“If it’s 'In,' It’s In Charleston”
Charleston has been breaking all kinds of ground with its new restaurants, hotels, apartments, and other developments that are in the works. King St. has so many new restaurants that have just opened/will be opening that I can hardly keep up. The Ordinary was a very exciting opening that has received rave reviews. In fact, Conde Nast (who named Charleston as the #1 City in the World last year), just placed The Ordinary in their top 8 Best New Restaurants of 2013 of the American South list. Here’s their description of the bank-turned-seafood restaurant.
“The scene: Upper King—the stretch of King Street just north of the well-touristed city center—continues to surprise locals and visitors alike with its proliferation of gems such as this grand two-level, 90-seat seafood restaurant set in a 1927 Bank of America building. A celebration of coastal Carolina mollusks and fish, it arrived in a wash of good will: James Beard Award–winning chef/owner Mike Lata runs city favorite FIG.
The food: The raw bar, in front of the bank’s vault door, churns out slender Caper’s Blades oysters on the half shell, banded rudderfish tartare, and triple shellfish towers that would impress a robber baron. The kitchen on the other side of the vault door prepares grouper-cheek sandwiches with chowchow tartar sauce, and barbecued white shrimp with charred bread to sop up the buttery, spicy sauce.
Our office downtown on King St., The Real Estate Studio, is also thrilled for the new breakfast and lunch restaurant, Kitchen 208, that just opened up right next door.
And they aren’t the only ones getting noticed. Lately, Charleston’s Food Trucks have also been booming. There have been multiple Food Truck Rodeos, including one that brought hundreds to the Post and Courier parking lot at the beginning of the month with 15 trucks. Two of these trucks, Geechee Island and Roti Rolls (who appears every Saturday at the Charleston Farmer’s Market) were included in The Daily Meal’s top 101 Food Trucks of 2013.
It’s not just Charleston’s food that makes the “best-of” lists. Charleston has been rated over the past few years for having one the best Farmer’s Markets, for being one of the best Shopping Cities in the country, was featured in Architectural Digest, on HGTV’s House Hunters (with one of our very own agents), and NBC’s “TODAY” was its most recent visitor. Most recently, Zero George, a boutique hotel that is the newest addition to Ansonborough, made Travel + Leisure’s “It List: The Best New Hotels 2013.” They were rated 8th out of 63 hotels in the country.. not bad. They also gave a lovely description of the hotel:
In a city known for antebellum-style inns and antiques-filled bed-and-breakfasts, a local iconoclast is shaking things up. Owner Dean Andrews—who ran the venerable Charleston Place hotel for 16 years—has introduced this genteel town’s first truly contemporary retreat with Zero George, in the oak-lined Ansonborough district. The 18 guest rooms, scattered among five historic buildings (all circa 1805), have the signature pocket gardens, piazzas, and sprawling verandas you’d expect from hotels here, but Farrow & Ball paint colors and Kravet linens bring the look refreshingly up to date. Guests can take Lowcountry cooking classes in the former kitchen house or dine on southern-inspired tapas in a sunny courtyard flanked by azalea- and palmetto-lined gardens