The Food & Wine Classic in Charleston debuted this past weekend, bringing with it a slew of seminars, tasting demos, specialty dinners, after parties and, of course, the requisite tasting tent (aka the Grand Tasting Pavilion).
Held during peak hurricane season, the festival narrowly avoided the impacts of Helene, which devastated other parts of the Southeast. Only one seminar was canceled and the Grand Tasting Pavilion (GTP) was delayed by an hour on the first day.
The weekend’s seminars featured talks and demos from celebrity chefs, local chefs, sommeliers, beer experts, scholars and more.
A tease by Tyler Florence
In “High Steaks: Recipes of an American Steakhouse,” South Carolina native and chef Tyler Florence taught the audience how to make the Caesar salad and tomahawk steak served at his famed steakhouse, Miller & Lux.
During the demo, Florence reminisced on his time cooking in Charleston. A Greenville native, Florence attended Charleston’s Johnson & Wales campus in the 1990s and cooked in a number of Holy City restaurants. He said his Lowcountry training is reflected on his restaurants’ menus and that fried chicken and deviled eggs are two of his biggest sellers.
Florence also teased a possible Charleston restaurant. When asked if he would ever open a restaurant in the city, Florence said there were “some exciting opportunities” to do just that. He said that a Charleston restaurant would be his “love letter to the South.”
In another cooking demonstration, “Brock on Burgers: Why the Crustburger Reigns Supreme,” former Charleston-based chef Sean Brock announced he would open his Nashville restaurant, Joybird, later this year on Calhoun Street.
Tough talks, regional tastes
Perhaps the most important seminar of the festival, “The City That Rice Built,” featured panelists Amethyst Ganaway, Alexander Smalls and Jonathan Green. A discussion based around a Food & Wine story by Jeff Gordinier and George McCalman, “The City That Rice Built” delved into the West African history of rice in the Lowcountry.
Ganaway, a periodic Charleston City Paper contributor, said the food of the Gullah Geechee people is a “food of endurance.” Attendees were served bacon and okra purloo from local legend, Charlotte Jenkins, who once ran Mount Pleasant-based Gullah Cuisine with her late husband Frank.
Ganaway also noted that while Charleston is often touted as the No. 1 city in the country, many folks never step into the Gullah Geechee restaurants that built this city. She mentioned Gillie’s Seafood on James Island and Bintu Atelier downtown as two must-stop spots if you’re traveling through Charleston.
Notable booze-forward seminars included “Choose Your Own Adventure: A Pinot Noir and Snacks Pairing Party” (where Graft Wine Shop’s Femi Oyediran and Miles White paired pinots with Southern snacks like boiled peanuts) and “Beer by the Sea: How Coastal Breweries Are Making Some of America’s Greatest Brews” (Blackberry Farm Brewery’s Roy Milner joined Edmund’s Oast Brewing Co.’s Scott Shor to taste and discuss beer from EO, Munkle and Westbrook).
In between seminar sessions, Food & Wine Classic attendees traipsed through the GTP, trying predominantly seafood and Southern-inspired bites from local restaurants. From fresh-shucked oysters from 167 Raw to poached shrimp from Charleston Grill to scallops from Gingerline, the GTP bites were sea-heavy indeed. There were also some super Southern offerings, including Magnolia’s fried chicken sandwich topped with pimento cheese.
While participating restaurants remained the same throughout the four GTP sessions, each one presented a new dish for each session. There were a number of liquor representatives as well, including local distillers Tom & Huck, and breweries like Holy City Brewing and Rusty Bull. There were fewer wine representatives than a name like FOOD & WINE may suggest, but, then again, this was only the first year of the Classic in Charleston.
If you missed out on this year’s festival, fear not — the Food & Wine Classic in Charleston already has next year’s dates on the books. Weather be damned, the second annual Classic is slated to take place Sept. 26 through Sept. 28, 2025.
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