If I want this kind of dining experience in Charleston, I would go to:

Fine Dining that I knew would be Perfect:

Peninsula Grill
Cypress
McCradys
Husk
FIG
Magnolias
Anson
Charleston Grill
82 Queen

Oysters, with a great view and unique atmosphere: Bowen's Island Restaurant

Oysters with good variety and more upscale: The Ordinary

The best charcuterie by the pound or in a sandwich: Artisan Meat Share

Fish and Chips with a good beer selection and great atmosphere: The Griffon

Modern American Cuisine with a Maverick touch: SNOB

Southern ingredients with a modern flair from a James Beard Award winner: Husk

Great Steak: Hall's Chophouse or Oak Steakhouse

Great Beer and even better food: Edmund's Oast

The best pulled pork: Sweatman's









Romantic Italian dinner that will be awesome: Fulton 5

Great southern Fried Chicken: Jestine's Kitchen or Martha Lou's

Great Thai food with a modern twist: Basil

Great seafood, great view, more upscale then Bowen's: The Boathouse

Great Seafood downtown: Hank's

Great Food with a Ghost: Poogan's Porch

Best corn tortillas and great Mexican: Minero's

Great Pizza with an awesome beer selection: Mellow Mushroom

Amazing and unique handmade cocktails and Bourbon: Husk Bar












Best Breakfast: Charleston's Cafe

Good food with a view:  Fleet Landing

Variety of beer to drink and retail bottles to take home: Cafe Craft or Craft Conundrum or House of Brews

Watch a game with great food, great beer and no rowdy bar crowd: Leaf Cafe and Bar (call ahead to make sure your game is on... (843) 793-2230

Grilled Tilefish with Asparagus Broth and Oyster Mushrooms - Page 197

This recipe incorporated a Sean Brock technique that we learned in the first few weeks of using Heritage as our guide and writing this blog.  The asparagus was cooked in a puree of itself.  This was reminiscent of the Glazed Carrot recipe, which pointed out that this was a good technique for many vegetables. It worked out well here too.

We picked up the fish at SellFish in Summerville, and were very pleased with the variety they had available, as well as their customer service.  The customer ahead of us was having fish packed in ice for a 45 minute trip home.  The staff was obsessed with making sure the fish was properly packed for the trip.  We liked that.

The recipe was relatively easy to follow, but you do need a juicer.  If you don't have one, you need to get one.  Juicing is awesome!  We have a 25 year old Juiceman that's still producing great juice and Consumer Reports still rates the Juiceman at the top of the list. Amazon has the latest model for sale at a STEAL price!  $55 dollars and Prime Eligible (Consumer Reports lists it for $100).  I actually ordered a new one seconds ago while researching this article.  Click on the picture to order.



We were pleasantly surprised to find that we had some of the ingredients in the garden pots - chives and parsley.  Zoe helped us harvest, though we lost some parsley along the way.  Believe it or not, she's smiling in that picture, not crying.  We also had non-local honey, but since it was harvested by me from my sister's hives in Maine - we called it good.

Grilling the fish was my job, and I did an okay job.  The grill grates had deteriorated during tax season and I didn't notice until the last minute so preparation was a bit spotty and there was some sticking.  Still, Ox managed to make it look real nice on the plate.  It all tasted pretty damn good too!

What to do with Excess Tomato Water and Jelly

So we were making the Strawberry Gazpacho, and we ended up with a bunch of leftover Tomato Water and Tomato Jelly.  What to do?  How about taking jalapenos, chives, green garlic and hot peppers and soak them in vodka for an hour.  Mix the strained vodka with tomato water, add a little jelly for fun, and you have un-bloody mary's.  Delicious - though we could have toned down the heat a little.

Strawberry Gazpacho with Tomato Water Jelly, Basil Ice and Crab Salad - Page 34

Ox and I both agreed that this felt like our first real foray into Chef Brock's mind.  We were making Jellies, Ices and Tomato Water.  The recipe is over 24 hours from start to finish, with multiple steps along the way, but the results were spectacular.  I think there's a good chance that Ox and I may be the only non professionals to make this recipe.

Our first trouble came when we couldn't find sheet gelatin.  No problem, Ox says, there must be a conversion available online.  Very first search result had this gem of a quote: "Substituting sheet gelatin for powdered gelatin is perhaps the most controversial ratio known to the baking world.  I’ve seen everything from 1 envelope equals 3, up to 5 sheets."  Here's the SOURCE.  We ended up melting the gelatin powder directly into the cold tomato water for 10 minutes and then microwaving for one minute.  Worked like a charm.  I have to say, making tomato puree with gelatin, freezing it, and then straining it in a crazy contraption seemed a bit insane, but one taste of the crystal clear tomato water revealed the genius.  Turns out the gelatin in the melting ice cubes holds all the colored solids and allows pure tomato flavor to escape.

As we've started to notice fairly consistently, the scale of the recipe is a bit too big.  We cut the basil ice recipe to 1/3, and still had way more basil ice than we needed.  The Basil Ice was a bit hard to scrape, I think next time we'll scrape it before it's thoroughly solid.  It looks a lot better as a garnish than it does in that picture.

The rest of the recipe aligned well, though we had a lot of Tomato Jelly leftover, but that turned out to be a good thing.  A REALLY good thing.  Check THIS out.

So, now we had Jelly, Basil Ice, Crab Salad, Gazpacho and garnishes.  Assembling in a way to match the picture, and we had a beautiful, delicious soup.  This recipe will cost you some money, will take a long time, and will tax your kitchen skills, but the end result is SOOOO worth it.



Advice: Make 1/8 the basil ice and 1/2 the tomato jelly (unless you what the bloodless bloody mary's).  Try hard to find sheet jelly - my brother the chef swears by it.  Scrape the basil ice before it is fully frozen.  Get good basil.  Not the crap crammed into the tiny containers.