Day 3: Brunch in Charleston and Patriots Point

  Charleston, South Carolina, United States
Tuesday, August 19, 2008

We started our quest for Southern home cooking at the Boulevard Diner for brunch

Diner

. Looks like your average diner, small building, old sign, but what lay within was certainly not average. We had fried pickles and fried green tomatoes to start

Fried Pickles and Green Tomatoes

We quickly decided to add another appetizer; a potato and spinach pancake with crab au gratin (yeah, seriously)

Pancake

. For main dishes we split a Southern fried grouper sandwich

Grouper

, & shrimp and cheese grits

Shrimp and Grits

. Everything was unbelievably good; heavy food, but so much flavor. The waitresses were so incredibly friendly and pleasant, Southern hospitality truly exists. This places deserves it's 9.25 rating and was by far the best restaurant thus far.








We then traveled to Patriots Point; resting place of the USS Yorktown (air craft carrier)

USS Yorktown

, the SS Taffey (destroyer), a submarine and coast guard cutter

SS Laffey

. All these ships have loads of history dating back to WWII. We spent a couple hours touring the ships. It was hot and incredibly humid outside to begin with, and so much worse in the hull of a massive metal ship

Bridge

. Evan definitely enjoyed this location the most, but was sad that he didn't get to ride the simulator.






NEXT.....we traveled into the heart of Charleston

Charleston Bridge

which for those who are unfamiliar, is not very big

Rainbow Row

. We took some photographs from the car as we drove along the shoreline mansions

Wrong Turn

, then parked and walked around thru parks, cobblestone streets, and neighborhoods

Fountain we sat in

. At about 6pm, it was time to eat.




The BBQ hot spot here is called Sticky Fingers. We started with an appetizer sampler; pork stuffed potato skins, onion strings with horseradish mayo, and smoked chicken wings with bbq ranch

Sticky Fingers Appetizer

. Delicious. For the main entrees, Evan had a rib sampler (different sauces on a rack of ribs) with mac & cheese, and baked beans

Evan's

. I had a combo consisting of a half slab of dry rubbed ribs (I added each of the 5 table bbq sauces to them)

Joel's

and pulled pork, with potato salad and corn bread. Everything was very tasty, a very good bbq restaurant; but nothing spectacular. The ribs definitely fell off the bone, and the sauce selection was great. An overall rating of 8.9 .

We left Charleston around 7PM, heading a mere 120 miles to Savannah, Georgia ( a nice light driving day today).