I love Charleston. I never thought I would love anywhere in South Carolina, but living 10 minutes from the beach does something to a person.

For those who don’t know anything about Charleston, it has had a thriving food and restaurant scene for many years, generally focusing on Lowcountry, Southern and Southern nouveau cuisine. Although the Triangle food scene has come a LONG way in the past 10 years, it is still nowhere close to the caliber of Charleston’s. The Charleston metro area has less than 1/2 the population of the Triangle, but probably has more than twice as many fantastic places to eat. Unfortunately, this review isn’t about one of them.

Every town has an “it” restaurant that everyone is raving about and gets by on buzz. The current one in Charleston is the Butcher and Bee. So of course Greg and I had to check it out on our last trip to Charleston. The Butcher and Bee is precisely the type a restaurant that inspired Cranky Diners into existence, a restaurant that survives on buzz and not food.

First, I will say, it wasn’t bad, but it certainly wasn’t great and definitely not worth the cost. The concept is the current trend of farm to table with a daily rotating menu. Yes, we could have been on an off day, but after talking about the Butcher and Bee with a few friends, we all had the same experience.

Greg ordered the Cuban and I had the veggie plate with Moroccan carrots, sunchokes and golden beet salad. According to Greg the Cuban itself was pretty good from a taste perspective but the ham was skimpy and the pulled pork needed a sizeable amount of the fat trimmed off.  It was far from Greg’s favorite ever Cuban ever, and the lack of a side item (a bit of pickled onion doesn’t count) made its $11 price tag hard to swallow.

My veggies were flavorful, however the beet salad had a overwhelming garlic dressing that covered any other flavor. My favorite were the sunchokes, they were perfectly marinated and zesty. However, this plate was not worth $10 and the Moroccan carrots on their own certainly wouldn’t be worth $6.

The space is nice. It’s open and airy and only has communal tables to encourage conversation and community. However, I’m guessing for an eclectic homey feel, all the stools are different, which is fine, but they were also dramatically different in height and comfort. The first stool I got was too tall and I couldn’t put my legs under the table and the second stool was too short. There was no Goldilocks just right for me.

There are so many great places to eat in Charleston (and if you are looking for a few, feel free to ask me); you should spend your time and money at one of them.

Have you made your way to the Butcher and Bee?

**DISCLAIMER: We generally try a place twice before giving a negative review, but since this wasn’t in the Triangle and several Charleston friends had the same experience, we felt our review was valid on one visit.

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