Food History of Charleston

Key eras

1670 to 1865, the rice plantation era

Charleston was the most-densely-enslaved port in the American South; an estimated 45 to 65 percent of Africans forced into US slavery came through the Port of Charleston. Carolina Gold rice, brought from Madagascar in the 17th century and cultivated using West African techniques, made Charleston one of the wealthiest cities in the world by the eve of the Civil War.

1865 to 1920, Gullah Geechee creole cuisine takes shape

After Emancipation the Gullah Geechee communities of the Sea Islands kept Carolina Gold rice cultivation alive for personal use even as the commercial industry collapsed. They built the canonical Lowcountry repertoire: she-crab soup, shrimp gumbo, okra soup, hoppin' John, red rice, perlou and crab rice.

1920s, she-crab soup is born

Around 1920 William Deas, butler and cook to Charleston Mayor Robert Goodwyn Rhett, added crab roe to the family's Scotch-Irish partan-bree soup to match it for a visit from President William Howard Taft. The orange roe gave the soup its name and look. Deas later put she-crab soup on the menu at Everett's restaurant, where it became the city's most-noted culinary specialty.

1950, Charleston Receipts and the cookbook tradition

The Junior League of Charleston published Charleston Receipts in 1950, codifying the city's dishes and the formal entertaining tradition. The first edition included an early printed recipe for Breakfast Shrimp, the dish that would later become shrimp and grits, and helped fix the city's cookbook reputation as the canonical Southern entertaining manual.

1982 to 1985, shrimp and grits goes national

Bill Neal repurposed the Lowcountry breakfast plate as a dinner entree at Crook's Corner in Chapel Hill in 1982. In 1985 Craig Claiborne wrote a praise-filled New York Times piece on the dish, kicking off shrimp and grits's rise from regional breakfast into a defining Southern restaurant entree on menus from Charleston to New York.

2000 onwards, the Carolina Gold revival

Glenn Roberts founded Anson Mills in Columbia in 2000 and made his mission the restoration of Carolina Gold rice and other Southern heirloom grains. The grain's return, combined with chef Sean Brock's opening of Husk on Queen Street in November 2010, kicked off a heritage-grain and Lowcountry-revival movement that put Charleston back at the centre of American Southern cooking.

2010s, James Beard awards and the national food city

The James Beard Foundation named three Charleston chefs Best Chef Southeast in successive years: Robert Stehling at Hominy Grill in 2008, Mike Lata at FIG in 2009, and Sean Brock at McCrady's in 2010. The recognition cemented Charleston as one of the top three food cities in the American South and a perennial tourist culinary destination.

Immigrant influences

• Gullah Geechee (West African): Descendants of enslaved Africans from the Rice Coast (Senegal to Liberia) built Lowcountry cuisine on rice cultivation, okra, peas, greens and seafood.
• Scotch-Irish settlers: Brought partan bree (cream-and-crab broth) to South Carolina in the 1700s, the dish that William Deas adapted into Charleston she-crab soup around 1920.
• French Huguenot: Settled Charleston from the late 1600s, building the city's first formal restaurant and patisserie tradition.
• Sephardic Jewish: Charleston housed the largest Jewish community in North America by 1820; the Sephardic baking tradition contributed pastries, breads and a kosher butcher trade that persists in pockets of the modern dining scene.
• Vietnamese and Southeast Asian (post-1975): Vietnamese refugees from the late 1970s settled North Charleston and built the city's pho and banh mi scene, anchored by Pho Saigon and Pho Bac on Rivers Avenue.

Signature innovations

• Carolina Gold rice cultivation (17th century): brought from Madagascar, farmed using West African techniques, foundational to Charleston wealth and cuisine.
• She-crab soup (circa 1920): William Deas added crab roe to partan bree for President Taft, creating Charleston's most-noted dish.
• Shrimp and grits codified: Bill Neal at Crook's Corner (1982) and Craig Claiborne's 1985 NYT piece took the Lowcountry breakfast plate national.
• Charleston Receipts (1950): Junior League cookbook codified the city's dishes and entertaining tradition.
• Carolina Gold revival (2000s): Anson Mills and Sean Brock's Husk (2010) brought heritage grains back to American Southern cooking.