♪ opening music ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [boat engine sounds] <Brittney Brackett> Hi, I'm Brittney Brackett and welcome to Backroad Bites.

I'm here with Captain Dave of the Carolina Marine Group.

We're about to take a fantastic voyage on the intercoastal waterways here in Charleston, and we're going to check out some of the best kept food secrets and seafood in the state.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [boat engine sounds] First, let's take a drive up Highway 17.

After you pass through Mount Pleasant and enter the Francis Marion National Forest sits a blue building with a bright red roof, that building is a former general store.

It's See Wee Restaurant.

On this episode of Backroad Bites we see why when people make the trip out to See Wee, it's like coming home for Sunday dinner.

♪ <Mark Lee> A lot of people can't find it because you always have to go just a little farther than you think it would be.

♪ See Wee Restaurant is located on Highway 17 North heading out of Mount Pleasant.

The history of this building is over a 100 years old.

It was built back in 1920.

In 1960, Mary Rancourt who owns the building now, bought this country store and continued to run it as a country store until about 1993, where she took over it and decided she's was going to run it as a restaurant.

♪ I started at See Wee Restaurant 21 years ago.

I came here part time and then Mary sat me down one day and said, "I want you to run my restaurant.

♪ With Mary's recipes, they're what you expect, when you walk into a restaurant like this and you want home cooking, something that your mother made, something that you expect out of Sunday dinner.

♪ The community has supported this restaurant for years.

They have always since we were considered so far out in the country.

It was the locals.

Mary always took care of the local people.

She supported the oysters, the shrimpers, you know, the guy plucking the crabs in the morning.

We have never been a restaurant that advertised.

We were a word of mouth restaurant.

There was many days we were wondering if we were going to make it, but then there were many days we were wondering how the heck we were going to make it, because there were people lined out the door.

♪ If South Carolina was one dish, it would be our pan fried grouper with our garlic shrimp.

We pan fry it, lightly bread it, and then we saute the shrimp and the drippings and a add lot of garlic, a lot of lemon, a lot of lime.

and we serve it over a fresh bed of spinach.

The spinach wilts down into the sauce, and it's just a great combination.

I have it on the menu every night.

♪ See Wee Restaurant is a family restaurant.

You feel that when you walk in.

You can feel that you are coming into your own home, because people know that when they walk in the door that the waitress will know their name, that when I walk out of the kitchen I'm going to shake their hand and talk to them.

I'm going to ask them how their dinner was.

When you come here, you feel like you're home.

♪ ♪ <Brittney> We're here once again with Captain Dave of Carolina Marine Group, Captain Dave, how awesome is your job and where have you brought us to?

<Cpt.

Dave> We, it's, it's okay.

It's good, most of the times, and we have ended up in Shem Creek, which is over in Mount Pleasant.

It's a little tiny area of Mount Pleasant.

It's this tiny little creek and we've got restaurants and bars on both sides.

We have our shrimp fleet down at the end right where you were right when you come in.

We have a town dock that you can walk up and down and do some crabbing off of.

There's dolphins down here A lot of stuff going on down in Shem Creek.

It's really one of the jewels of the Charleston area for eating on the water.

<Brittney> Nice.

Well, talking about eating on the water, obviously Backroad Bites .

That's what we're all about.

What else can you do out here on the water?

You mentioned dolphins.

<Cpt.

Dave> We do a lot of tours here in Charleston.

So, our company does dolphin tours, Scenic Tours, intercoastal tours.

We do a lot of bachelorette parties and a lot of engagements and things like that.

So, those are fun.

We also do bachelor parties.

We don't discriminate.

So you know, we do get some of those, as well.

But we have a lot of fun on the weekends.

and during the week, <Brittney> I can imagine.

<Cpt.

Dave> We've got three different boats that we utilize.

The one that we're on now can carry up to 18 people.

Hatteras is a little bit more smaller, more intimate groups, and we do a lot of our engagements on those.

So, you guys are looking for something neat to do for proposing, we are 100% on the "Yes" category, and I don't know what happens after they leave, you know, they got a boat tour and everything.

So they're obligated to say "Yes", maybe, but we know for a fact that we're 100% on that.

So, it's a great thing to do beautiful sunsets here in Charleston, some of the best sunsets ever here in Charleston, South Carolina.

<Brittney> Amazing.

How long have you been working with Carolina Marine group?

<Cpt.

Dave> About 10 years.

<Brittney> Nice.

How have you seen Charleston evolve in 10 years?

<Cpt.

Dave> It has grown exponentially.

So, you know, all of the smaller areas have grown, downtown's grown, hundreds and hundreds of people are moving in on a weekly monthly basis.

So it has ballooned, and, you know, this is one of those areas that people come to find that Charleston charm, and that we're trying to still, you know, as with every city that grows try and balance that out between the growth and why people are coming there in the first place, and so this is one of those areas that allows us to kind of do that.

So.

<Brittney> Captain Dave, what is the best part of your job?

<Cpt.

Dave> This!

Taking you people out, showing you guys around, having the experience that, you know, I get every day and seeing the fun and the excitement on your faces, and you know, I kind of look at the same thing every day, but it's my clients that come on board that we have a great time with, that we can show them around and give them a great time here in Charleston while they're here.

<Brittney> Well, you're a great host.

<Cpt.

Dave> Thank you.

<Brittney> We're looking forward to seeing more with you.

Thanks for having us.

<Cpt.

Dave> We love to have you guys down.

<Brittney> Next, we adventure inland, down a long country road to the edge of the Santee Cooper.

There you'll find Black's Fish Camp.

This off the beaten path eatery is quickly becoming a region favorite to the hungry passerby and anglers alike.

♪ ♪ <Kevin Davis> What is a fish camp?

A fish camp is somewhere you can go and spend the night, be it in your camper, or in a room or a cabin and just bring your friends, bring your family wake up each morning.

Your boat right there in front of your cabin.

Fish Camp is just a good place to relax and go fishing and not worry about the cares of everyday life.

♪ I'm Kevin Davis, co-owner of Black's Camp in Cross, South Carolina on the Santee Cooper lakes ♪ Black's Camp has been here since 1951.

It was one of the first fish camps to be built on the Santee Cooper lakes.

It was started by the Blackman family.

Here at Black's Camp, we have cabins for rent, apartments, hotel rooms, full service restaurant, live bait, fishing tackle, gasoline, oil, everything you need to go fishing.

Here at the restaurant in Black's Camp you can get a really good home cooked meal.

Nothing's pre-prepared.

Everything's cooked to order.

And really good ground beef for the cheeseburgers, fresh seafood, fresh salads, but everything's cooked to order.

If South Carolina were one dish, I know my favorite meal here at Black's Camp and I've eaten many meals here.

My favorite meal is a catfish sandwich with a cup of catfish stew.

Catfish stew is like a fish soup with a lot of fat back in it, so the pork is what makes it taste real good.

Then we take the belly meat from a catfish which is not good to fry, but it's really good in catfish stew.

It breaks down a whole lot more than the filet would.

Catfish stew got the belly meat from the catfish, potatoes, ketchup, onions.

I don't know how to describe it, other than to say, it's delicious.

Here in the restaurant, we have a lot of local people, regulars that come just about everyday to eat, but then the majority of our business is from out of town.

These lakes are so famous.

We've had people from California to Florida to Maine.

We've had some from China, Japan.

They're really well known reservoirs and people come from all over the place to go fishing here and to eat here.

♪ The Santee Cooper lakes are man made lakes.

They were dammed up and flooded in the early 40s, right after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

They are excellent fisheries, one of the best in the nation, because there's many different types of fish habitats.

You got rocks, stumps, drop offs, dykes, deep water, shallow water, sharp drop offs.

So, really just a fisherman's paradise.

♪ Not much development on the Santee Cooper lakes, and to me that's what makes these lakes so special.

Very rural, a lot of thousands of acres of woods and the hunting is very good too, but just a real laid back rural area and when you come to one of these fish camps it's almost like you're stepping back into the 50s or 60s, because it's just so relaxed and people aren't in a rush and that's what I love about this area.

♪ ♪ <Brittney> Now, who would have thought you could find authentic Gullah cuisine by way of New York in the small town of Manning, South Carolina?

Well, we found just that at Gu llah Gullah Fish and Seafood .

The dynamic team of a mom and two sons returned south from the bustling city to bring their unique style of cooking to this small town.

♪ <Craig Levy> A lot of people when they come in, they feel like it's a wholesome environment.

They feel like family when they come in.

It's like when they come in and they feel like it's their mother and they're aunt also, so just them coming in and seeing them puts a smile on their face and knowing they're getting good food at the same time.

That's a big part of it.

<Barbara Levy> Manning, it's beautiful.

It's a quiet place you know, and the people are very friendly.

Well, this is originally my home and I left in 1965.

I moved to New York and retired and relocated back home after being in New York for about 40 years.

<Craig Levy> And I was born and raised in New York, but, you know, my mother's from here so I decided to come with my little New York twist, with her South Carolina roots and stuff like that.

That's how it came to fruition.

Now, growing up we came down every summer as a kid and I said, they don't really have a good soul food seafood place, and when I said, "We're going to open one.

"Let's do it with me and my brother", then we decided to you know, travel like the coast, like Beaufort, like she said and you know, look at some of the places along the Gullah traditional area and that's when we decided to open one down here.

♪ Well, they love our crab legs.

We do our crab legs a little different.

We do the old school steam pot, like my grandmother used to do, and a lot of restaurants now they do it like in a steam bag and it sort of sogs down the crab legs, but we do it where it keeps the meat nice and plump, so it's a difference, so when people try it they always say there's a difference with your crab legs., and our garlic butter is something me and my brother came up with after making mistakes and going back and forth and we found like a good consistency on the garlic butter which everybody loves.

>> My favorite dish, we do the Gullah rice.

My Gullah rice, really consists of jerk chicken, shrimp and our was special seasoning with the garlic butter and everyone just, they love it, and I do the seafood mac and cheese, and then I do my cole slaw, which is very special.

It's just simple recipes, but the cole slaw, I mean, it's out of sight.

<Craig> When we first opened up, a lot of people thought we was fast food.

So when they would come in, they would have short patience saying, "Well, my food is not ready, it's not ready yet?

", but we cook everything from scratch.

So, it's just, it took us a long time, but now we get into people, we let them know everything is freshly cooked.

So, now they're tasting the food and saying, "Wow, this food is really good.

", and the reason why it's good because we're taking our time.

Everything's from scratch, original recipes and everything.

<customer> It's a big deal for the town because we didn't have many options that were not fast food options.

So, we know this is a family business, and we know that they did a lot of research of the Gullah community.

You get big platters of food.

It's not skimpy.

It's priced right?

It's Gullah Gullah.

<Craig> When we was trying to make up some of the recipes, she was like, "No, it needs a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

So, working together, you know, we got to consistencies, and we're actually working towards a cookbook, and, you know, it's with her recipes, and with me and my brother coming together on it everything is coming together, you know, like I can't be more happier with what's going on.

♪ <Brittney> Next, we'll roll down the windows to feel the salty air as we drive down the end of the road to Edisto Beach on the eastern edge of South Carolina's coast line.

At McConkey's Jungle Shack , we explore running a restaurant on an island and what it takes to keep beach goers coming back every summer.

♪ <Priscilla Padgett> I think the basis of successful restaurant is the people that work there have to like people and they have to want to care for people, and they have to be people, people.

♪ Me and Jennie, We were working at a local restaurant and it closed.

We were all kind of scratching our heads, "What do we do?"

>> This building had been vacant for six months.

It had housed a restaurant called the Ruby Sea Horse, which was a local favorite.

And everybody was missing it.

And so we just gravitated as a group of displaced restaurant workers over here.

We didn't have a name for this restaurant for a while.

And we came across the McConkey name and learned that this was McConkey's Beach and that was McConkey Boulevard out there.

[traffic sounds] <Priscilla> It's hard to be a restaurant owner on a small island just because you have to have a good product.

If you don't have a good product and you don't have the employees, then you're not going to make it.

We're an hour away from the nearest emergency provisions.

If we run out of something, we can't just run out and get it.

It's a half day foray into Charleston to find things.

So, we have to plan very carefully, order carefully, and we get better at that every single year.

♪ All of our tables are painted by local artists the table here is actually painted by my daughter.

We don't number our tables.

We name them whatever the painting on their table is.

This is a compass rose.

And so, this one is named... compass.

Food means family to me.

A lot of the recipes that I use here are family recipes, my family, Jennie's family.

One thing I see in culinary classes versus what we're all doing here is you're not really following a recipe.

You know what ingredients you need to put into a dish and you just make it work, or you experiment, and a lot of our dishes that we have, have come from experimenting.

♪ If South Carolina was one dish, it would be because McConkey's pimento cheeseburger.

First, you would make the pimento cheese which I'm not going to give y'all that recipe.

Cook the cheeseburger medium well.

Put a generous amount of pimento cheese on top and get it all melted, and then we would put it on our potato bun with lettuce, tomato, onion and pickles.

♪ <Jennie> When we were initially faced with the consequences of the pandemic in the early Spring, the community came out in force.

They came out often.

They ordered big meals.

They tipped beautifully and they supported us until the beach was reopened for tourism, almost becoming two businesses, a take out operation and a socially distanced dine in as well.

In the Summer, we primarily serve the tourists, and the tourists sustained this community.

Without the tourists, there would be no town, which is something that we can't lose sight of, but in the off season, we see our locals.

They come back and they come back for our specials and they come back to their favorites.

and they sustained us in the months when the tourism's not here ♪ <Jennie> Edisto's great.

Everyone is very close knit and everyone is like your family.

Everyone knows everyone else.

<Priscilla> Edisto is changing, but not a lot.

♪ <Brittney> Southern seafood in a casual camp like setting with views of the Ellis Marsh and Creek.

That's what we found on James Island.

One of the few waterfront restaurants in Charleston, Ellis Creek Fish Camp serves up comfort food and soothing atmosphere we all look forward to.

>> My name is Colleen O'Connor.

We are at Ellis Creek Fish Camp, and we are located on James Island, South Carolina.

The original restaurant that was here was called the Boathouse.

It was located over the marsh.

That unfortunately burned and so we decided that we would utilize the structures that were here, expand the outside dining area and make it more like a camp like setting and a little bit more casual.

We have a variety of seating at Ellis Creek.

You can sit inside or you can sit outside.

We've got an area that overlooks the marsh, as well, and then we also have covered booths.

In case of inclement weather, you can sit there, if it's raining and still get served.

We do offer a variety of food on our menu, from fried seafood, to a great burger, chicken sandwich.

We have tacos, chicken and waffles.

So, it can really appeal to those that are better seafood lovers and non seafood lovers.

We do have some vegetarian offers, as well, beyond burgers, salads, I would say on the whole, the favorite dish here, myself included, is going to be the grouper sandwich.

I like it blackened, however, you can get it grilled, fried or blackened.

I find that Ellis Creek is unique.

There's very few restaurants that are on the water in the Charleston area, and as well, we also have a wide variety on our menu for seafood lovers and non seafood lovers.

If South Carolina was a dish at Ellis Creek Fish Camp, it would be whole fried flounder, with collard greens and grits.

You can find flounder right here in the creek, and there's nothing more South Carolina than local grown collard greens and local milled grits.

We just always are conscious about the oak tree and making sure that we are always, we built everything around it so that we would not, wouldn't be harmed in any way.

In South Carolina you can't, you cannot remove any sort of live oaks.

They are protected.

It's kind of like the Angel Oak, the oaks at Middleton, they're all protected.

We're dog friendly.

Dogs are more than welcome to sit outside anywhere.

We also have a dog menu where we make homemade dog food.

I have a turkey dinner for them that we sell here, and it's kind of, it's kind of exactly like turkey, Thanksgiving dinner for them.

It's oats, green beans, sweet potatoes, and ground turkey.

I think the community really enjoys this restaurant because of the ambiance and the setting on the marsh as well as our quick and friendly service.

We do utilize the window service, which makes our food preparation time really quick.

We have servers here that have been here for a really long time and people know them and they like them and we just like everything to feel like you're sitting in your living room or your dining room.

So, we want everybody to feel as comfortable as they can and bring their dogs with them.

♪ <Brittney> For more tasty tidbits from around the state, please visit our website at SCETV.org and don't forget to follow us on social media.

Whether it's Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

For Backroad Bites, I'm Brittney Brackett.

Thanks for watching.

♪ closing music ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> This is literally the most outdoorsy I have ever been in my life.

♪ [gun fire] [shrieks and laughs] ♪ [shrieks] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> This is our town.

>> This is our town.

♪ ♪ >> Salutations, and welcome everyone.

♪ ♪ >> Food is Southern culture.

♪ >> When I think of Southern cuisine, I think it's just filled with flavor filled with love.

♪ >> If South Carolina was a dish, it would be a tomato sandwich.

We have really hung our hats on that too.

♪ [laughter] ♪