savor — guide to dining on the azalea coast
by Cole Dittmer | photography by Joshua Curry
Best Food
I ever Ate
The dishes that keep these local notables coming back for more
As the Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw once lamented,
“Everything I eat has been proved by some doctor or other
to be a deadly poison, and everything I don’t eat has been
proved to be indispensable for life. But I go marching on.”
Truly, even more so now than when Shaw was alive sixty years ago,
the choices people make about what they eat have become increasingly
complex, as medical science discovers more facts concerning the effect of
food on health.
This greater sense of health consciousness has caused a culinary conundrum:
To eat what tastes good, or to eat what is good for you? Finding a
balance between these opposing ideals can be difficult, particularly if you
are from the South and have been reared on anything that can be battered
and deep-fried.
Yet the magic contained within a truly delicious meal, handcrafted with
care and dedication, has the ability to inspire, to create, to amaze and at
its very least, to satisfy one of the most essential and basic requirements of
human life. Perhaps it is the wide range of senses that food appeals to that
makes the experiences people have with it so varied and unique.
A handful of local noteables tell us about the best food they ever ate.
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Bil l Nea l ’s S h r imp a nd Gr it s f r o m NOFO .