Eating high on the hog in Charleston

Where to eat

Husk. 76 Queen St., Charleston, S.C. 843-577-2500, huskrestaurant.com.

Leon's Oyster Shop. 698 King St., Charleston, S.C. 843-531-6500, leonsoystershop.com.

Dixie Supply Bakery and Cafe. 62 State St., Charleston, S.C. 843-722-5650, dixiecafecharleston.com.

The Rooftop at Vendue. 19 Vendue Range, Charleston, S.C. 1-800-845-7900, thevendue.com.

In South Carolina, I ate my first pig’s ear and liked it.

It wasn’t the most tempting thing on the ever-changing menu at Husk, the Charleston restaurant that skyrocketed James Beard Award-winning chef and partner Sean Brock to nationwide fame when it opened in 2010, but my server sang its praises until I agreed to try the popular appetizer.

I thought I was buying a pig in a poke, so to speak, but, after one bite, I knew I was eating high on the hog.

Charleston, known as the Holy City because of the countless church steeples that puncture a charming skyline devoid of skyscrapers, attracts about 5 million visitors annually and has been named the top tourist destination in America by Conde Nast Traveler readers for four years running. Majestic antebellum architecture, an abundance of Civil War history and a vibrant culture unique to coastal South Carolina all contribute to its appeal.

But, for me, the top attraction will always be that tantalizing Lowcountry cuisine.

I came to Charleston with a long list of must-try restaurants, and Husk was right at the top.

My crunchy pork appetizer was served as an Asian-style lettuce wrap garnished with crisp, shaved cucumber and red onion. Kentuckyaki sauce — a bourbon-infused, Kentucky-made teriyaki — added a tangy flourish.

Why teriyaki sauce from Kentucky? Brock, who hails from the coal fields of Virginia, only allows food sourced from south of the Mason-Dixon Line in his restaurant. That’s right, no Yankee food allowed. No imported food allowed.

Every drop of olive oil and every grain of salt comes from the South.

Charleston is one of America’s great food cities, and fine restaurants are almost as abundant as palmetto trees, but Husk stands out from the pack because of Brock’s groundbreaking concept, which goes far beyond farm-to-table.

Instead of serving the best food of the season, Husk serves the best of the moment.

“The idea was to create a place where people could experience what the South tastes like on a particular day,” Brock said.

The lunch and dinner menu is based on the highest quality meat, seafood and produce available that morning.

Like his grandmother before him, Brock believes in pickling, canning and preserving food that can’t be immediately consumed. In January, the best available food is likely to come from this stockpile.

Brock has been lauded as the savior of traditional Southern cuisine. The truth is, he’s virtually resurrected it from the dead, repatriating heirloom vegetables, grains and seeds that were once plentiful in the South but disappeared over time.

Take Carolina Gold rice, for example. Rice was the backbone of South Carolina’s economy for more than 200 years, but by the 1930s this sweet, flavorful variety was no longer being grown. The introduction of instant rice to America in the 1940s helped relegate it to the pages of culinary history.

Thanks in part to Brock’s work with Anson Mills, a company dedicated to saving nearly extinct varieties of grains, Carolina Gold rice is back. It’s sometimes on the menu as purloo, a Lowcountry one-pot rice dish made with meat or seafood.

Rice is one of Brock’s great passions, and he speaks of Carolina Gold with the zeal of an archaeologist who has unearthed a long lost treasure.

“Carolina Gold is a very special rice, and it was celebrated for such a long time for a reason,” Brock said. “It’s insanely delicious and unique and beautiful.”

Don’t get him started on instant rice. He derides the stuff in a tone usually reserved for truly distasteful topics, such as backed-up toilets or cockroaches.

Brock’s obsession with preserving Southern food is really about preserving a culture.

“We’re in this exciting time in the South right now where we’re rediscovering our cuisine and the fantastic plants that were once grown here,” Brock said. “In order to continue our path to deliciousness, we have to grow those things and save them and learn their story.”

Thanks to Brock, Charleston’s foodways may soon be as well preserved as the city itself.

Not fancy, but tasty

Husk was all I hoped for and more, but I didn’t restrict my culinary sojourn to white tablecloth restaurants manned by famous chefs. Plenty of hole-in-the-wall, mom-and-pop places offer their own brand of culinary excellence.

For a hearty Southern breakfast, it’s hard to beat Dixie Supply Bakery and Cafe. Customers line up in this nondescript little joint for shrimp and grits or tomato pie, a savory summer treat filled with vine-ripened tomatoes.

I had a hankering for chicken and waffles and was served a portion hearty enough to satisfy a lumberjack. The peach chutney was probably meant to be eaten with the waffles, but I heaped it on the peppery chicken, relishing the contrast of sweet and savory.

For lunch, I headed to Leon’s Oyster Shop. It opened in an old auto repair shop just last year, but the place has such a timeworn, shabby vibe, it feels like Charleston residents have been coming in for tasty, cheap eats for decades.

As much as I love seafood, I’ve never been able to stomach a raw oyster, so I gave the char-grilled version a try. Doused in butter and generously topped with Parmesan cheese, the smoky bivalves were so delicious that I ordered seconds.

No matter where your dinner plans take you, kick off your evening with an aperitif at the Rooftop at Vendue, a swanky bar perched atop the city’s only art hotel. A breathtaking view of Charleston Harbor entices imbibers to linger and watch the luminous sun slide lazily into the horizon, signaling the stars to take over the vast Southern sky.