Roadfood in Charleston

Roadfood authorities Jane and Michael Stern have been in Charleston recently exploring some of our humbler delicacies, including turkey necks with shrimp fried rice at Hannibal's and the lima bean dinner and okra soup at Ernie's .

Bagna Cauda, Chucktown Style

Charleston's own Sean Brock from McCrady's gets a mention in a NY Times article on Bagna Cauda, a traditional Italian preparation.

Update on Woody's

Turns out the Woody's BBQ that's coming to Mount Pleasant is a franchise of a Jacksonville-based barbecue chain that now has some thirty locations, most of them in Florida.

Judging from the web site, it looks like they specialize in ribs, but as an ongoing example of the geographic blurring that's going on in the barbecue industry, the menu includes a laundry list of items that includes barbecued pork, beef, turkey, chicken, and brisket.

It's the kind of place that sells T-shirts saying "Sloppy Woody: You Know You Want One", "Woody's Pulled My Pork", and "Best Racks in Town". And the interior may well look a lot like this:



I would be surprised if any hash and rice manages to sneak onto the menu, but we'll just have to see.

Brothers vs. Brothers

The New York Times has a fun piece that compares the latest book from the Lee Brothers against the latest from Paula Deen's boys.





I'm not sure which pair is truly more Southern, but I know which ones my money would be on in a Texas cage match . . .

Meat, meat, and more meat

Craig Deihl of Cypress has started a blog, with the first post recounting how he got started butchering whole hogs in house. He also announces his new Artisan Meat Share, a CSA-style arrangement but rather than four zillion tons of rutabagas and squash you get a big sack of artisanal charcuterie, made right there at Cypress from whole South Carolina hogs.

This might be the breakthrough food event of the year.

The Original Locavores

Nothing like a good Depression to stimulate eating locally.

Barbecue Springs Eternal

Mt. Pleasant has seen it's share of short-lived barbecue ventures, like Ray's over on Coleman and Oink up on Highway 17, both of which opened and closed within the span of a year. But, barbecue keeps on coming back.

Local father-and-son team Jerry and Bennett Crites just opened Palmetto Pig Bar-B-Q over at Towne Centre, a franchise of an operation whose two original restaurants are up in Columbia. The Crites have taken over the old Mama Fu's location and put in a barbecue buffet.

Meanwhile, a new banner announcing "Woody's BBQ: Coming Soon" has appeared in the Publix shopping center by Park West, in the location where The Loop used to be. It's not clear how soon "soon" is, but judging from the construction still underway it won't be open next week.

For those keeping the running tally:

Barbecue +2, Sandwich/Pizza/deli -1, Chinese Joints -1.

Net net, a gain for the area.

From Oink to Oak

The Charleston Regional Business Journal reports that Oak Restaurant's Brett McKee is launching a new "comfort food" restaurant in Mt. Pleasant in the former home of the short-lived Oink barbecue joint.

More Bacon

I'm starting to think that the folks down at Ted's Butcherblock really like bacon:

Bacon!

Fifty years from now, Ted Dombroski will be remembered as either the Al Capone of his generation or the Jonas Salk--or maybe just the Johnny Baconseed. I'm not sure which it will be yet, but I'm leaning toward Salk or Baconseed because . . . bacon tastes GOOD.

What is up with Chinese people and why do they like bacon so much?

So, I wander away from the old blog for a few days, er, weeks, or I guess it's actually been a few MONTHS now (Christ, has it been THAT long? There's a good reason, really, I promise . . . and I'll explain later, I promise, and no it's not something dreary or depressing like a family illness or divorce or anything like that. Something actually positive but complicated). But now I've been getting these random comments popping into my email box, and they're all in Chinese. Or, at least, something that looks a lot like what I assume Chinese must look like, though clearly I've never learned anything about the Chinese language.

And, they're all being left on the same post . . . a trivial little thing called "A Call For Bacon" that I threw out there to get ideas for an article I was writing for the City Paper.

I have no answers, only questions. Questions I've been too lazy to really track down the answer for. But here are the questions:

1. Who are these people leaving comments on this post?
2. Why this post and no other posts?
3. Is that really Chinese?
4. What do these messages say?
5. I am assuming this is all some bizarre automated spam and I should ignore them. Is that true? Are these just posts for some Chinese version of Mexican viagra?
6. How hard would it be for me to figure out the answer to #5?
7. Is it even really worth it?
8. What if they aren't spam but really trenchant comments on something I'm totally missing out on because I'm too lazy to teach myself Chinese just to decipher comments that are probably really just spam?
9. What if Chinese people (or people of whatever nationality they really are, since I haven't even established definitively if these comments are Chinese or something else, and even if they are are they in Mandarin or Cantonese, or maybe some other dialect that I don't even know about because I don't even know what all the Chinese dialects are or even if that's a silly statement because there are thousands of Chinese dialects and I only know there are two, but what if I don't even have those two right . . .

And this is a death spiral of ignorance that has no end. And I don't even know the answer to question #4,231, which is, "Do Chinese people even like bacon?" (Answer: "Of course they do. EVERYONE likes bacon!") And here's the crazy thing: I actually took an entire 3-hour college course on Chinese history AND I've actually been to China! And apparently learned nothing from any of that and all that tuition and airfare money was totally wasted.

So, please, if anyone out there can read Chinese or whatever language these comments are in, please leave a comment telling me and both my readers (or, wait, have all these Chinese comments boosted my page hit rates . . . I need to go check out Google Analytics and find out. I might be making a fortune off those Chinese Google ad word ads that are now popping up, even though I've never made enough off those stupid little ads for Google to even cut me a single check, though it sounded like a good idea at the time.)

Anyhow, stay tuned . . . I've got a really good story for where I've been for the last three months.