Ernie's

64 Spring St., Charleston, SC - (843) 723-8591

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Posted By Michael Stern on 10/20/2009 4:26:00 AM

The most useless suggestion Jane and I can give for finding good Roadfood is to look for a restaurant that has no sign outside. That's where you'll find some of the best local meals ... providing you can find the place at all! Ernie's is an excellent example. Nothing about its exterior other than the smell of pork chops and stewed chicken suggests that it is a place to eat. Nor do most customers bother looking at a menu. They arrive knowing what they want. Even if you are a first timer, printed menus are superfluous because when you step up to the counter, an order-taker recites what is available that day.

The most popular meal, and one of the most satisfying low-cost dinners in all of Charleston, is the lima bean dinner. It is a huge presentation that arrives on one plate (for rice) and in two bowls, one for beans, the other for an impossible amount of brick-red neck bone meat dripping with hammy flavor. Cost: $6. For a dollar less, you get a bowl of lima beans with rice. The beans are liberally laced with pig meat, but you don't get the whole bowl full of pork that comes with dinner.

Similarly, Ernie's offers both okra soup and okra soup dinner, the latter poured over rice and supplemented by great chunks of meat. This soup alone has a dense vegetable flavor that is at once hugely satisfying and salubrious. Even the white rice that accompanies Ernie's fine fried chicken isn't just plain white rice. It is laced with wisps of cooked onion; it glistens with chicken fat and bristles with grains of hot pepper.

A few other items that are favorites among regulars: turkey wings (gargantuan), turkey necks either as a dinner or simply with rice, gizzards, red rice with pork chops, hoppin john, and out-of-this-world bread pudding.

Scorecard

Overall: Legendary - Worth driving from anyplace

Lima Bean Dinner	Corn Bread
Okra Soup	Fried Chicken
Bread Pudding

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"This actually is not a lima bean dinner. It is simply a bowl of lima beans. But there is enough meat among the legumes to make it immensely satisfying."
Michael Stern

"Bread pudding is a huge, heavy block of moist bread laced with fruit cocktail. It comes with plenty of crunchy-chewy strips from the edge of the pan."
Michael Stern

"Ernie's fried chicken has a good crunch to its skin and plenty of juice inside. You can buy it by the piece or as dinner; you can have chicken barbecued or stewed. Fried gizzards also are available."
Michael Stern

"Sweet and crumbly corn bread goes well with just about everything on Ernie's menu."
Michael Stern

"Charleston's sleeper meal, a staple of several soul food restaurants that are popular among locals, but seldom found by tourists: the lima bean dinner. This picture does not show the big plate of onion-laced rice that comes alongside, but that bowl in the foreground does indicate the ridiculously large amount of meat included."
Michael Stern

"A fork would be every bit as useful as a spoon to eat this astonishingly hearty bowl of okra soup. Note the succulent pig tail at 3 o'clock."
Michael Stern

"Before lunch hour, Ernie's has plenty of available seats. Even when all are occupied, there is a quiet, civil tone about the place that adds grace to the expertly made food."
Michael Stern

"The name of this place is not No Loitering. It is Ernie's -- enough of a local favorite not to need a sign."
Michael Stern