CRESCENT Places: Grits & Groceries (Part 4)
YOUR KIDS DON’T HAVE TO EAT JUNK
HEIDI: We have this big argument with people who come in and want chicken fingers. Well, not really an argument. I say “Chickens don’t really have fingers. But we have our really nice natural chicken, would you like for me to fry a chicken breast for you?” “No, my kids won’t eat anything but chicken fingers.” Well, they will if they get hungry enough, they will.
Most kids will, it’s the parents who think the kids won’t. We have kids, my son is 6. We have kids who come over here. Their parent’s say “They won’t eat that.” I put it on the table and they eat it. Joe’s nephew, his sister said “He won’t eat any of that.” He ate everything that was on the table. She said she’d never seen him eat any of these foods.
HOW SC STACKS UP TO OTHER STATES IN CULINARY STYLE
HEIDI: I think South Carolina is like Louisiana. There are 2 different components. There’s Charleston / Hilton Head, and there’s the rest of the state. In Louisiana, there’s New Orleans and there’s the rest of the state. So it’s a little different. It’s easy to be good where you have a lot of customers, in the lower part of the state, the coastline, same with New Orleans. It’s a lot harder to be good further away where we’re relying on a smaller base of customers and sharing a lot more. It’s just an individual basis. We have as good a chefs, maybe not as many because we don’t have as many customers for them. What do you think?
JOE: That makes sense. There are pockets of really great… There are really great barbecue chefs here. Barbecue is obviously huge part of South Carolina, huge part of the tradition. There are a lot of good barbecue restaurants here, but there are also a lot of bad barbecue restaurants here, too. But you know, you have to sort of search ‘em out.
HEIDI: Then be faithful to them and support them. What we’ve seen here is that Anderson County loves a new restaurant…for about 3 weeks. Then they go to the next new restaurant. When you find one, you have to support it. That’s the big difference. And then, in big cities, especially pedestrian cities, once you get your customers, they stay with you. They’re on a walking basis. It’s a little harder here where we have to rely on people to drive from Greenville or Anderson.
JOE: In Greenville, you have a lot of great chefs because it is kind of a metropolitan area and you have people to support it. And I’m sure Columbia has some really good restaurants. It matters if you have the fan base and the people to support you. Here, we have to work a little harder to get those people here. We have to be a destination location. Our local clientele has supported us really well for a long time, but we’re also counting on people traveling. It’s an interesting place to come.
FUN WITH VEGETARIANS
HEIDI: We had a couple come through from DC who were thinking about locating to South Carolina so they traveled the Heritage Corridor looking at everything. They came in and they were real excited because they were vegetarians and we had a vegetable plate that day. And then I said “How committed to vegetarian are you?” And they said “What do you mean?” I said “We kind of think of it as a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” so I had collard greens, pinto beans, fries, squash casserole and cornbread that day so the only thing that didn’t have ham hock would have been the squash casserole, everything else would have had a ham hock in the pot.
So they said “We’ll just Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and when I looked over, they were licking their plates clean. “We’re so glad we didn’t ask.”
WHAT HAPPENS AT SAYLORS DOESN’T HAVE TO STAY AT SAYLORS
HEIDI: We’d like people to be interested in taking a little bit of Grits and Groceries home, especially since we’re not so close to people. That’s why we started the jellies and jams and sauces. So we can capture our local farmers’ ingredients so, if they’re not that close, they can still take it home, take our cookbook. All the recipes work really well. Try to make things from it. Invite a friend over. There is a praline recipe in the cookbook and people always ask “What can I do to make them last longer?” You don’t. You make pralines and you eat ‘em. Or you make praline and you take them to your next door neighbor. That’s what pralines are for. You make a pot of soup, you make something out of our cookbook and you give it to a friend. Be a good South Carolina neighbor. Buy fresh ingredients.
Says Heidi, “When we moved here, nobody knew who we were. In New Orleans , my restaurant was one of the top 10 restaurants. Joe worked for Emeril. We got spoiled being known there so when we moved here, I would try to get something done and people weren’t immediately receptive. I told them, ‘You don’t know me, but one day, people will write about me, and you’ll be sorry.’” Well, here we are, writing about Heidi and Joe.
