Blue Ridge Country March/April 2020 - 62

F L AV O R S

FROM PITA BREAD TO BISCUITS

South Carolina Upstate is a Culinary Wonderland
Israeli home cooking and ham-seasoned pole beans find a place at the table.
By FRED & JILL SAUCEMAN

et's establish our coordinates. Driving south from
Tennessee, we approach the northwestern tip of
the rice and gravy line. We're too far west to start
seeing yellow barbecue sauce. But pots of collards
are already replacing mustard and turnip greens.
Blue cheese comes in purple and orange wrappers.
And mayonnaise loyalty to one brand is fierce.
Our destination is Upstate South Carolina.
It's a region where the term "meat-and-three" rarely
needs translation, and when rice and gravy and macaroni
and cheese are listed among the vegetables of the day,
folks understand.
It's a region where chaotic ordering at a raucous, postWorld War II short order joint called The Beacon Drive-In
co-exists with the gentility of a place called Spoonbread,
one of the best restaurant names we've ever encountered.
In Upstate South Carolina, pimento cheese passion is
unrivaled. At Greenville's Northgate Soda Shop, it's not
just something to smear in a celery furrow. It's a molten,
unforgettable topping for a hamburger. Start heading
south, and you'll find places that melt it over steaks.
Eugenia Dukes died in 1971 at the age of 90, but her
flavorful influence over the region is very much alive. She
was the creator of what we call the best commercially produced mayonnaise on the planet-so good, in fact, that
Chef Sean Brock, whose Greenville, South Carolina, Husk
restaurant opened in 2017, stopped making his own and
spoons Duke's out of the jar just like we do.
At its 80,000-square-foot facility in Easley, Duke

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ABOVE LEFT:
One of Spartanburg's
most recognizable
landmarks beckons
diners to the
Beacon for platters
"a-plenty."

Brands makes a line of sandwich
spreads "crafted with only the finABOVE:
est, freshest ingredients and Eugenia Greenville's Pita
Duke's original recipe," reads the House features the
packaging on the 12-ounce carton of bright flavors of the
Middle East.
cream cheese and pineapple spread.
It's reminiscent of the great era of
southern tea rooms and bridge club
finger sandwiches.
Eugenia Duke was quite the entrepreneur. In 1917,
she started selling sandwiches made with her homemade
spreads to soldiers at Camp Sevier outside Greenville. In
the spring of 1919, she reportedly sold more than 10,000
sandwiches in one day. A bridge between the Peace Center and RiverPlace in Greenville bears Eugenia's name-a
fitting symbol of the region's respect for its food traditions.
Since 1941, Clemson University has been making blue
cheese. For 15 years, it was aged in Stumphouse Tunnel,
an unfinished Civil War railroad tunnel cut into the face
of Stumphouse Mountain. That aging now takes place on
the Clemson campus, under the watchful eye of cheese
master Anthony Pounders. Milk comes from a herd of
Holstein cows owned by Clemson alumni Watson and
Lisa Dorn. In 2019, in cheese-rich Green Bay, Wisconsin,
Clemson Blue Cheese placed fourth in its class in the U.S.
Championship Cheese Contest.
Since 1985, Furman University graduate Tommy Stevenson has been arriving at 3 a.m. seven days a week to

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Blue Ridge Country March/April 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country March/April 2020