I came to this port city to see if I could get in anyway. I wanted to see what the fuss was all about.<\/p>\n
I discovered a good, young restaurant with a zeal for its location and a passion for selling it hard. Mr. Brock makes a mean shrimp and grits at Husk, which is in a beautiful restored 1893 Queen Anne home in the town center. Bartenders carve fine country ham from suppliers like Finchville and Newsom\u2019s and serve it with top-notch bourbon in a barroom next to the restaurant that\u2019s as pretty as any on earth. It\u2019s comfortable on the Husk bandwagon. Everyone\u2019s happy. But as they say down here, I\u2019ll tell you what: I ate at McCrady\u2019s, too. And that restaurant is one of only a few outside the first tier of American cities that could compete in any of them. It is marvelous, well worth a two-hour drive from Columbia, the state capital, or the flight from New York.<\/p>\n
Of course, coming to this salty gem of a city would be worth it even if neither restaurant had ever opened. Charleston, with fewer than 125,000 residents, is one of the great eating towns of the American South<\/b>, on par with New Orleans for quality if nowhere near it for size or variety.<\/p>\n