Melvin’s BBQ and Amen Street, Charleston, South Carolina: Stops 8 and 9 (for me) on The Great Charleston RoadFood Crawl

Th is A Tale of Two Restaurants, not the best of restaurants and the worst of restaurants, but two fine restaurants, one a traditional South Carolina barbecue and hash place, and the other a bustling downtown seafood restaurant.

After I waddled out of Palmira in a state of ecstasy, or food coma if you prefer, I skipped the Christopher Chocolatier stop in favor of a hot cup of coffee and a cold glass of water. I was able to regroup sufficiently to get to Melvin’s at 925 Houston Northcutt Road in Mount Pleasant. Melvin’s is a true South Carolina barbecue bastion, and a local treasure. You can get the background of Melvin’s and the many branches of the Bessinger family here. And for those of you who neglected to click on that link to my first visit, I’ll save 2,000 words with photos of the food, starting with the core items, my pork sandwich and some hash and rice,

and Robert Moss’s tray of, from top left, ribs, butter beans, cornbread, hash and rice, and pork barbecue.

On this trip I ordered the same thing I’d ordered before: a pork sandwich and hash and rice. I did hit the condiment bar (or Fixin’s Bar as I call it in tribute to Roy Rogers) to add pickles to the sandwich, always a good move, and also grabbed some vegetables, a couple of jalapeños, to balance the meal.

Our group sat in a separate room with the ideal ambience.

Lovely. Melvin’s is good, real good. They cook the meat exclusively with wood, and do it expertly. The meat is dressed lightly with perhaps THE classic South Carolina mustard sauce, of which I’ve become a fan. Melvin’s also has a fine version of hash and rice. You read about the hash at Palmira. Melvin’s version is more mellow but richer.

Then on to Amen Street, in the heart of downtown Charleston at 205 Bay Street, the intersection of Bay and Amen.

It’s a seafood restaurant with a beguiling raw bar.

This is a hopping area, right next to the historic (1807) City Market, and it’s crowded with slender and attractive young people. I fit right in. We had reservations and got a table for 13 slender young people. It ended up a touch crowded with 13 formerly young people whose ambitious, often heroic appetites had met challenge after challenge for several days. Still, it was great fun due in large part to our server, Michael.

Michael, was funny, engaging, and remarkably efficient. The challenge of squeezing by people and finding room on the table for everything was daunting, but he managed it beautifully with grace and dexterity. His skills verged on the acrobatic when it came to the challenge of taking that photograph while standing on a chair. Michael missed nothing. When Boyd (I think) came in with glasses partially steamed up, Michael whipped out a cloth and cleaned them for him. He also produced a handwritten list of additional Charleston restaurants and sites he recommended. Well done, Michael!

The tight quarters, long table, and dwindling dexterity inhibited my own photography. I missed a shot of the tasty she-crab soup with just the right amount of sherry, but I did get the hushpuppies, or at least most of them.

These were very good hushpuppies in the seafood restaurant style (the North Carolina barbecue place style differs, usually with little or no onion) and I liked them a lot. I’ll grant that hushpuppies, like macaroni and cheese, are hard to really mess up, but these were a cut above the usual run. That’s a container of honey at bottom. To me adding honey to hushpuppies is merely gilding the lily even more than adding butter. Still, this is America, and even though we revolted from England so we wouldn’t have to overcook and underseason food, you can spoil food here to your heart’s content.

I also got the fried chicken plate, which came with macaroni and cheese and greens.

That’s an apple brandy mustard glaze on the chicken, and smoked gouda macaroni and cheese. The fried chicken was tasty. I didn’t try the glaze. As you can see, Amen Street braises the collards with some other vegetables, which you don’t see that often. It worked well.

Below is a seafood platter with slaw and creamed corn and hushpuppies.

You can see the fried flounder filet and most of the shrimp and oysters that were there when it arrived. The creamed corn was nice and rich, and the slaw was fine. All of the seafood was fresh, well seasoned, and fried very well indeed. Charleston has an extremely high standard of fried food for a city. I can’t think of a better, offhand. The tartar sauce was way above average, but I thought the cocktail sauce needed a lot more horseradish, but then I always think cocktail sauce needs a lot more horseradish. And maybe some more lemon. This was an impressive and generous platter of food. Kudos to the kitchen.

We all enjoyed the meal, and I would like to go back to Amen Street to try some more dishes, including the shrimp corn dog appetizer. I rarely come across corn dogs. Log Cabin Bar-B-Que offered corn dog nuggets as a side, and they surpassed my admittedly low expectations, so that I no longer sneer at corndogs. Shrimp fried in cornmeal has great potential and is certainly worth a try. So do the rest of the menu items. Look them over, and then make a reservation at Amen Street. Take a group so you can share, but do consider the, uh, size of your group.

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