I met my very good friend, Sophia, for the long President’s Day weekend in Charleston, SC. We toured around the city and nearby area and also went out to dinner a couple of times.

The first restaurant we went to was 82 Queen named after the address of the Charleston style house that has been repurposed to be a restaurant. I chose the chef’s special because I feel that frequently the special is the best choice. It was called feather, fin, and fur referring to quail, swordfish, and elk sausage. These ingredients were presented with broccolini and over a risotto, a real polyglot of a plate.

This dish just has too many components so it was hard to get them all right. The elk sausage was very good but the quail and swordfish could have used a lot more seasoning. The risotto was a clump of rice. So the dish was not entirely successful. I ate some of it.

On Sunday we ate at Cuoco Pazzo which means Crazy Chef. I ordered my go-to, spaghetti alle vongole or spaghetti with clams.

It was an enormous plate of food! I ate a little of the spaghetti and all of the clams. We took the rest of our dinners back to the hotel and ate them for dinner on Monday. The original portion was so large that we still had to throw some of it away. I am looking forward to eating spaghetti alle vongole in Italy next month!