally we have Muse, a Mediterranean restaurant. This was located in a historic house in Charleston. We started with a Greek platter of hummus and baba ganoush along with toasted pitas, marinated olives and cucumber salad. I’m not sure I’d ever had baba ganoush and had to look up exactly what it was (mashed eggplant), but it was pretty good. Mrs. went a little boring ordering the penne pasta with chicken for her meal. I think she described it as “eh”. I went with a house specialty, the crispy sea bass, which was described a whole sea bass deboned, lightly breaded and then flash fried. What I (and Mrs.) didn’t expect was that it would come as a whole fish, head, tail, scales and all. The man at the table next to us had ordered it as well, so we got a glimpse shortly before mine arrived. It was actually decent, served with white beans, spinach and peppers. It’s just a little weird having a fish stare at you before you dig in. We also had enough room to share teas and a chocolate torte cake. However, this did lead to one problem as instead of bringing us each a small pot of hot water for our teas (as all the other places did), our waiter brought each of us a small (and it was small) tea cup of hot water. The horrified look on Mrs.’ face told the story. Mrs. immediately got on her phone to find the nearest Starbucks, and after leaving Muse, we stopped by Starbucks on the way back to the hotel for some emergency backup caffeine. We got there just in time.