Yesterday Biffle and I had a date. We went out to lunch at Husk, one of the restaurants that makes Charleston a place people visit (Bon Appetit restaurant of the year, etc). It's fantastic. Every bite we took was noteworthy. I won't be like the NYTimes food writer who said things like, "The dish managed to evoke the marshy salinity of the air that rises off the flats of the Cooper River at low tide, as dogs run into the water below the Carolina Yacht Club." As I read the NYTimes piece hanging on the wall at Husk, I observed to Biffle, "If one of my students wrote something like this, I'd say, 'Scale back the drama!'"
At any rate, there's our empty table. We had fresh bread with pork butter (nothing better than pork fat to make butter even more delicious), fried green tomatoes, pimiento cheese and ham on toast, greens, fried bologna, and a huge incredibly fresh salad. Here's what I'd write if I were reviewing Husk for the NYTimes: "The fried bologna was so good even Jim Biffle would have liked it." This is quite the compliment, given that Biffle's dad Jim is the kind of guy who has eaten fried bologna on a regular basis throughout his Southern childhood and adulthood.
If Jim Biffle were reviewing Husk for the NYTimes, he'd say, "That bologna was so good it made my tongue slap my brains out."
I don't think Jim would have liked the pimiento cheese.
Last night we went to the Festival of Lights at James Island County Park. Like Husk restaurant, this is one of those things that is worth doing if you come to Charleston. It's this phenomenon of one billion lights hung up in a park, so you can drive through this three mile light show, and you can also walk around, visit Santa, hear a horn quartet playing carols, and ride a carousel. This year Maybelle was big enough that we did, in fact, get out and walk around.
Here's my advice for those of you who haven't yet visited: the marshmallows are really big. If you get a marshmallow stick, burn all the marshmallows to delicious smithereens at one of the fire pits, and eat them all yourself, you're probably going to feel a little sick.
10 years ago
3 comments:
I'm not sure if I'm super excited or frightened of all that southern food. Pork butter?! Sounds dangerous. I shouldn't tease though because one of our local restaurants serves fried salad (it's yummy).
Congrats on that rarest of entities - the marital date!
I've been wanting to visit Charleston for months. By virtue of this weird thing called the internet, I've made web-friends with 2 women who attended C of C, and can't say enough good things about both the school and the town. And today you post about fried bologna. Which was a delicacy that my grandparents used to make for us when we were kids. Apparently fried bologna isn't really a west coast thing, because I mentioned my love for it once in high school and was met with faces that told me I should never mention it again. It warms my heart to know that other people that like it too. So now I want to go to Charleston, and eat fried bologna.
Come to Charleston! We're loaded with feminists! And we have fried bologna, fried green tomatoes, sweet potato fries, fried macaroni and cheese, fried shrimp, fried doughnuts...really, the list is endless.
I don't believe we have any fried salads, though, so I may need to visit krlr's hometown (and I can't remember if that's public, so I won't mention the name).
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