Charleston’s Only Chef-Led Culinary & History Tour
Walk the French Quarter. Learn from a chef. Taste history.
Before the yachts and rooftop bars, before the boardwalks filled with visitors on summer evenings, Shem Creek was a working waterfront. At low tide, the smell of pluff mud hung over the marsh, mingling with salt, diesel, and the shrimp boats chugging home. Along that creek stood The Lorelei, a historic seafood restaurant whose menus …
Continue reading "Vintage Menu Monday: The Lorelei — Shem Creek Before It Was Shem Creek"
Inside a glass of Cannon Distillery’s single-barrel Wadmalaw Island Rhum Agricole lies the story of Purple Ribbon sugarcane—an extinct heirloom crop brought back to Sea Island soil through science, history, and community. Discover how South Carolina's agricultural repatriation movement is concentrating coastal terroir from field to glass.
Explore the lost history of Henry’s on Market Street, one of Charleston’s most influential restaurants. Rare 1939 and postwar menus reveal how Lowcountry seafood, deviled crab, French culinary technique, and Chef John Bolton helped shape the evolution of Charleston dining.
Master the "Velvet Season" with Chef Forrest Parker. This guide marries Gullah Geechee "deb’l" stuffing with the Edisto Motel’s "shatter-crunch." Learn the professional secrets to stuffing and sautéing Charleston’s most fleeting seasonal prize.
In the Lowcountry, spring doesn’t arrive on a calendar; it arrives when the blue crab sheds its armor and the docks whisper that soft shell season has begun. Travelers searching for an authentic Charleston food tour or a historic Charleston cooking class often encounter these briny delicacies without realizing they owe their place on the …
Adapted by Chef Forrest Parker, from Molly Heady Sillers Our version at Revival, TripAdvisor's #1 Fine Dining Restaurant in North America 2026, included lobster. "Henry's was the much more famous palace of cuisine and was much more central to the evolution of restaurant dining in Charleston." Dr. David S. Shields In the mid-20th century, when …
Continue reading "Henry’s Flounder à la Gherardi: A Mid-Century Charleston Masterpiece"
If you scroll through Instagram, you’ll see the modern face of Henry's on the Market: a rooftop patio, live music, and the relaxed confidence of a long-lived address. The captions often describe it as the “oldest continuously operating restaurant in Charleston,” dating to 1932. But the story of 54 Market Street begins decades earlier. By …
Continue reading "The Secret of the Silver Spoon: Refining Henry’s"
In the humid, salt-crusted twilight of 1970s Charleston, Chef Serge Claire understood a fundamental truth: the most beautiful things are built on ruins. At 235 Meeting Street, he transformed a derelict shell into Restaurant Marianne—one of the most important French kitchens in Charleston history—and in doing so, gave the city a dish that still echoes …
Continue reading "Resurrecting Marianne’s French Onion Soup in Charleston"
In the humid, salt-crusted twilight of 1970s Charleston, Meeting Street was no postcard. It was a landscape of heavy silence and crumbling brick that felt more like a scene from Poe than a travel brochure. Long before the city found its polish, it was a reliquary of subterranean secrets. And beneath one ruined building at …
A French Quarter Culinary Tradition, adapted by Chef Forrest Parker The Pompano: A Coastal Inheritance There is a silver-scaled elegance to the Pompano that demands reverence—a quiet, salt-licked alchemy of the South Carolina Lowcountry. This buttery marriage of delicate fish and briny crabmeat stuffing carries the same DNA of refinement we explored in our historical …
Continue reading "Colony House Stuffed Pompano: A Classic Charleston Lowcountry Recipe"