The Charleston F&B Import/Export Report
Change is Is Neither Good nor Bad, and Other Inflammatory Opinions
Going to Ruin
A few weeks ago, I was invited to attend the soft launch of Mother’s Ruin, the new restaurant and bar that just took over the old Rarebit space on King Street. I was intrigued by the splendid name (an old pejorative for gin) and by the fact that, like so many other restaurants opening in Charleston these days, it’s an outpost of a business founded somewhere else.
It’s not a chain, exactly — at least not a very big one. The first Mother’s Ruin opened in New York City in 2011, and eight years later partners TJ Lynch and Richard Knapp headed South to launch a location in Nashville. Two more followed, one in Chicago in 2022 and one in Austin last year. It’s been such a hit in the Music City that the partners are working to open a second Nashville location later this year, complete with a rooftop bar.
The Charleston iteration is not a carbon copy of the New York original nor the Nashville outpost. All three have a slate of nine “signature cocktails,” but each offers a different selection. (The Nashville location, I will note, has picklebacks, which pair a shot of Four Walls whiskey with one of pickle brine, while Charleston has “picklejacks,” with Jack Daniel’s for the whiskey.) There’s plenty of overlap on the “all day eats,” though, with the Nashville and Charleston menus offering a similar modern pub grub selection of smashburgers, spicy chicken sandwiches, and wings tossed in Cholula and honey.
The evening I visited the new Charleston branch, there was also a build-your-own-nacho station with a dramatic cheese sauce fountain.
The fountain was just for the preview event, unfortunately, not a regular bar fixture. The snapshot above was the best I managed to take before I was elbowed out of the way by a gaggle of influencers who needed to record long, swooping videos of themselves plunging chips into the gooey cascade.
Former patrons of the Rarebit may remember its sleek, white marble-topped bar. They might also notice that the bar in the picture above is rather low, plain, and brown. (To jog your memory, there’s a shot of that old marble bar in the Post & Courier’s story announcing the Rarebit’s closure.) While we were ordering our first cocktails at the soft launch, a friend of mine asked the bartender, “Why did you guys get rid of that awesome marble-topped bar?”
The bartender paused for a second, then said, “It just didn’t fit with our whole vibe.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. After all, who would want a low, plain brown wooden bar instead of a tall, sleek, white marble-topped one?
The next morning, I saw a few of those influencers’ Instagram pics, taken in the hours after I made my judicious early exit. Then I understood.
I could work myself up into a high dudgeon about such matters (all change is bad, right?) and get overly sentimental about the Rarebit’s getting replaced by an upstart from New York by way of Nashville. But it’s not like the Rarebit had deep roots stretching back to the misty origins of Charleston cuisine. In fact, its arrival on the scene in December 2012 was itself a sign of change.
I can’t say with 100% certainty that the Rarebit was the first bar in Charleston to serve Moscow Mules in shiny copper mugs, but it was certainly among the first local spots to revive that cocktail as well as the now-omnipresent serving vessels. (Both the recipe and the mugs were launched as a promotional campaign by Smirnoff vodka in the 1940s, but they had lapsed into obscurity by the 1960s and only got resurrected in the early 21st century’s craft cocktail revival.)
Those mule mugs were certainly enough of a novelty to inspire thievery in some Charlestonians’ hearts. (“Diners Stealing The Rarebit’s Copper Mugs by the Dozen,” reported Eater Charleston, a month after the restaurant opened.) I remembered all the purloined mugs, but I had forgotten until I went back and read my 2013 Rarebit review in the Charleston City Paper just how different the restaurant had seemed from the rest of the Charleston scene.
In 2013, the Rarebit struck me as being notable for what it wasn’t as much as for what it was. In the review, I cited “seared pork belly with Korean mustard” and “tuna tataki drizzled in sesame oil” as two dishes one would not find at the Rarebit. With patty melts and grilled cheese sandwiches, it was bucking the era’s two prevailing culinary trends: the hyper-Southern “lardcore” aesthetic and the more globally-focused culinary fusion in which everything was cheffed up to eleven.
The Rarebit seemed unmoored not just from its current moment but also from Charleston itself. “There’s no particular theme to the place,” I wrote, “beyond a general early-1960s vibe” with “aspects of the languid Rat Pack style.” Perhaps the founders were trying to import Las Vegas to Charleston, but if so, it was the Las Vegas of 1963, not 2013.
Most telling is the review’s conclusion. “We seem to be entering an era that’s growing weary of foodie monomania and strange parts of the pig,” I observed. “Will more and more of us start turning our backs on the farm and heading to the big city? If so, the Rarebit may not be so much a throwback to a lost era as a harbinger of things to come.”
I’d call that 50% correct. Charleston was indeed growing tired of all the bourbon and bacon fat and farm-to-table trappings. A languid Rat Pack style did not turn out to be the mood of the decade that followed, but a pivot to a more “big city” ethos was certainly underway. I just didn’t foresee that the big city would be Nashville.
Nashville on the Cooper
I do have to give a big shout out to Mother’s Ruin on this point: its nine signature cocktails include the Rarebit Mule, made with “Sweatman’s OG Mule Ginger Beer.” (Brent Sweatman, now the proprietor of Sweatman’s Garden, headed up the Rarebit’s bar program when it first opened, and he still produces a splendid ginger beer made with real ginger, fresh lemon, and a touch of vanilla.)
The homage version at Mother’s Ruin is as refreshing and delicious as I remember the original’s being, though it is served it in a clear glass mug instead of a copper one. (See “larceny” above.) It’s refreshing to see the next generation giving a nod to the previous one.
I know Mother’s Ruin was founded in New York, but for some reason — I don’t know, maybe the spicy chicken sandwiches? — the Charleston iteration seems to have more in common with its Tennessee sibling than its New York progenitor. Indeed, when I walk down upper King Street these days, I don’t at all feel like I’m in Manhattan, but I do often wonder whether I might have been transported to Nashville.
It’s not just the endless parades of bachelorette parties. Two blocks north and on the opposite side of the street from Mother’s Ruin is a new club called On Air. It opened in March in the building with the funky stone-arched facade at 565 King, previously the home of Ink Rooftop & Lounge.
The ambitious concept comprises three levels. On Air Studio is a “dark, moody, loungey” listening room with “an intimate dance floor and high-fidelity sound”. On Air Live is a “Nashville-inspired honky tonk with live bands and a full dance floor.” The daily food menu, per reporting by the Post & Courier, includes “everything from Nashville-style hot chicken tenders and Cheerwine-glazed wings to typical pub fare and a Chicago Italian beef sandwich.” There’s also a roof-top bar, which I assume serves drinks up on the roof.
I’m basing this information off news reports and the venue’s web site. I did receive a media preview invite for On Air, but I didn’t take them up on the offer. I was afraid I might get carded, and I don’t have a fake ID showing I’m under 30.
Yes, a Nashville-inspired honky tonk might seem a bit out of place in Charleston, which has never been known as a country music capital. There’s no reason we can’t change that, though. We can legitimately claim Darius Rucker as one of our native sons, and there’s also . . . well, surely one or two other twangy singers.
And let’s not forget V Modern Italian, which just moved into the 6,000-square-foot space on the ground floor of the Greystar building on Meeting Street that was formerly occupied by The Select. If you were thinking that what Charleston really needs these days is a place to get Italian cuisine, you’re in luck, for V features fancy pasta plates, sourdough pizza, and an obscure Italian delicacy called “chicken Parmigiana.”
What’s more of note is that the restaurant boasts “a lively atmosphere,” which apparently involves lots of sparklers, martini towers, cocktail carousels, and the entire staff periodically dancing through the dining room while whirling towels over their heads. (This Instagram video captures the vibe quite well.)
V Modern Italian is actually a concept that originated in Europe, with two locations in Sweden, two in Belgium, two in Spain, and one in Saudi Arabia. (Who says Charleston isn’t cosmopolitan?) The new Charleston location joins two other U.S. outposts, one in Tampa and the other in — can you guess? — Nashville.
In some ways I get it. Most people aren’t particularly interested in history, and when planning a vacation, they don’t delve deeply into local foodways and try to understand the finer points that make one city distinct from the next. If a celebrity is someone who’s famous for being famous, then a tourist destination is a where everyone goes because everyone else is going there, too.
Still, there’s something depressing about people spending a lot of time and money to travel to a particular place and expecting to find there all the things they associate with some other place. This seems to be particularly pronounced in the South, where all sorts of things once associated with a particular city or state have gotten rolled together into a sort of pan-Southern greatest hits that folks expect to find wherever they go. Witness the omnipresence of shrimp and grits in New Orleans, po boys in Charleston, and Nashville hot chicken just about everywhere.
I’m beginning to suspect that for many folks there are basically just two buckets of experiences. One is “things I know from where I live,” and the other is '“things found in places where I don’t live.” It certainly would explain all those Hard Rock Cafés and shops selling salt water taffy. (Does anyone buy salt water taffy at home?)
No, we don’t have a Hard Rock Café here in Charleston, but I figure it’s only a matter of time. After all, there’s one in downtown Nashville.
At Least We’re Sticking it to Atlanta
I am proud to report that Charleston’s F&B export industry isn’t totally moribund. Somehow the Instagram algorithm has seen fit to insert this sponsored post into my feed every few hours:
The article in question opens, “Imagine spending the day at a selection of storied Charleston, South Carolina, restaurants right here in Atlanta.” It name checks the Atlanta locations of Lewis Barbecue, The Daily, Oak, Indaco, Oku, and the Brown Dog Eatery, which apparently was inspired by but is no longer affiliated with Charleston’s Brown Dog Deli.
As a Charleston resident, I actually find that kind of reassuring. If I ever get to the point where I can’t stand another Nashville hot chicken sandwich or pickleback shot, I can always drive five hours to Atlanta and enjoy a little taste of home.
"At Least We’re Sticking it to Atlanta" 😎
O tempora! O mores!