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Lowcountry/Soul

Rob Young

Grace Beahm
The Post and Courier

Martha Lou’s Kitchen has been dishing soul food out for 25 years.

Fried chicken. Fried fish. Pork chops. All the fixin's. It's simple, streaked with grease, Southern in tradition and down-home delicious.

Martha Lou's Kitchen

1068 Morrison Drive, downtown

577-9583

Less than $

If we praised her pork chop as beautiful, would ye think us strange?

If we compared the fried chicken to gold, would ye think us foolish?

Then give us a dunce cap and crown us village knucklehead. We'd do a jig and act a fool for the grub of one Martha Lou Gadsden.

This month, the soul food matriarch celebrates her namesake restaurant's 25th anniversary, those years spent cooking untold orders of fish, baked turkey wings and bread pudding. Her famous chitlins she makes on Wednesdays, the beef barbecue ribs on Fridays.

That's a quarter-century of good eatin,' from her chicken, fried crispy and clean, the skin a perfect hue of orange and gold, to those extra-special pork chops, the lima beans and collard greens, gussied up with ham hock and love.

Her restaurant is a tiny pink cinder-block building on Morrison Drive. No matter, it's a quintessential meat-and-two, meat-and-three palace.

Ernie's Restaurant

64 Spring St., downtown

723-8591

Less than $

Ignore the inadequate parking or the worn booths. Taste the food, forgive all else. Ask for a big ol' plate of smothered pork chops and all the sides. Try the Hoppin' John, a mountain of savory field peas and rice.

It's easy at Ernie's, a celebrator of soul food since 1977, the restaurant run by Ernie Kinloch and his sisters.

The baked barbecue ribs — tender morsels, neither covered nor basted in thick sauce — fall freely from the bone. The okra soup is laden with greens and chunky bits of ham hock, and the lima beans, Ernie's most popular dish, are smoky-savory delicious.

Specials alternate daily. Choices include stewed chicken, pork chops draped in gravy and onions, smothered oxtail, smothered steak, red rice and fish.

Ernie's also serves spot-on fried chicken, turkey wings, black-eyed peas and cabbage.

The building's easy to overlook from Spring Street. You'll remember the food.

Workmen's Cafe

1837 Grimball Road, James Island

406-1020

Less than $

Over on James Island, Workmen's Cafe gives the proletariat what it wants.

Great food, great value.

Angie Bellinger, Workmen's chef and owner, has spruced up the place in recent months, tidying the dining area and painting the exterior white. She wears a chef jacket now with Angie B. on the lapel.

Thankfully, the menu's the same, starting with fried chicken, moist and ripe with flavor. It's a remarkable bird.

Similarly, the pork chops and hearty meatloaf are strong, satisfying choices.

Other dishes are rotated, such as fried fish, turkey wings, barbecue ribs, beef stew and sides including collards, okra soup, rutabaga and turnips.

Bellinger's recipes come from her late mother, a minister named Ruby Bellinger. Angie began the restaurant on her mom's insistence, using the title she suggested. The name, Ruby told her, came from God. Indeed, the food here is blessed.