Charleston Culinary Tours Offer Tasty Tours at the Best Restaurants in Charleston

I had the chance to do a review of one of the best tours in Charleston. Foodies, make sure to read this blog I posted at Apartments.com. You won't be disappointed. This is a must do tour for tourists and locals alike! Absolutely delicious and informative for all.

Folly Beach Crab Shack Celebrates 15 Years

The doors opened at the Folly Beach Crab Shack 15 years ago. Ron Hill, owner, is celebrating the anniversary with us by offering great deals on some of the Shack’s most popular dishes. Patrons may indulge in some of the Shack’s favorite seafood dishes for $15 during the month of November. While you’re there, make sure to pick up a Crabby Mary created with Absolut Peppar, a blend of clamato and spices, and topped with a huge crab claw, pepperoncini, celery, and accented with slices of lemon and lime. The delicious cocktail is served in a mason jar with the rim lightly coated with their signature seafood seasoning.

Years ago, partners Dan Doyle and Ryan Condon convinced Ron to follow through with his lifelong dream of owning his own restaurant on Folly Beach. Their decision to offer seafood on tables with huge buckets in the middle for trash was an innovative way to serve customers at the time. Their creativity didn’t stop there but continued as they created an extensive menu loaded with a full raw bar, fried or grilled plates, and buckets overflowing with extra large shrimp, snow crab legs, and oysters. Land lovers have fierce lunch and sandwich options as well.

Upon arrival, take a close look at the murals in the open restaurant. Ron commissioned his brother, James Christopher Hill, to demonstrate what the restaurant represents. Scenes of the old pier and front beach are awe inspiring. A bounty of seafood surrounds an old house that could be found anywhere off the Folly River. James brings an instant familiarity by integrating the old with the new.

Hill’s dedication to the Lowcountry Local First community is extending past just buying local seafood from merchants in the area. Backman’s and Crosby’s provide many of the staples used in the restaurant. For hard to get items, or as a supplement, Hill negotiates with Sysco for only the best and freshest ingredients. He keeps his ears to the ground and listens to what his customers want. His intuition now is to expand his buying habits to local farms.

The Wandering Eye had a chance to review a 4-course meal with Hill’s contribution to how each dish is created. He gives full credit to his chef, Chef George Rivers, who works solidly to perfect and maintain a high quality of standard, Sous Chef Nathan Albertson, and General Manager M. K. O’Connell. First, gigantic shrimp were served two ways, fried and grilled, with remoulade and cocktail sauces. Crisp and fresh, the shrimp were absolutely divine and well cooked. The fried shrimp, coated just once and lightly floured, had a nice flavor. Being so large, they can sometimes be overcooked and chewy. Not here. They were absolutely perfect.

Next, we were served a sample of their shrimp and grits with tasso gravy. If you are like us, we like our gravy light and not drowning the plate. In many instances, restaurants use their gravy to cover up a plate of average (or below average grits). Again, not here. Being true down home Southerners, we are grits snobs and appreciate them when done well. The Crab Shack uses a stone ground yellow grit, heavy cream and just the right amount of salt to make the creamiest grits in town. The gravy didn’t hide the texture of them but added a nice flavor to the plate. Again, huge shrimp nestled into the grits, inviting us to try each bite, which we did and enjoyed immensely.
The third course consisted of a bucket full of Frogmore Stew and topped with snow crab clusters. The overflowing bucket contained tasty bits of sausage, potatoes coated with their seafood seasoning, more of those gigantic shrimp and corn on the cob. The crab legs and shrimp were the heart of the bucket. Well cooked and easy to crack and peel, the moist pieces of sweet meat were delivered in perfect bites to our mouths.

Finally, slices of key lime pie and salted caramel cheesecake rounded out our meal. By this point, we could hardly eat any more, but the desserts were top notch. The excellence in service, food and passion for truly connecting with the public is easily seen in both Hill’s attitude and throughout the restaurant’s culture. It is clear why the business is celebrating 15 years, and it’s also no surprise that Southern Living Magazine has called the Folly Beach Crab Shack one of the top 10 seafood restaurants in South Carolina.

Restaurant Review - CRAVE in Mt Pleasant

My friend Kim and I stopped by Crave in Mt Pleasant after attending a class at the College of Charleston's music department last night. Being consistently one of our favorite places, we were looking forward to discussing the evening and catching up on trips, life, kids and all of our favorite subjects. The bar area of Crave is lovely, nice and open and with high tables scattered throughout. Ordering a glass of wine and a beer, we settled into the menu like bees to honey, busily devouring each appetizer's description. We finally chose to share a salad on the specials menu and also wanted to sample the antipasto plate.



To begin with, our server brought a basket of warm bread. We each pulled out the steaming muffins first, as they looked incredibly tasty. Taking just small bites and were delighted at the delicate sweetness of what turned out to be sweet potato muffins. The slight cinnamon flavor was accentuated with a light maple butter. Nestled next to the muffins were pieces of french bread, crusted perfectly with fluffy middles. The muffins are made in-house with just a few simple ingredients and are just one of Crave's delicious treats. While the french loaves had a nice consistency and appeared fresh, we learned that they are not hand crafted by Crave's chefs but delivered by a food service.



Our salad arrived promptly, and we forked through the delicious bib lettuce, goat cheese with bacon crumbles, and dried apple chips. One fried egg was placed on top. As an aside, I believe a fried egg on anything makes it better, but on this particular salad, it was outstanding. A champagne vinaigrette drizzled the dainty leaves without drowning them, and the natural flavors blended well. The simplicity of dried apple chips with goat cheese was a nice surprise, and we enjoyed each bite. As our server came to remove the plate, we dryly suggested they take it off the menu, because we obviously didn't like it (the plate was basically licked clean). She laughed and brought out our second dish.



Kim and I are utterly baffled by this dish. There is no other way to say it. It was terrible. What is so surprising is that Crave is typically consistent. Our food choices in the past have included lobster and shrimp risotto, scallops, and salmon. Their dinners are truly wonderful and spot-on, but this.. this.. this plate.. ?? First of all, look at the plating. They are trying out for a rustic appeal with large chuckly blocks of what is supposed to be feta cheese on a wooden block. It looks ok, I guess, and in the dim lighting it's hard to show you just how boring it really was. The artichoke salad with black olives tasted medicinal and bland. The feta cheese blocks were chalky and dry. The charcuterie was simply disgusting! We couldn't eat it. The best thing on the platter was pickled beets, and they were straight out of a can. The pickled green beans were crunchy, yes, but so lightly pickled that they just tasted sickly (maybe they needed the artichokes for help!). Little drowned grape tomatoes dotted one section, but they were so sad looking that we couldn't enjoy them either. It was one of the worst food experiences I have experienced over the past few years, and that's saying something after my trip to North Carolina!

Overall, I cannot give Crave a bad review. Multiple experiences have proven they are a decent restaurant. One suggestion though, never put the antipasto plate on your specials menu again. Take it off, forget you tried that one, and stick to what you're good at. Everything else.

Review - The Rusty Rudder

The Rusty Rudder is a new restaurant on the outskirts of Mt Pleasant on your way to Awendaw. The restaurant sits in the old 17North location and has a lovely patio area with games and lots of room to enjoy the live music that's played weekly. Inside, the decor is simple yet inviting. The woodsy feel of the place and long bar, serviced by a pretty female bartender on this day, is an inviting establishment with a hopeful future. Landing in Charleston after having large success in the Charlotte market, the owners are hoping to achieve the same in their new location.

We took the liberty of ordering a couple of appetizers with our meals. Our choices were she crab soup, which was pretty good, and Oysters Rockefeller. To their credit, the oysters were plated nicely and looked appetizing enough. The tops were nicely browned, had a heaping amount of spinach on the salty oyster beds, and they seemed scrumptious. Unfortunately for us, they simply - weren't. They were OK. The oysters seemed unfresh and cold but edible, so we ate them anyway. Looking forward to our meals, we hoped that the BBQ sandwich and mahi mahi tacos would prove to be a little more appetizing than the previous dishes.

The meals were delivered promptly and HUGE. The tacos were filled with big pieces of fish, a pineapple slaw with a jalapeno mango sauce. The BBQ sandwich was piled high with pulled pork, and they gave us two choices of sauce. One was a tomato-vinegar based, called the Rudder special, and the other was a spicy mustard sauce. As things seem to go, the food looked delicious! Tasting it was to be a little less exciting, as they simply didn't convey what they promised. The tacos were a little bland but not bad. There didn't seem to be a hint of anything spicy, and we didn't even realize that there was supposed to be any on them until we were informed by the server. (She was great by the way. One of the best in Mt Pleasant.) The BBQ sandwich was, well, a BBQ sandwich. The fries, on the other hand, were outstanding. We ended up dipping them into the sauces. Fat yet crunchy on the inside, their soft middles blossomed with the sauces' sweet and spicy undertones.

After we indulged a little in the above, we decided to take most of it home and try one of their unusual desserts. The cheesecake stuffed strawberries, dipped in chocolate, should be a nice end to our meal. They weren't bad, but the "cheesecake stuffing" was more of a mushy filling that tasted like it was born out of a can. You can't beat a strawberry dipped in chocolate though, so we ate a couple and took the rest home.

Overall, the restaurant is OK. It's definitely not one of the best in town, but it's not bad either. If you don't mind spending a little too much for food that is of average quality, this is your place. The convenience of having it so close to home (for us in North Mt Pleasant), the lovely outdoor patio with live music, and a family friendly atmosphere make up for a lot of the issues we have with the food. It's a cool place to kick back with a few of their craft beers and specialty cocktails after work. Just, maybe skip the oysters and head straight to the meat of the place.