"charleston food wine festival" news and stories

Over the past five years, the BB&T Charleston Wine + Food Festival has managed to raise over $130,000 for local charitable initiatives. This year, after vetting applications from a number of local organizations, the festival selected Louie's Kids and Slow Food Charleston as their signature charities for 2010.

Louie's Kids helps to fight obesity one child at a time by customizing solutions that range from local Y membership and online counseling to creating scholarships to wellness and weight loss camps. Charleston's active chapter of Slow Food USA is motivating the city's residents to support local farmers and the restaurants that support them and serve sustainable, seasonal foods from the region.

To up the ante on charitable donations this year, a series of one-of-a-kind portraits -- crafted entirely of rice and beans -- were created by local high school students at School of the Arts (SOTA), and put up for silent auction. The portraits pay homage to the Lowcountry's food cycle and feature four individuals who embody the importance of local food traditions and community: chef Mike Lata, shrimper Wayne Magwood, farmer Celeste Albers, and Louie's Kid participant Auja Ravenel (who lost 60 pounds as a result of her hard work with the organization). Each likeness was stenciled, using photos of the individuals for reference, onto a 5 by 4 piece of wood before individual grains of rice and legumes were applied by hand using small paintbrushes and lots of acrylic glue.

Students got to rest for once and for all the notion that playing with food leads to no good.

Bubbles & Sweets...with a Twist, presented by the Art Institute of Charleston and Charleston Magazine, was back by popular demand at this year's Charleston Wine + Food Festival. What exactly was the promised twist? There were more than a few unusual flavors and interpretations of the classics (and, unlike almost every other festival event this year, there was nary a cupcake to be found).

Elizabeth Falkner, of Citizen Cake and Orson in SF, created a dense, tart, eggless lemon curd, finished with micro herbs that added a refreshing and oddly savory end note. Andrea Lever, of Magnolias and Blossom in Charleston, brought together sweet and salty with her Split Farms goat cheesecake with a crunchy pretzel crust and a smoky fig and bacon jam topping. M. Kelly Wilson of Low Country's Cassique offered up a bubblegum ice-cream float (think straight Bazooka) in house-made cherry soda.

Spicy additions to the usual mix of sweets was Todd Richter's dark-chocolate cake served with spearmint mojito, and the candied jalapeno on top of Kinsey Sattane's creamy lemon cheesecake with prickly pear cactus sauce.

Matt and Ted Lee, longtime connoisseurs and champions of Southern cuisine, have maintained a strong bond to the local community in Charleston despite having long ago made New York City their home away from home. When they first left the Low Country to attend colleges in 1994, they so missed the flavors of the region that they founded The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, an excellent source for mail ordering Southern staples wherever you might be. An illustrious career as freelance writers and cookbook authors followed and has brought greater national recognition of and respect for Southern food traditions, ingredients, and even novelties (Piggly Wiggly magnets, anyone?).

I was excited to make their acquaintance at the Celebrity Authors Reception, held in a beautiful private home and garden on LeGare St. here in Charleston on Saturday afternoon. As we snacked on bruschetta, fried ricotta, and phyllo crusts filled with creamy braised lamb (courtesy of Thomas Egerton at MUSE restaurant), Ted shed some light on why he believes his brother and he possess such unique insight to and appreciation for Low-country cuisine: "We grew up here, but we were not born here." The distinction may seem, on the surface, to be a splitting of hairs, but he went on to articulate that while those who were born into old Southern families often take their rich food and cultural heritage for granted, his brother and he developed a great respect for those same traditions and rituals experiencing, enjoying, and analyzing them always with just a hint of self-imposed distance and awe. Sometimes it takes an outsider, or two, to show you just what you've got going for you.