Kultura Charleston
Restaurant · Charleston
73 Spring St Unit A, Charleston, SC 29403
Highlights
Upscale Filipino dishes & creative cocktails, brunch & karaoke
Upscale Filipino dishes & creative cocktails, brunch & karaoke
"Even your cousin who only goes out once a year could tell you that Cannonborough-Elliotborough is a hub for great restaurants. Filipino spot Kultura is one of the newest place in the neighborhood you'll text your friends about. We used to love going for their karaoke brunch, but it's all pork adobo, arroz caldo, and kinilaw for dinner now." - Jai Jones
"Chef Nikko Cagalanan and Baguette Magic co-owner Paula Kramer teamed up to make Filipino flavors a more permanent fixture on Spring Street with the opening of Kultura. For the karaoke brunch, the space offers coffee and pastries from Baguette Magic but with Filipino flavors, like ube lattes, guava “Pop-Tarts,” and egg sandwiches with pork belly adobo. In the evenings, the menu includes arroz caldo with smoked trout roe, pancit with lump crab, and twice-cooked pork ribs in banana ketchup. It’s a casual spot where you’ll find a mix of locals and tourists in the know." - Erin Perkins
"This is a great early date place, to tuck into a small table and try menu items together kind of place. The execution here is a revelation, especially when you realize that Chef Nikko Cagalagan prepares all his dishes without the help of a professional kitchen set up; it's just induction burners and a small oven. Beyond the skill to consistently execute, the dishes are edited perfectly, both in the number of elements included and the size. Nikko is a native Filipino, and the dishes seem like love poetry whose subject is his homeland, but set in Charleston. The Pancit is traditionally sauced in citrus and soy and served with local oyster mushrooms, local pork belly is the star of the Pork Asado, and local snapper is bathed in red curry and served alongside a carrot salad. And the menu isn't big, so many tables order everything." - Stephanie Burt
"Chef-owner Nikko Cagalanan says, “Not in my wildest imagination did I think that I would open my own restaurant.” Born in the Philippines, he immigrated to the United States in 2011 to work as a nurse and then pivoted to cooking; his first venture, Mansueta’s Filipino Food, was named the best Filipino restaurant in South Carolina in 2022, and he won Food Network’s Chopped in November 2023. What began as a pop-up he started “because I just wanna eat the food that I grew up eating, make it the way I want it, while adding a little diversity to Charleston’s food scene,” moved to a permanent space in 2024, and he earned a James Beard Foundation Award nomination for Emerging Chef. The dishes lean traditional with contemporary accents — the arroz caldo, for example, is inspired by his grandmother’s version but is topped with smoked caviar, mushroom XO sauce, and chili crisp." - Lauren Mowery
"We just went to Kultura and had a great time and a great meal." - Erin Perkins
