Bowens Island Restaurant, Charleston, South Carolina: Stop 1 on The Great Charleston RoadFood Crawl

Remember the great Cincinnati RoadFood Crawl? The wondrous mettwurst and goetta? Well, this year the RoadFood Crawl was in Charleston. And the first stop was at Bowens Island. Go to their website for an aerial view of the whole sprawling property. Have you ever been to Flora-Bama? The home of the Mullett Toss? Architecturally, Bowens Island is an upscale version of Flora-Bama. You drive through marshland and you’re getting near when the paved road ends and you bump down a rutted road reminiscent of the road to the Chappaquidick bridge back in the day. The restaurant is raised far above the ground to avoid high water,

whereas Flora-Bama just rebuilds. It’s not a huge rebuild project, they just rearrange the debris. You clamber up and enter Bowens Island and, after admiring the view from one of the wide decks that embrace three sides of the building, get in a long line to order and then look for a seat. I suspect that you can go to the bar and get something to fortify you for the wait in line, but I didn’t test it.

Our group gathered and proceeded back to the ground level, where a long table had been set up for us. Our server, who spent the evening running up and down stairs, came and took drink orders, and then food orders. The idea of a Roadfood Crawl is that you order a whole bunch of food and you all share it. Platters flying around the table and everyone getting a taste. It’s great fun.

Our group ordered just about everything. We had one member who avoids seafood, so we started with two orders of chips with a good pimiento cheese

and fried green tomatoes with pimiento cheese.

Both were excellent, although a couple of the chips on one order got damp somehow. The rest were as crisp as you could want. The pimiento cheese itself wasn’t heavily overdressed as is usually the case, so these two were winners. Bowens Island offers clusters of oysters at a reasonable price. If only I were comfortable opening oysters! As it was I shared in some Rich Folks oysters, pre-opened and with a welcome side of horseradish.

Then more food! Starting with the fried oysters at 12 o’clock you see a couple of crab cakes, a plate of fried shrimp, more crab cakes, a mixed seafood platter of shrimp, crab cakes, and fried fish, Frogmore Stew (a Low Country Boil of sausage, shrimp, corn, and potatoes). In the upper left and center are two orders of shrimp and grits.

The food was great. The Frogmore Stew had very well-seasoned sausage, and you can see that the shrimp and grits had an extraordinary amount of excellent fresh shrimp. The grits were great, and the sauce was tasty, but could have used a little more of that sausage. The sole misfire was the crab cakes, which were Deep South style — mostly filler with very little crabmeat. It’s much like the deviled crab you get on the Gulf coast, but without the onion and bell pepper. I used to like that style and ordered deviled crab often, but now I’ve been spoiled by the low- and no-filler Chesapeake Bay crab cakes.

They flat know how to fry food at Bowens Island. I enjoyed the fried oysters and fried fish immensely. Both were light, fresh, and very, very tasty. These are definitely must-order foods. The real stars of the show, the stand-out items, were, first, the fried shrimp.

These were wonderful shrimp, fresh as can be, and cooked just about perfectly. Charleston is a great place for shrimp, fried and otherwise, as you will see in future posts, and these were the very best of the trip. Indeed, a trip to Bowens Island just for the fried shrimp would be well worth your while. But then you’d miss the other truly superb item — the boiled peanuts.

Life is fun of blessings, and boiled peanuts are among the dearest. They’re best in South Georgia right after harvest, when the green peanuts are at their most succulent, and when they’re boiled in brine in a cast iron pot. These peanuts weren’t green, of course, it not being harvest time, but virtually any boiled peanut is delicious, the highest and best among the 300 uses for which the great George Washington Carver found for peanuts. Fortunately, the rubes with whom I was traveling didn’t appreciate the wonder of boiled peanuts so I got to eat alI wanted, and more. Ah, life!

What a great meal, great food, heroic service, and a bunch of friends, old and new! Actually, no one was an old friend of mine, but you become great friends on a RoadFood Crawl. That alone is enough to sign up. This Crawl, by the way, was organized by the great and wonderful David Sanders. As you will see, David did a fine job selecting pairs that would have us finding back-up options when things went awry, as things inevitably do. David hit a home run with Bowens Island. If you find yourself in Charleston, and you certainly should, make a point to go to Bowens Island. Get some of those fried shrimp and all the other good things. Take some friends so you can try more dishes. You’ll have great food and a great time.

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