Lowcountry Bistro

I'm a little late getting this review out but better late than never!

Lowcountry Bistro is the new sister restaurant to the acclaimed fine-dining establishment, 82 Queen. Boasting a more laid back atmosphere and casual menu than their parent restaurant, LB brings the same quality food and service we expect from any place associated with 82 Queen. Located on the very busy Market Street, the Bistro is in the perfect location to attract the hoards of visiting tourists who are looking for a bite to eat during their excavation of the Market's manystores. .

My girlfriend Katie and her fiance John

My Fiance Matt and Me

 
So I went as part of a double brunch date with my bridesmaid Katie and her fiance John who were in town visiting. This was the perfect place to take them. Southern, charming, with a great view of the city on the  upstairs porch. We all ordered, Matt and I shared a small order of shrimp and grits, and steak sliders with a side of mac and cheese (it's never too early in the morning for mac and cheese in my opinion). Plus the waitress boasted this was the best mac in the city. This turned out to be completely false, it was overcooked and under-seasoned and I can make way better at home.

Our meal was averagely good for brunch, perhaps better than average but not really memorable. What I do remember is that we ordered the sliders and it came out with only two little sliders on the plate. I mean, come on people...have you EVER ordered sliders and gotten less than three? It's almost like the rule of sliders, there must be an odd number and three is just a perfect portion. Needless to say I felt a little slighted by the stingy portion, especially because they were so good.

The real star of the brunch was what Katie ordered. She made the wise choice of selecting their chicken and waffles. Not only did she get a massive portion of perfectly crispy salty chicken (a half chicken to be exact), but her waffle was spongy sweet potato waffle that was sweet and briny and soft, like some red headed step child of it's much more famous Belgian cousin. The whole thing came with the standard ball 'o butter on top, except this was not normal butter. oh no, my friends, this was pecan bacon butter. Yes....Pecan. Bacon. Butter. Have you ever heard three more beautiful words strung together at a brunch table? I think not. And this being a fancy chicken and waffles the syrup was stylish too. The syrup was a bourbon infused syrup, and you could taste just a hint of cinnamon. It was heavenly. Katie is a big fan of food and I had to give her serious accolades for ordering with a savant-like genius. This was by far the star of the brunch menu and should be a mandatory order for all tables during brunch. Maybe they could just automatically bring some over, like they do with dinner rolls or bread sticks. Ah....one can dream.


All in all Lowcountry Bistro isn't somewhere I am jumping at the chance to return to. I would like to try their lunch and dinner to see how that fares but overall its a little overpriced (if I'm paying $12 for sliders I was three of them dammit!) and a bit inconsistant. If they can make all their dishes shine like the chicken and waffles did they would be a huge hit. If you are heading that way though, stop for a bloody mary and an order of chicken and waffles and you will not be disappointed.

My Style

So as I go on in my culinary education I am starting to formulate philosophy of sorts. Most chefs have one, how they cook and why, what they like, what they don't etc. For example, there are a great number of chefs now-a-days that pray to the gods of molecular gastronomy. In lamens terms that is the art of turning perfectly good food into a science project. Not my style. In my opinion, there already have been a bunch of scientists behind the scenes poking and prodding our food before we even get to cook it so the less you can do to your food the better. I don't need a foam that tastes like sardines, or a gele of artichoke hearts, or even a peanut butter dust....no, I much prefer to let nature do most of my job for me. If you  have great ingredients, you've already won half the battle. Your job as a chef is to highlight what nature has given us, not to bastardize it. And with that...you have my take on food.

Simple...Seasonal....Delicious....Italian

The Mediterranean diet

The Mother Of Slow Food

Engagement Fiesta!

This week jump starts Charleston Restaurant Week, by far the most exciting time of year to be a food lover. With all this added excitement surrounding food, this past weekend was also labor day as well as my and Matt's engagement party. Perhaps not as famous as restaurant week, this party was definitely a underground dinner for the food wise elite. The food was catered entirely by my soon-to-be step-mother-in-law Lydia, who is perhaps the closest you can get to a Mexican caterer without actually being Mexican.

Let me tell you what this menu included before I spiral off into a diatribe consisting completely of foodie porn adjectives like "unctuous" and "decadent".

There were four (yes four!) courses of traditional Mexican street food typical of the Riviera Maya region of Mexico.

6:00pm  

 shrimp and avocado salad shooters

7:00pm

 Steak and chicken fajita tacos

8:00pm

Pulled chicken and cheese enchiladas

&

Cochinitas Pibil

9:00pm 

Assorted desserts (chocolate fudge, brownies, lemon bars, snickerdoodles, recess peanut butter cup cookies) courtesy of Mary Brindisi (Matt's mom)

Ok, so let's begin to break this down. The first course/appetizer was a huge hit! The shrimp was tossed with avocado, cucumber, red onion, tomato and cilantro with a hint of lime juice. The cold temperature and the freshness that comes along with the classic combo of lime and cilantro was the perfect way to jump start your palate for a night of eating. 

The steak and chicken fajitas were out of this world. Served as a buffet style taco bar there was a mountain of perfectly cooked steak that was just the right medium rare served with a grilled chicken and tri-colored pepper and onion saute. The buffet station was jam packed with four different salsas, crema mexicana, Oaxaca cheese and homemade guacamole. Leterally anything you could need to create the most delicious taco ever! Unfortunately the only thing wrong with this course was that several guests did not know that it was one of three more courses and ate too much! Not a bad problem to have.

Next up was the enchiladas, my overall favorite of the night. These enchiladas were better than the ones I had in Mexico! Lydia got the real deal tortillas from a Mexican market and even learned from the woman who owned the store how to make authentic enchilada sauce. The end result was mouth watering-ly good. The sweet unctuousness of the authentic corn tortilla  made all the other ingredients sing. The chicken was perfectly juicy and pulled to perfection, mixed with the cheese it was almost like a savory mousse. The sauce of course was divine, just the right mix of sweet and spicy. Overall, a stellar dish that I wish I had made. 

The last course was piece-de-resistance, chochinitas pibil. Basically a pork butt wrapped in banana leaves and slow cooked with a blend of sauce and spice. It comes out at the most incredible shredded pork that is then slammed into a taco shell and devoured fiendishly. Served with pickled onions, I'm a huge fan. I mean, who doesn't like pork and pickled anything?

Overall, the party was a HUGE success in large part to my fabulous step-mother-in-law to be and the incredible food she made!!

Co on King

The other day my fiance Matt and I found ourselves out in downtown Charleston for lunch with friends. Being a foursome of adventurous eaters we decided to try out a new restaurant that just opened three months ago.

Co is a restaurant and noodle bar in the Vietnamese style, or at least that is how it presents itself. What it truly is, is a tiny little place, perfectly modern and trendy with a menu that spans the Asian continent offering everything from curry to pad thai, Bahn Mi (the vietnamese answer to a hoagie) to Pho. I would consider it "trendy asian fusion", a title that would make most big city people cringe but for Charleston is surprisingly original. For such a metropolitan city, I find Charleston lacking in ethnic variety.

The restaurant consists of two floors, the first consists of an L-shape bar and one long high-top table in the back. When we went the bar seats were already taken, so we were shown upstairs where the proper dining room is located. Their tables were a bit odd. Long wooden tables meant to seat around ten in a picnic-table style manner. Thankfully there weren't too many people upstairs so we had a table to ourselves.

Our first order of business was of course cocktails!!
Matt and I both ordered their mimosa (which had guava and orange juices). It was delicious, maybe the best mimosa I've ever had.
While selecting our cocktails, we took a good look at their wine list for future reference. I was impressed to see it was short and concise with a fantastic array of imported wines spanning the globe from South Africa, Argentina, Italy, and Portugal. My friend Tess mentioned how refreshing it is to see any menu these days without the token California white or worse, a California red blend. These people obviously know their stuff about vino because they are all fantastic wines at a great price point.

Now, getting back to what really makes or breaks a new place in Charleston, the food. I have to say I was pretty worried about what we were going to get when our waiter mentioned they were still working out the kinks so to speak: getting the staff right, figuring the timing with the kitchen, perfecting the recipes and increasing consistency, all completely legitimate issues that come up with a new restaurant. I can't say that everything went off without a hitch because, well, it didn't.

Our poor friends Tess and Ed made the grave mistake of ordering a dish called Com Ga ($13) which was described on the menu as "Vietnamese fried chicken, rice, pickled vegetables, and ginger dressing. What they ended up with was less than stellar fried chicken, and completely bland rice with no taste whatsoever. There was no ginger dressing to be found and sparse pickled vegetables. In the end, it was pretty much prison food. The saving grace for them however were the Pork Belly Buns ($6). Matt and I also partook in the buns and were pretty satisfied with them. I say pretty satisfied and not super satisfied because they were just not what I was expecting. I was expecting a steamed bun with crispy and fatty slices of pork belly accompanied by pickled vegetables. What these are are fried dough-esque buns with slices of pork belly in them that in all honesty, could and should have been cooked lower and slower before searing. The best part of those buns was the special smokey spicy sauce the waiter brought out to the table. Made in-house this stuff should be sold by the gallon and I would bathe in it all day long, reveling in the smokey, slightly sweet glory of its goodness.

Our other appetizer dish was equally as ho-hum. We ordered the Shrimp and Pork Dumplings ($5) hoping for the best, but getting an average steamed dumpling that came to the table cold inside. Our local Chinese restaurants dumplings blow those out of the water! However, before I make all of you think I didn't enjoy this place, let me tell you our main course was freakin' amazing. We had the Drunken Thai Noodles ($14) and they were everything we had hoped for from CO. They were sweet and spicy (we had the kitchen spice them up a notch) and had a slight smokey flavor that just made my toes tingle. We ordered it with shrimp and I couldn't have loved it more. It was the best drunken noodles I've had since I lived in New York and would order delivery Thai food once a week. Seriously top notch.

Drunken Thai Noodles!

Our Feast, Pork Belly Buns on the left, Drunken Thai Noodles on the right

It was this one dish that gave me extreme hope for the future of this restaurant. They may not have all of their ducks in a row quite yet, but once they've got their stride, I expect they will do quite well here in our lovely city. I will definitely be going back for dinner....................in a couple of months.

Sunday Brunch at The Triangle

Sunday is reserved for one thing. No, not church. Not family. No...Sunday is brunch day!!!

Also commonly referred to as "Sunday Fun-day". No Sunday is complete without a bloody mary or mimosa, a heaping pile of food, and great atmosphere. For me, Sunday brunch is more sacred than anything your local preacher could be offering up. It's the closest thing to a ritual I adhere to (not counting Friday night Shabbat dinner at my folks place). First reason I love brunch so much is that it is socially acceptable to be shit faced by one in the afternoon. I have been a fan of day drinking since college and think it is the truly responsible way to drink; you get your party fix, you are much more alert having just woken up, and you will most likely wake up the next day completely sober.

So the usual brunch spot for my crew is the Triangle Char & Bar in Mount Pleasant. It is known for horrible food, which is true....except for Sundays. I admit that my fiance and I have come up with a fool proof regular brunch order which guarantees us great food, so if you go there for brunch and have a crappy dry omelet...you've been warned.

Triangle is always packed on Sundays, for good reason. $1 mimosas, great spicy bloody mary's, and a fun outside bar area. What I am more interested in talking about however, is their fried chicken livers. These things are spectacular! and the only thing my fiance Matt and I will EVER order from this place. Every Sunday brunch we go there and split the $7 order of chicken livers and a carafe of mimosas and walk away buzzed and so stuffed with food that we waddle lackadaisically back to our vehicle. 

To most people, fried chicken livers sounds disgusting. I understand that. I love third category meats (organ meats to the non culinary crowd), and   chicken liver to me is a special treat. They are also fairly common in the south, where people love the weird stuff (feet, snout, tail etc.) which is fantastic for people like me! you wont find chicken livers on a Manhattan brunch menu that is for sure.




This dish is brunch perfection. The fried chicken livers are accompanied by cheese grits and tasso gravy- a kind of creamy sinfully good pork based sauce that literally makes your tastebuds do high-fives-and all finished off with a fried egg for good measure. It ends up being a creamy, crunchy, salty, sweet slop-bucket of glory. I cannot sing this dishes praises enough. I seriously just want to make out with it, or get it intravenously. And, it is such a filling dish that I could never safely finish one on my own, so it makes the perfect brunch plate for Matt and I....two pigs in shit we are when Sunday rolls around.

As I said....Sunday is for brunch....and of course, friend chicken livers.