Israeli home cooking and ham-seasoned pole beans find a place at the table.
Photo Above: Greenville’s Pita House features the bright flavors of the Middle East.
Let’s establish our coordinates. Driving south from Tennessee, we approach the northwestern tip of the rice and gravy line. We’re too far west to start seeing yellow barbecue sauce. But pots of collards are already replacing mustard and turnip greens. Blue cheese comes in purple and orange wrappers. And mayonnaise loyalty to one brand is fierce.
Our destination is Upstate South Carolina.
It’s a region where the term “meat-and-three” rarely needs translation, and when rice and gravy and macaroni and cheese are listed among the vegetables of the day, folks understand.
It’s a region where chaotic ordering at a raucous, post-World War II short order joint called The Beacon Drive-In co-exists with the gentility of a place called Spoonbread, one of the best restaurant names we’ve ever encountered.
In Upstate South Carolina, pimento cheese passion is unrivaled. At Greenville’s Northgate Soda Shop, it’s not just something to smear in a celery furrow. It’s a molten, unforgettable topping for a hamburger. Start heading south, and you’ll find places that melt it over steaks.
Eugenia Dukes died in 1971 at the age of 90, but her flavorful influence over the region is very much alive. She was the creator of what we call the best commercially produced mayonnaise on the planet—so good, in fact, that Chef Sean Brock, whose Greenville, South Carolina, Husk restaurant opened in 2017, stopped making his own and spoons Duke’s out of the jar just like we do.
At its 80,000-square-foot facility in Easley, Duke Brands makes a line of sandwich spreads “crafted with only the finest, freshest ingredients and Eugenia Duke’s original recipe,” reads the packaging on the 12-ounce carton of cream cheese and pineapple spread. It’s reminiscent of the great era of southern tea rooms and bridge club finger sandwiches.
Eugenia Duke was quite the entrepreneur. In 1917, she started selling sandwiches made with her homemade spreads to soldiers at Camp Sevier outside Greenville. In the spring of 1919, she reportedly sold more than 10,000 sandwiches in one day. A bridge between the Peace Center and RiverPlace in Greenville bears Eugenia’s name—a fitting symbol of the region’s respect for its food traditions.
Since 1941, Clemson University has been making blue cheese. For 15 years, it was aged in Stumphouse Tunnel, an unfinished Civil War railroad tunnel cut into the face of Stumphouse Mountain. That aging now takes place on the Clemson campus, under the watchful eye of cheese master Anthony Pounders. Milk comes from a herd of Holstein cows owned by Clemson alumni Watson and Lisa Dorn. In 2019, in cheese-rich Green Bay, Wisconsin, Clemson Blue Cheese placed fourth in its class in the U.S. Championship Cheese Contest.
Since 1985, Furman University graduate Tommy Stevenson has been arriving at 3 a.m. seven days a week to grind sausage and cube his own steak at Tommy’s Country Ham House in Greenville. It’s a classic meat-and-three establishment, where diners choose one meat and three vegetables. True to South Carolina tradition, Stevenson lists rice and gravy among the vegetable offerings, along with pole beans, collard greens and fried squash.
Even older is Wade’s in Spartanburg, started by Wade and Betty Lindsey in 1947. It’s still thriving, serving over 3,500 yeast rolls on a typical day. In addition to the speckled butter beans on the 15-item vegetable board are, yes, rice and gravy and macaroni and cheese.
One year before the Lindseys went into business, World War II veteran John White opened Spartanburg’s Beacon Drive-In, adding a new food term to the Upstate lexicon: “a-plenty.” That translates to a sandwich platter topped with French fries and hand-breaded Vidalia onion rings. The Beacon’s best-seller is the chili cheeseburger, another defining element of South Carolina cuisine. The Beacon claims to sell more sweet tea than any other restaurant in the country. Even more amazing is the fact that orders are consistently accurate, despite a chaotic system that involves yelling unwritten orders back to the kitchen staff.
Diners in search of a calmer experience would do well to partake of Sunday brunch at the Westin Poinsett Hotel in downtown Greenville, home of the wonderfully-named restaurant called Spoonbread. It’s a term that immediately suggests a genteel southern past. According to our friend the late John Egerton, “A properly prepared dish of spoonbread can be taken as testimony to the perfectability of humankind.”
Joyce McCarrell, who, along with her sister Nancy, operated The Café at Williams Hardware in nearby Travelers Rest for 10 successful years, introduced us to Spoonbread.
“It’s a step back in time,” Joyce tells us. “And ask for Sylvia Anders. She welcomes people to Spoonbread like they are old friends.”
The McCarrell sisters also introduced us to The Pita House in Greenville. The Namouz family, originally from Israel, has been stuffing grape leaves and frying falafel at this Middle Eastern restaurant and grocery since 1985. Pita bread is baked fresh there every day, in an 850-degree oven.
That’s the magic of the Upstate. It offers up South Carolina favorites alongside flavors from around the world, from a bowl of Charleston-style she crab soup at Soby’s in downtown Greenville to a steamy bowl of Vietnamese beef pho simmered for 15 hours at TruBroth in Travelers Rest.
For natives and newcomers alike, the McCarrell family motto holds true: If you can’t see Paris Mountain, you’re too far from home.
Clemson Blue Cheese and Pecan Ham Roll
- 6 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 6 ounces Clemson Blue Cheese, crumbled
- 4 ounces Boursin cheese (We used the cracked black pepper variety)
- ¼ cup pecans, lightly toasted and chopped
- 2 tablespoons dry sherry
- 2 pounds ham, thinly sliced
In a mixing bowl, combine butter and cheeses. Add pecans and sherry and stir well. Spread the cheese mixture on ham slices and roll. Slice as desired.
—Adapted from a recipe by Christian Thormose, author of the book “Tastes of Clemson Blue Cheese.”
Fred and Jill Sauceman study and celebrate the foodways of Appalachia and beyond from their home base in Johnson City, Tennessee.
The story above appears in our March/April 2020 issue.
