Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [134]
Jestine’s Kitchen
251 Meeting St.
843–722–7224
Charleston, SC
LD | $$
Jestine’s opened about ten years ago, but its recipes go back decades. Some were contributed by the kitchen staff, but most were bequeathed to proprietor Dana Berlin by Jestine Matthews, the African-American woman who raised her and for whom the café is named. Ms. Matthews passed away in 1997 at the age of 112.
A hospitable Meeting Street storefront with a soundtrack of old-time jazz singers and décor that includes vintage cast-iron skillets, flour sifters, and juice squeezers, Jestine’s has a homey feeling that attracts guests from all walks of life. “This is my all-time, number-one restaurant,” boasts a young seaman from the nearby naval base to his date one afternoon as he guides her to a booth and chivalrously unwraps her silver from the clean green washcloth that serves as a napkin, then orders a pound of spiced, steamed shrimp and a basket of corn bread for them to share.
“Lunch, Dinner, Supper?” asks the menu. “Whatever you call it, we serve it all day.” That can range from the so-called Blue Collar Special of a peanut butter and banana sandwich to a big pork chop plate, fried seafood platter, or half-pound slab of meat loaf. There isn’t a nicer table anywhere to taste the time-honored coastal delights of shrimp and grits or shrimp Creole, as well as such stupendously seasoned low country vegetables as okra gumbo and red rice or fried green tomatoes with sweet pepper relish. Even common side dishes are uncommonly delicious: mashed potatoes pack eye-opening zest, macaroni and cheese is threaded with chewy strips from the top of the casserole, cabbage is cooked with plenty of pork until its leaves are limp and sweet. Vegetarian vegetables (cooked without ham bone or hock) are also available. There are beer and wine to drink, but the proper beverage to accompany this powerfully flavored food is listed on the menu as “Jestine’s table wine”—cool, sugary tea served in shapely tumblers.
The Old Post Office
Hwy. 174 at Store Creek
843–869–2339
Edisto Island, SC
LD | $$$
We don’t know of another restaurant where the table setting includes bags of raw grits. The Old Post Office is renowned for grits prepared low country–style, meaning they are long-and slow-cooked, attaining a pleasant rugged texture but also a creamy quality from all the butter and milk they absorb. They come alongside virtually every meal served here, and they are especially wonderful as part of that favorite low country duet, shrimp and grits.
Grits bags on the table are important not only because the grits at the Old Post Office taste so good, but because grits are fundamental to low country cooking, and here is a restaurant where the food traditions of the region are honored with brio. Ask any food-savvy person from Edisto, Charleston, or beyond where to eat meals that sing of South Carolina’s coastal culture, and chances are good you will be directed to this unlikely place on Edisto Island.
Chef Philip Bardin changes his menu to reflect the spectacular vegetable crops of Edisto, as well as the seafood caught around here. That means that if it’s oyster season (fall through early spring), you will likely have the opportunity to fork into Oyster Skillet, a dish the menu describes as “low country Escargots,” but that puts smelly old canned snails to shame. A cast-iron skillet filled with small local creek oysters swimming in a pool of butter, their own liquor, garlic, and parsley, it comes with a toasted baguette that is great for shoveling heaps of oysters up from the skillet, as well as for sopping up those intoxicating juices.
The wide-ranging menu goes well beyond local seafood to include delicious roast duck, a “fussed over pork chop” that’s a good reminder of just how important pork is in these parts, and “P.B.’s Ultimate Filet Mignon” (P.B. = Philip Bardin).
The key lime mousse was a winning variation