April Bloomfield, the British-born chef from the Spotted Pig and the Breslin, is standing on a stage, brandishing a knife that would make a hunter tremble.
Without much fuss, Bloomfield plunges the knife into a carcass and separates head from body. Several bystanders blanch.
Fortunately, the lifeless body is just a pig. When she wants to break the animal’s torso in half, Bloomfield unceremoniously picks up a shiny metal saw and begins rocking back and forth. Her face begins to redden.
“We’re going to need a bigger saw,” quips a woman standing next to her onstage.
Welcome to the BB&T Charleston Wine + Food Festival.
Hungry folks from all over the country flew into Charleston, SC, this past weekend to stuff themselves silly on pork and seafood and guzzle beer and wine by the gallon. Chef Helen Turner, of Helen’s BBQ in Brownsville, Tenn., set foot on a plane for the first time in her life to cook and eat at the festival. (She was born in 1955.) Turner was joined by the likes of Adam Perry Lang of Daisy May’s, Recette’s Jesse Schenker, and Ben Shewry from Melbourne, Australia’s Attica, also eager to prove to Charleston’s culinary graybeards that they could throw down.
The festivities got under way with an opening-night party at Charleston’s aquarium. Charleston chefs represented well there: Ken Vedrinski of Trattoria Lucca fried up quail scallopini, Frank McMahon of Hank’s Seafood sliced house-cured salmon, Nico Romo of Fish drizzled honey on top of mini-lamb paninis, and Emily Cookson of Charleston Grill served mini pineapple upside-down cake. The heartiest partiers retreated to Jeremiah Bacon’s Oak Steakhouse afterward for bratwurst sliders.
The next two days might have seemed like a blur of culinary decadence.
Craig Rogers, a shepherd (yes, a shepherd) with Border Springs Farm in Virginia, roasted a full lamb on a spit on Friday morning, and after that was consumed, he put a second lamb up for the Lambs and Clams party that night at the Grocery. (Not wanting to interrupt the roasting process, Rogers rigged the spit to a golf cart and drove it from the festival’s culinary village at Marion Square Park to the Grocery’s backyard.)
The food was as exotic as anything you’re liable to see at any festival. At an eight-course dinner at Sean Brock’s McCrady’s, cooked by Shewry, a potato dish was cooked in several layers of dirt for three or four hours before being served. (“Incredible!” was Brock’s verdict.)
The food was also extremely fresh and local. As brothers Matt and Ted Lee, the authors of “The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen,” prepared for a dinner they were hosting with Michael Anthony of Gramercy Tavern and Chris Bradley of Untitled, they found out their local strawberry provider was AWOL.
“Want to go strawberry picking?” Ted asks.
Gossip was exchanged all weekend long (rumor has it Bill Murray has a stake in new Charleston restaurant, Rutledge Cab Co.), and attendees checked out the city’s most-hyped eateries, like Mike Lata’s 2-month-old restaurant, the Ordinary, which GQ’s Alan Richman already named as one of the 12 best new restaurants in the country. Ashley Christensen, the chef at Poole’s Diner in Raleigh, NC, was spotted trying out newcomer Xiao Bao Biscuit, a former gas station that serves Chinese sandwiches on biscuits.
Plenty also checked out the city’s mainstays — Drew Robinson of Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q paid his respects to McCrady’s. The kitchen sent out extra courses of cured pork, oysters and “Charleston ice cream” (a k a, extremely buttery rice) to their fellow chef.
Of course, drink was almost as important as food. In between the various wineries hawking their vintages, a lot of chefs retreated to local bars after they had finished cooking for the night. (A grizzled vet of these food festivals, Brock chuckles when asked how many times he made his friend, chef George Mendes of Aldea, puke due to overdrinking. “Do you mean over the years, or just this week?”)
On Friday, Brock stopped by Gin Joint with pals. “I only had time for two drinks,” he says. “But that place is amazing. I think they’re providing the best cocktails in America — and I practice a lot.”