The pace of restaurant openings and culinary happenings in this town can be downright gluttonous and overwhelming. Sometimes, instead of chasing the new and flashy, you simply crave the tried and true. Especially when it comes to desserts. Fortunately, that’s much easier than snagging a reservation at Merci or Sorelle.
In a city so deeply rooted in history and heritage, a few standout restaurants — and one bakery — offer what can be considered Lowcountry heritage desserts. These sweet endings are steeped in place as much as butter and sugar. They taste like tradition, celebration, comfort and decadence.
There’s a reason these treats have stood the test of time. Here’s why you should order that after dinner aperitif and get that dessert fork ready.
Coconut cake at Peninsula Grill
This 12-layer stalwart is more than a cake — it’s an institution. So much so that Peninsula Grill opened its adjacent coffee and dessert bar, Benne’s, to accommodate the growing number of diners making reservations just to score a slice.
As good ol’ Southern coconut cakes go, it’s less white frosting atop fluffy crumb than a rich, dense architecture of excess, in all the best ways. Peninsula Grill’s pastry chef Samantha Ed remembers visiting Charleston before moving here and eating the cake. Now she’s baking 32 each day for the three-day process that results in 16 cakes to meet the restaurant’s daily needs and a robust mail-order demand. The restaurant delivered some 600 12-pound honkers over the recent holidays at a hefty $270 per cake, shipped anywhere in the U.S.
The famed dessert has been a staple at the Relais and Chateaux property since the late Bob Carter, Peninsula Grill’s chef from 1997 to 2011, introduced it during his first Valentine’s Day at the restaurant.
“I grew up with this cake,” he said, according to restaurant history. “When I first started cooking professionally, I purposefully kept it out of my repertoire because it was just too familiar… until I realized it was the best darn layer cake I had ever tasted.”
Others agree, including Bobby Flay, Martha Stewart, The New York Times and Southern Living, which christened it “one of the South’s grand desserts.”
Huguenot torte at Middleton Place Restaurant
The French Huguenots who sought religious freedom in Charlestowne in the 1680s have given this region much flavor, but this eponymous dessert is not part of that legacy. According to food historian John Martin Taylor, the Huguenot torte actually hails from the Ozarks and got its French protestant moniker when Mrs. Cornelius Huguenin submitted the nutty, appley crisp to the first Charleston Receipts (1950). But who’s quibbling?
In the 1980s, when the revered Edna Lewis became chef at Middleton’s restaurant, she developed a menu focused on historically accurate fare, i.e. seasonally sourced “plantation cooking” and other Southern foodways. This simple crowd-pleaser, with its sugary crunch and pecan explosion, fit the bill.
Huguenot torte warmed and crowned with a dollop of ice cream is basically the perfect food delivery system: fruit, nuts and dairy, as easy and unfussy as it is delicious.
According to the website TasteAtlas, Middleton Place’s torte takes top world ranking, which would undoubtedly make Lewis proud. The restaurant has evolved since her time there, with the torte not always on the menu, but when it is, it’s worth the drive. Closer to downtown, you can find a more than worthy Huguenot torte at Fleet Landing or at the Grace Church Cathedral tearoom in the spring.
Carolina Gold rice pudding at The Grocery
Can it get more classic in Charleston than Carolina Gold rice? When Chef Kevin Johnson stirs it into a creamy, dreamy rice pudding, the answer is no. For the multiple James Beard nominee and culinary pioneer who opened The Grocery in 2011, Carolina Gold rice pudding is the quintessential Charleston dessert.
“I think my first memory of rice pudding was at Hot Shoppes Cafeteria in Virginia when I was a kid,” Johnson said. “I enjoyed the simplicity and the texture. At The Grocery, I revisited it as a way to highlight the wonderful rice of our region. It’s the Carolina Gold middlins that make it so incredibly delicious.”
Rice pudding isn’t for everyone, he admits. “It can be polarizing, but there’s a certain percentage of us who love it, me included,” he added. One of the reasons he’s such a fan and that it fits The Grocery’s seasonally-based menu so well “is its ability to travel throughout any season,” Johnson said. “It’s a great canvas for whatever fruit is at its prime — citrus in the winter, berries in the spring, peaches all summer and muscadine grapes in the fall.”
Bread pudding at Hannibal’s Kitchen
Pro tip: if you’re a sweet-tooth looking for a deal, look no further than the venerable Hannibal’s Kitchen in Charleston’s East Side. For a mere three bucks (you read that right) you can get a mini-loaf of bread pudding. At Hannibal’s, it is something akin to a hearty apple-raisin cake meets morning glory muffin meets cinnamony chunk of pure joy.
It ain’t fancy, but it doesn’t need to be. Pop in and order one to go, or better yet, sit down for a full soul food feast and top it off with this compact concoction that is more fruity than bready, so it seems healthier than it probably is.
Sisters Safiya Grant and Felicity Huger, the third-generation family owners and operators, stay true to the classics, of which bread pudding is a non-negotiable.
“Always a favorite,” says Felicity, not skipping a beat as she mans the cash register while filling a to-go order of crab rice. If you hear folks complaining about Charleston getting too slick or too touristy, send ‘em here, where for less than you’d pay for a small coffee at most spots, you can find soulful, comforting bread-pudding perfection.
Charleston chewies at Daddy’s Girl Bakery
Chewies can be a sensory overload, requiring the mouth to pull out all its tastebuds and texture-loving tricks. A sublime gooeyness balanced with slight crunch, it’s a melt-in-your-mouth alchemy of old school simplicity: butter, brown sugar, nuts, flour, eggs and vanilla extract.
But when Nate Brown of Daddy’s Girl Bakery adds in his magic, the chewie transforms into a near-mystical experience. Nate and his wife Chasity opened the North Charleston bakery in 2021 after they realized the demand for the treats that Nate had been selling around town.
The recipe, passed down from Nate’s aunt Yolanda Gilliard, has been a family staple for generations, “always served at holidays, birthdays and family celebrations,” Chasity said, just as chewies have been in African American families throughout the region.
“We’ve been asking elders, trying to research the history, but nobody has solid answers,” she says. Others, like Gullah chef B.J. Dennis, agree that it’s a traditional Gullah Geechee dessert, “rooted in the old molasses, brown sugar, cane syrup-based Gullah Geechee sweets,” he told the Southern Foodways Alliance.
The classic treat is by far the bakery’s best seller. In today’s lexicon, think of it as a power bar, a shot of sugary energy and delight.
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