Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [131]
“The Classics” section of the menu includes biscuits with sausage gravy and buttermilk or apple oatmeal pancakes. “Best Sellers” are shrimp and grits, a four-cheese omelet, eggs atop fried green tomatoes with country ham gravy, and various omelets. The Bookstore Café is also proud of its hash, and as hash devotees, we must say that the spicy tasso ham hash we ordered was terrific: rugged and chunky, at once spicy and sweet, topped with buttery fried eggs. When we return, we’re going to try the traditional corned beef hash…or maybe the sweet potato–chicken hash…or the salmon–red potato hash.
Charlie’s Steakhouse
18 Coffee St.
864–232–9541
Greenville, SC
D | $$
Dinner at Charlie’s is built upon time-honored rituals that citizens of Greenville (and their parents and grandparents) have come to know and appreciate since this fine old steak house opened in 1921: apply-your-own dressing service for salad or slaw (the latter just a huge heap of cut cabbage), a bottle of Charlie’s own steak sauce on every table, thick china plates rimmed with a pattern of magnolias, silver presented wrapped in thick linen napkins, and tables cushioned so well that highball glasses wobble as you slice into a steak.
The arrival of any steak is a glorious event, for it comes on a hot metal plate (resting on a wood pallet), sizzling and sputtering so loud that all conversations stop in wonderment. It is nice meat, dense and juicy, although like so many modern steaks, it lacks the intense beef taste of a good old prime cut. Still, who could resist a menu that boasts “All beef shipped direct from Waterloo & Des Moines, Iowa; St. Joe & Kansas City, Mo.”? The roster includes a T-bone, a filet mignon, and a porterhouse for one, but many regulars who come in groups opt for a jumbo sirloin cut into portions for two, three, or four people.
Charlie’s is a low-key sort of place—polite, but not overly impressed by itself and not ridiculously overpriced like the national prime-steak chains. Waitresses are friendly as can be, but also real pros, constantly positioning and repositioning the dressings, sour cream bowl, bread plate, and butter-pat dish on the table so everything is arrayed for maximum convenience. As we photographed an extra-large thick sirloin for our “What We Ate” picture album, our waitress suggested that when we get back to Wisconsin, we send her a copy so everyone at Charlie’s could sign it. Earlier in the meal, we had told her we were from Connecticut, but we figure that to a lot of citizens of the Deep South, the difference between Connecticut and Wisconsin is a non-issue.
Diana’s
155 Meeting St.
843–534–0043
Charleston, SC
BLD | $$
Diana’s adjoins a downtown Day’s Inn, but when we asked our waitress, Marie, if it was affiliated, she was adamant: “We are not connected to the hotel!” she said. “No way, whatsoever, not at all!”
It’s apparent when you see the food that it is multiple levels above what one would expect in a chain-hotel snack shop. When you taste that food, you realize you are the beneficiary of master cooks. At breakfast, for example, if you order French toast you don’t just get a couple of slabs of fried, egg-dipped bread. You get huge chunks of currant-berry bread stuffed with apples, cooked to a crisp outside, floating in an amber pool of apple cider syrup. Sausage gravy is served over luscious homemade biscuits. And the low country favorite, shrimp and grits, is amended with crawfish, too, and topped with some of the most delicious fried green tomatoes we’ve eaten anywhere—thinly veiled in crust, cooked al dente with a vivid tang.
Tipster Susanne Hupfer told us not to miss the southern fried chicken, served with chipotle whipped potatoes, and she was right.