"David Schuttenberg and Tinae Heath-Schuttenberg, the owners of James Island’s Kwei Fei—every in-the-know Charelstonian’s destination for Sichuan spice—opened Beautiful South last summer in a modern industrial space downtown. Although Schuttenberg acknowledges that he’s “as white as they come,” he fell hard for Asian cooking while working under Zakary Pelaccio in New York City at the Malaysian-inspired gastropub Fatty Crab. Schuttenberg says he found the parallels between the foods of the American Southeast and southeastern China—seafood, rice, sorghum—“were too great to ignore,” and he experiments freely with them in his cooking. (Think vegetable bao with collards in place of Chinese greens.) Don’t miss the Cantonese-style roast duck; it requires a day’s advance order, but the succulent meat and crunchy skin make the planning worth it."
