Lowcountry Cuisine

Lowcountry Cuisine

It’s Hoppin’ John, and Fried Green Tomatoes. It’s Shrimp & Grits, Red Rice, She Crab Soup, Limpini Susan and Frogmore Stew. It’s Scuppernong Jam, Dilled Green Beans, Fig Conserve, and Pear Chutney. In a word it’s “Lowcountry Cuisine”.

The bucolic Lowcountry of South Carolina, rich in cultural diversity and geography, is home to a uniquely Southern culinary style. Stretching from Savannah to Charleston a network of fresh water rivers meet the marshes and the sea. This land of pristine tidal estuaries and maritime forests offers a bountiful natural abundance.

The Lowcountry, originally the home of the Powhattan Indians, was settled by English Barbadian planters at Charles Town (now Charleston) in 1670. Rice and indigo plantations proliferated in the surrounding coastal lowcountry worked by slaves from the Caribbean and Africa. Germans, French Huguenots and the Sephardic Jews from Portugal and Spain soon migrated to the developing seacoast. This melting pot of cultural inspiration and local bounty eventually produced the renown Southern classic “Lowcountry Cuisine”.

The basic food stuff from which Lowcountry Cuisine is prepared is as diverse as the local history. It is called a "cuisine of the water" because the shrimp, crab, oyster and varieties of fish so plentiful along the coastline are used so deliciously. The regions indigenous game, notably venison and duck, were and remain staple ingredients. Native Americans gave us pecans, squash and file', a powder made from sassafras leaves, and ground de-hulled and soaked corn which we now call Grits. The West African and Caribbean contribution is immeasurable. They supplied knowledge of rice growing, as well as hot peppers, black-eyed peas, field peas, eggplants, okra (for which "gumbo" is an African word), jerky, collard greens, yams, peanuts and watermelon. The very tradition of deep frying foods came from Africa. The early Europeans mostly avoided African cultural influences, but because slave women did most of the cooking for plantations their cooking techniques were used in preparing European dishes and were eventually passed to slave owners' children.

A generation ago Lowcountry Cuisine could only be found in the homes and cafes of the Carolina Lowcountry itself. Today upscale restaurants across the country proudly advertise Lowcountry dishes and menus. The ascendancy of Lowcountry Cuisine to prominence can be traced to two primary factors.

First was Chef Louis Osteen, a South Carolina native, who was dubbed ”the premier interpreter of new Southern cuisine” by Esquire Magazine. Osteen and wife Marlene opened the Pawleys Island Inn in 1990. The menu featured interpretations of honest recipes showcasing fresh seafood and local ingredients and was met with rave reviews. In 2000 Osteen took his artistry to a larger audience at the Charleston Grill but returned to Pawleys Island in 2001 with 'Louis's at Pawleys and the Fish Camp Bar'. He published 'Louis Osteen's Charleston Cuisine: Recipes From a Low Country Chef' (Algonquin Books 1999) with Bret Lott and has been praised as “the spiritual general of the new Charleston chefs” by the New York Times.

In 1992 John Martin Taylor wrote 'Hoppin' John's Lowcountry Cooking: Recipes & Ruminations from Charleston and the Carolina Coastal Plain' (Houghton Mifflin). The Los Angeles Times said of the book, "Few regional cookbooks aim quite as high as this one, but the unorthodox scope of Taylor's survey is no surprise to the friends who marveled at his fanatical devotion to the Lowcountry...Taylor's done exactly what regional cookbooks should do and usually don't." Part cookbook and part travelogue it imparts an unforgettable sense of place and did much to focus international attention on the Lowcountry and its cuisine.