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Join us 4/29/12 for Coastal Uncorked in Myrtle Beach!

Posted on Apr 13, 2012 1:27 pm

We’re so excited to be returning this year to Coastal Uncorked, Myrtle Beach’s excellent wine and food festival. We’ll be judging the Chef’s Challenge on Sunday night 4/29/12 of the festival. It’s an awesome tasting event that’s also an “Iron Chef”-style competition featuring some of the area’s best restaurant chefs. We had a blast last year, and the food was phenomenal. And this year, we’re especially excited to be joined at the Judges Table by James Beard Best Chef Southeast Award Winner Louis Osteen! Click here for details.

The Ultimate Rice-Cooking Collection

Posted on Mar 1, 2012 1:01 pm

Check out Carolina Gold Rice collection we put together, on sale today @OpenSky.com Everything you need to rock the tastiest, most authentic Lowcountry-style rice!
In the collection is:

– real South Carolina-grown Carolina Gold, the original variety of rice first brought to Charleston from Madagascar in the late 1600s – a Charleston rice spoon, by Reed & Barton, a serving spoon whose grand proportions (it’s huge!) make it ideal for presenting with your rice – a real Charleston-style rice steamer, for gently cooking your rice without encouraging stickiness (and without risking a messy bubble-over!)

These items can be purchased in any number of combinations.

Joining OpenSky.com is free. Choose the curators you wish to follow—a few others include Tom Colicchio, Hugh Acheson, Lidia Bastianich, Rick Bayless and Dorie Greenspan. Click here to go to the site and to browse our collection:
http://tinyurl.com/7r6tgdw

Artisan Chocolates, Charleston-style

Posted on Feb 7, 2012 12:58 pm

Check out the assortment of exquisitely handcrafted chocolates we put together on OpenSky. http://osky.co/yaPk9O
These are from artisan chocolatier Sweeteeth, straight outta North Charleston, and suitable for giving to someone you love…or for inhaling yourself! While supplies last

Sweeteeth is the newest, and most successful, small-batch chocolate maker in South Carolina. It’s the vision of Johnny Battles, who was working at a creative pizzeria in North Charleston (E.V.O.) when the chocolate bug hit him.

Johnny thinks like a chef, and it shows: in the quality of the ingredients, the handcrafted care that each bar receives, and in his flavor selections—exciting combinations that really work. These are chocolates with spice and flair, and they somehow feel distinctly Southern in spirit: cinnamon, apple and pecans in dark chocolate; white chocolate with crumbled ginger snaps; chocolate and port. And the visual look of the chocolates is edgy and sophisticated.

We’re chocolate skeptics, but we were blown away when we first encountered Sweeteeth chocolate at a shop in downtown Charleston, and just knew we had to bring these to our OpenSky followers.

The Surprising Charleston Origins of the “Garden & Gun” Name

Posted on Jan 23, 2012 1:22 pm

From the headnote to our “Garden and Gun Cocktail” (bourbon-based, with lemon-inflected watermelon rind preserves) in The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook (WW Norton, 2006), page 52:

“Charleston once had its own version of Studio 54, called the King Street Garden and Gun Club, founded by Richard Robison. A producer at the Spoleto Festival USA, the performing arts festival that takes over the town each year in late May and early June, Robison opened the Garden and Gun (which was all anyone ever called it) primarily as a place for the baritones and ballerinas from out of town to unwind after their shows, but the nightspot attracted a large local following, too. Although the Garden and Gun lasted only from 1976 (the founding of the Spoleto Festival) until 1981, the bar was deeply influential, and even today many Charlestonians claim it was the first bar in the city where people of all races and sexual orientations felt comfortable dancing together. We still hear people of a certain age waxing nostalgic about the dance scene at the Garden and Gun. There was never anything like it before, they tell us, and there hasn’t been anything quite like it since.
We were far from drinking age during the Garden and Gun’s heyday, but the phrase always captivated us for the way it effortlessly welds together two concepts that seem so at odds, the twee domesticity of “garden” and the frightening brawn of “gun.” It was only as we grew older that we realized it captures one aspect of Charleston’s soul: a little bit courtly and a little bit country. It’s a quality perhaps best articulated by one of Ted’s contemporaries at a debutante party. “Don’t you just love deb season?” said the young rake, taking a long slug of a gin and tonic. “Just change out of your camo [camouflage], and into your tuxedo.”

In this cocktail, the bourbon is the gun; the watermelon rind preserves, which is basically a simple syrup infused with lemon, ginger, and the cucumber-y freshness of watermelon rind, is the garden.

A vintage G&G Club matchbook:

Get it while you can! Jack Rudy tonic syrup at OpenSky

Posted on Jan 18, 2012 1:59 pm

We’re drinking gin & tonics year round since we discovered Jack Rudy tonic syrup, made in Charleston, which takes our G&Ts to another level in terms of flavor, nuance and quality: this is old-school tonic like it was made in the prohibition era, from bitter/sweet ingredients like quinine and cane sugar, aromatic/tart ones like lemongrass and citrus. This OpenSky offering begins today at the link below; the last time around Jack Rudy tonic sold out in just a couple hours (it’s pretty rare, even here in Charleston). Cheers, and we hope y’all enjoy! Click here to be taken to our OpenSky page

“The charming Lee Brothers cook delicious, real food that's alive with flavor. How wonderful to be invited into their Southern kitchen!”
- author Alice Waters