The Southeastern Wildlife Expo (SEWE) has jumping dogs, flying raptors and countless folks stomping about in camouflage. But the real action this year may be on the “Fresh on the Menu” culinary stage. Some of Charleston’s top chefs will be showcasing local ingredients with seafood and greens — plus game and meats many people have never tried, including ostrich.
Shuai Wang
Shrimp toast sliders
Fresh off his selection as one of the contestants in this season’s Top Chef television competition, Shuai Wang will be cooking shrimp toast sliders with shrimp from the Gay Fish Co. out of St. Helena Island. The appearance is one of his “duties” as Chef Ambassador for the state (it’s fair to say that Wang is having a moment), but he says he’s happy to support SEWE.
“SEWE is a great event,” Wang said. “The whole Chef Ambassador thing is pretty crazy. Someone else nominated me. It wasn’t even a thought in my head, I just put my head down and work.
“When recognition comes, I’m over the moon, but I never chase it. That’s not what cooking is for or about. I do try to push hard about supporting local farmers and fishermen (one of the tenets of being Chef Ambassador). I don’t understand why you’d buy anything else. Nothing tastes as good.”
Wang and his wife, Corrie, are the owners of King BBQ and Jackrabbit Filly, the latter of which recently opened in a new location. In 2017, he garnered a semi-finalist nod in the James Beard Awards Rising Chef category for his food truck, Short Grain.
Shuai said he is a big proponent of local seafood, even though he knows many people are reluctant to cook with fresh fish. “With pre-packaged fish, you don’t know where it’s from, how it was handled,” he said. “The frozen stuff is waterlogged and won’t taste like the fish it is supposed to taste like. One of the wonderful things about living here is we have so many fish mongers who are local. Why waste that?”
Jason Stanhope
Mangalitsa Pork
Jason Stanhope, executive chef at Lowland, will be cooking pork — but not just any pork. He will be preparing Mangalitsa Pork, produced by Rutters Ranch in upstate Townville, S.C.
The pork is “a curly-haired hairy heritage hog that is really prized for its fat content and intramuscular marbling,” Stanhope said. “It’s kind of like the top of the line for a salumi hog and it’s really highly prized for cured meats.”
Stanhope, a 2015 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef Southeast, will serve lonza (dry-cured pork loin), guanciale (cured pork jowl) and n’duja (spreadable Italian sausage).
Stanhope said he doesn’t have the room to cure meat at Lowland, but he loves the whole heritage hog movement in this country that has been developing in the past decade.
“Great things happen when Americans’ obsession for heritage hogs meets Old World Italian salumi traditions,” he said.
Stanhope said he always loves SEWE, even though his time these days is limited. After leaving his long-time job at FIG to open sister restaurants Lowland Tavern and Quinte within 60 days of each other, he recently consolidated the two into one restaurant since they were sharing a kitchen anyway. In addition, he’s recently started a supper club for about 60 people who get a monthly takeout from the restaurant.
“It felt like [it’s] Covid-19 days, a weird flashback,” Stanhope said of preparing takeout. “You know, we made a career of putting food on plates, and during the pandemic, you realized that some food is not meant to go in boxes. We were just forcing our menu into boxes because we had to. Now, it’s a pretty cool exercise to think about something that is meant to take home.”
Greg Garrison
Ostrich
When Greg Garrison, chef/partner at Prohibition here and in Columbia, was asked to cook at SEWE, he jumped at it. After all, he’s an avid bowhunter so he’s used to cooking things like venison.
Then, he found out his protein was going to be ostrich.
“I was surprised and interested to find out that there’s an ostrich farm in (Laurens) South Carolina,” Garrison, also a partner at Repeal 33 restaurant in Savannah, said. “The first thing I asked after talking with [farmer Adam Bokor] is whether you treat it like duck or turkey, and he said it’s more like filet mignon. You serve the whole muscle cuts like the steak rare to mid-rare. He said to treat it like tenderloin and cook it on the grill. We got samples and I told my wife, ‘We’re having ostrich tonight!’ ”
The result, he said, was a cross between chicken and beef, a mild red meat with a “really good texture.”
Garrison said ostrich is more expensive than less exotic meat, and he plans to use ground ostrich at SEWE.
“We are going to have little cocktail meatballs with a sweet and sour barbecue sauce,” Garrison said. “We’ll be talking about all the variations people can try at home. I want to do something people will actually feel like is something they can do,” although he added that, for now, the ostrich is available only frozen around Greenville and Columbia and in jerky form online.
Rhonda Mitchell
Pea and Collard Stew
Even with a game-heavy menu, there should always be sides, and Chef Rhonda Mitchell, owner of catering company The Drizzled Pear, will be presenting a dish with local collard greens.
She says collard greens are a “big thing on our menu” at The Drizzled Pear, and that she’s excited to be working at SEWE with farming legend Joseph Fields of Fields Farms.
Mitchell launched The Drizzled Pear full-time in 2022 and says that at SEWE, she will be preparing a dish focused on local ingredients, a coconut Sea Island red pea and collard stew that is “a rich, hearty stew with peas and tomatoes and carrots and celery and finished with collards that cook right in the broth.”
Mitchell, whose company also is one of the International African American Museum’s preferred vendors, said collards are in season for much of the year and that “greens and grits are my favorite thing.”
“A lot of people think collards are country and grandma food, but collards are everything,” she added. “Collards are versatile. You can wrap things in them, steam them, flash pan fry them, even use them in Asian food, anything that uses leafy greens. We recently made a collard green risotto for a plated dinner. They’re not just country food. The elevation comes from the way you present them.”
For the schedule of SEWE chefs events, go online at charlestoncitypaper.com.
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