Loosen your belt: Greenville’s growing
Cook it and they will come in food-tastic South Carolina city
GREENVILLE, S.C. — Like a family recipe in an old cupboard, Greenville, S.C., is a culinary secret.
At first it seems surprising that foodies from around the world would travel to Greenville (pop. 76,000), a two-hour drive from Atlanta.
At first it seems surprising that foodies from around the world would travel to Greenville (pop. 76,000), a two-hour drive from Atlanta.
But Greenville is a flourishing, individualistic place.
STAYING THERE: The Westin Poinsett in the heart of downtown opened in 1925 and underwent a $20 million restoration in 2000. I heard George Clooney stayed here when he was filming “Leatherheads.” Rates are $99 to $199. The hotel is at 120 S. Main St., (864) 421-9700, westin.com/poinsett.
READ MORE: Go to blogs.suntimes.com/hoekstra for more on the challenges of developing a new and progressive art scene in old South Carolina. And check out thrivedowntown.com.
LISTEN UP: Dave Hoekstra will discuss Cougars and Snappers and Loons (Oh My!) (State Street Publishing, $24.95), his latest Midwest League baseball travel book, between 6:30-9 a.m. today on Rick Kogan’s Sunday Papers radio show on WGN-AM (720).
But Greenville is a flourishing, individualistic place.
You need to be that way when there are 32 Greenvilles in the United States.
Greenville is the home turf of White Sox legend Shoeless Joe Jackson. The downtown Westin Poinsett hotel, built in 1925, is named after the guy who brought the poinsettia to America. The popular city magazine has a sister publication called Garden & Gun. And BMW and Michelin North America are headquartered in Greenville, which is where the region’s food eclecticism begins.
“There’s more foreign direct investment per capita in Greenville County than anywhere in the United States,” said Michael Fanning, Michelin North America vice president of corporate affairs during dinner at Devereaux’s, a Southern classic restaurant housed in a century-old cigar factory. “There’s 350 U.S. operations of international companies located in the county. Michelin has a research and development facility with 900 engineers from 30 different countries. You walk down the streets of Greenville and you’ll hear Japanese, French [and] German.”
Diversity walks hand in hand with keen marketing on the city streets. The Downtown Greenville Development Initiative describes the city as “The Intellectual South.”
Of course this does not include South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s “hiking trips” along the Appalachian Trail.
The Euphoria food and wine festival is the hallmark event in Greenville.
The three-day event (euphoriagreenville.com) was established three years ago by Greenville restaurateur Carl Sobocinski and popular Greenville singer-songwriter Edwin McCain. Held at locations throughout the city, Euphoria blends visiting chefs with touring musicians and fine wine. It is everything Taste of Chicago should be.
Euphoria will be held Sept. 18-20, with 10 restaurants offering food and beverage samplings. Guest chefs such as Guy Savoy from Paris and Chicago’s Rick Tramonto of Tru will give demonstrations at various restaurants on Sept. 19. Musical guests include McCain (who also is a partner in Whitestone Studios, a downtown recording company), jazz trumpeter Mark Rapp and Grammy-winning songwriter and singer Anders Osborne.
Last year’s festival attracted visitors from 17 states and Canada. The first year, people came from 11 states, mostly in the Southeast.
The growing food scene is just an an entree into downtown Greenville.
Redevelopment is anchored by Falls Park on the Reedy, 32 acres of revamped green space along the banks of the Reedy River. I took a bike ride along the winding river and saw The Men of Distinction beach music band in a riverfront pavilion. The park’s Liberty Bridge is an exquisite 380-foot-long curved pedestrian walkway spanning the river. The cabled, steel bridge was designed by Miguel Rosales (Bunker Hill Bridge over Boston’s Charles River).
This is the best American downtown redevelopment I have seen since the San Antonio River Walk.
A consulting firm found that Greenville had “a great opportunity to be a weekend destination,” said Chris Stone, president of the Greenville Convention & Visitors Bureau, or CVB. “People would take in downtown for a day. And then take in the outdoors, the mountains and the lakes.” The Blue Ridge Mountains are 40 miles away; the Atlantic Ocean is less than a four-hour drive.
Future Greenville developments are being drawn up by acclaimed Chicago architect Jeanne Gang and her Studio Gang firm based in Wicker Park. Gang, 45, is the architect behind Aqua, the 82-story skyscraper being built in Chicago, and the new media production center at Columbia College. The Greenville CVB last year hired Gang’s firm over competitors from around the globe.
“We saw talent as it relates to the work that has been done in Aqua tower off of Millennium Park,” Stone said. “We saw star power with that ... They have breadth and depth.”
I found organic breadth and depth at the Christopher Park Gallery (chickenman art.com), 608-A South Main St., a self-taught/folk art store and gallery. Gallery owner Betty Bercowski’s colorful stock of more than 5,000 items includes affordably priced regional wall art and pottery. I paid $50 for my “Chicken Man” painting.
The Chicken Man, a k a Ernest Lake, is a self-taught artist from Columbia, S.C., who paints dancing chickens on 4-foot-tall slats of plywood. He works in a tent on the side of the road.
Bercowski moved from Canada to Greenville with her husband, a CEO in the automotive industry, and opened her shop in a former clothing boutique in 2003.
“The neighborhood was just emerging,” she said. “The park had just opened. Businesses were in transition.”
The Chicken Man would enjoy the roasted chicken from North Carolina’s Ashley Farms at Soby’s restaurant (sobys.com), 207 S. Main St., the centerpiece for Greenville foodies. Soby’s regional cuisine includes Gullah shrimp and grits with Caw Caw Creek bacon, fried green tomatoes and a killer white chocolate banana creme pie. Soby’s wine cellar has more than 5,000 bottles, but I stuck with the local beer from Thomas Creek Brewery. The restaurant is in a restored cotton exchange building from the 1880s and features dramatic 60-foot oak beams and dark brick walls. When Euphoria’s co-founder Sobocinski opened Soby’s in 1997 it helped launch downtown redevelopment.
“Even though Greenville has an international influence, restaurants like this and others can survive,” said Sobocinski, 41. “When people come to the south they want regional. At Devereaux’s we take basic regional cuisine and put traditional French influences into the food or some of the Asian influences that are popular right now. You must remember that 12 years ago Greenville was barbecue joints and shacks.”
Former textile factories are being turned into loft developments. Even the turn of the 20th century mill houses near Joe Jackson’s boyhood home are being bought and restored by young hipsters.
On Oct. 3 and 4, the Upcountry History Museum (upcountryhistory.org) will host a “Textile Heritage Celebration” with the Textile Heritage Band and other musicians playing folk tunes from the peak of the textile era. Oral histories will be shared from what was once the Textile Center of the World. The industry peaked in 1937 when there were 35 textile plants in Greenville County and 100 within a 100-mile radius of Greenville.
“Representatives of nearly 25 historical societies from each mill have gathered pictures, picker sticks [a stick that throws the shuttle that leads the threads], mill whistles that signified shift changes, whatever,” said museum curator Anne Blythe. “The community spirit was phenomenal and it’s a warm feeling they want to preserve.”
Greenville has a way of keeping that feeling in mind as it moves forward. The destination will not be a secret for long.