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Culinary Heritage Walking Tours of Historic CharlestonAmanda Dew Manning, a tenth generation South Carolinian and culinary will take you behind the scenes.By Vladia Jurcova
It’s not easy to forget the cool humid evenings spent in rocking chairs on piazzas, neither the exciting lifestyle close to the community where shrimping, crabbing and fishing are as a significant part of life as hundreds of years ago. Amanda, a true Southerner, could not stay away for long, and after years spent in California, Georgia and Washington, D.C., she returned back to find out that her heart had always been planted deep in the rich, fertile soils of South Carolina. Amanda still uses all her senses to experience Charleston. Walking down the street with the culinary heritage tour, one can really smell the typical smell of horses pulling carriages full of astonished tourists as well as soft and pleasant aromas of honeycomb bushes lining the narrow ancient streets.
Many in South Carolina still find joy and relaxation in simple activities that bring them closer to their roots and heritage foods. Even the long time gone ancestors would be proud of artisan farms and plantations which are utilizing the fertile land and buzzing with life. The Holy City may be one of the last metropolises where locals and visitors still can pick their strawberries for jams and cobblers, or pick their muscadine grapes for a jelly.
Although food tasting in the prominent restaurants is an irresistible stop on the 3 hour long culinary tour, the famous Saturday Farmers Market on Marion Square offers diversity and variety of heritage foods. That’s where the Pluff Mud and Muscadine wine await the curious visitor. The Pluff Mud invented and produced by Steve Dowdney from Rockland Plantation can be called a southern twist on Mexican black bean dip; and the semi-sweet porch wine is made of the only native grape to the South, the muscadine. It is the same wine that Charlestonians have been sipping over the centuries on their back porches while enjoying views of oak trees draped in the veils of Spanish moss. Until this day, these views remain preserved at many plantations as well as the only Charleston winery, the Irvin-House Vineyards run by the winemaker Jim Irvin and his lovely wife Ann.
General Information:For more information about the culinary tours contact Carolina FoodPros at adm@carolinafoodpros.com or (843) 723-3366. Mama Brown’s BBQ, 1471 Ben Sawyer Blvd., Mt. Pleasant, SC, (843) 849-8802 Magnolia’s Restaurant, 185 E. Bay Street Charleston, SC 29401, (843) 577-7771 For more information on Pluff Mud contact Rockland Plantation Products, owner Stephen Palmer Dowdney at (843) 744-9300 For more information on Charleston’s only winery and vineyards contact The Irvin-House Vineyards, owner Jim Irvin, 6775 Bear’s Bluff Rd., Wadmalaw Island, SC, (843) 559-6867 Links: |
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“Once you have real stone ground grits, you’ll never be
the same,” Amanda Dew Manning, the president of Carolina FoodPros and my
culinary guide said. As far as I am concerned, the only place where to find
real stone ground grits is the Lowcountry. Trying just any grits for the
fist time could be a disappointing experience, and many have no intentions
of putting that weird sticky stuff in their mouth again. Except that can all
change when Amanda enters the picture. She invited me on a culinary tour of
historic Charleston where I experienced heavenly grits prepared the old
fashion way by Donald Barickman, the chef and owner of renowned Charleston
restaurant Magnolia’s.
Culinary heritage tours must be the best kept secret of
the Holy City. This Southern destination boils with wonderful dishes that
were given unforgettable names such as She-Crab-Soup, Hoppin’ John, Old
Fashioned Macaroni Pie, Pluff Mud and Fried Okra just to name a few. Tasting
the dearly loved BBQ is definitely an obligation in South Carolina. Mama
Brown’s Restaurant in Mount Pleasant has been serving the best BBQ for
many-many years. Although the culinary tours hit the most prominent
restaurants in historic Charleston, family owned businesses like Mama
Brown’s will always be the all-stars. These little, reasonably priced joints
serve simple dishes such as fried chicken, dirty rice, hominy and mashed
potatoes that Southerners cannot go without. 
Amanda’s memories go all the way back to her childhood
at the South Carolina farm where she did not shy away from harvesting the
vegetables side by side with her father neither scratching a hog’s ear. She
talks about Christmas butchering of a hog and delicious aromas of tender
biscuits that her mother Annie made every morning. Her early encounters with
farming left her passionate about food. Later on when she founded Carolina
FoodPros, after a lifelong career in food and nutrition, promoting
agricultural products authentic to the Palmetto State was as natural and
genuine of a thing as Amanda herself. 
A distinctiveness of the culinary tours comes from
Amanda’s ability to tell amazing stories and explain the history of
Charleston through the history of food. Visiting restaurants and sampling
the menu is a must on the culinary tours. Going behind the scenes is just
what the doctor ordered, and a mystique is uncovered by well-know Charleston
chefs who walk the path of promoting heritage foods with Amanda. They still
use traditional culinary practices when grinding grits because it preserves
their distinctive flavor, which can be lost using modern techniques. The
bottom line, food in South Carolina still tastes the same as it did many
years ago. 
The uniqueness of the Lowcountry cuisine was created
over time. It claims to be a combination of Gullah cuisine, a simple cuisine
of African slaves; European cuisine, learned from the first settlers from
France, Spain, England, Scotland, and Ireland; and healthy Native American
cuisine. The rich soils of the savannah that the Lowcountry is located on
allowed the South to become a big melting pot of nations that exchanged
their knowledge about various foods. Native Americans taught some of the
region’s first European settlers how to grow and prepare corn, making this
new product a primary staple in their diets. For centuries, hominy and grits
have been prepared and eaten in one form or the other, but old-fashioned
stone ground grits and fresh shrimp remain a favorite food and regular item
on the menus in Charleston. 
While strutting down the French Quarter passing by
Amanda’s French Huguenot church, she explained that “South Carolinians
preserve their culinary traditions, maybe even more than any other state or
region of the country because for generations, South Carolina’s kitchens
have been the source of exceptional food and warm hospitality.” Thanks to
this special relationship, now Charleston is hovering up to the levels of
the major culinary destinations of the world. Nothing is ordinary in
Charleston, and food is one of the reasons why visitors cannot resist
returning to this beautiful and preserved centuries old port city.
Southerners also have a sweet tooth, and thus the tours
don’t leave out the local bakeries and chocolatiers. Peach cobbler is
indigenous to South Carolina, and one would give their right hand for the
roasted pecans covered in layers of the finest chocolate. An interesting
fact about the culinary tours is that they are really “hands and mouth on”.
They offer a unique inside look into real traditional South Carolina
kitchens. No secret is left uncovered, no bottles left uncorked or food
untouched. Caring Amanda makes sure that even the shyest member of the tour
leaves with a goody bag full of wonderful experiences, recipes and
entertaining tips to create their very own Southern style meal. If you have
a hunger for knowledge as well as a curious palate, Charleston will
generously satisfy both. On this quest, Amanda Manning, a true Southern
lady, stands out among the culinary experts making her Charleston’s very own
culinary god mother.