Poogan’s Porch – Plentiful Portions
My spouse and I enjoyed lunch at Poogan’s Porch on a Friday
afternoon in mid-November 2016. We booked our table using the online Open Table
reservation system. Poogan’s Porch is open for lunch and dinner daily
(including holidays), and weekend brunch (beginning at 9:00 am on Saturdays and
Sundays). Note that the restaurant is not open continuously from lunch through
dinner; it has a brief shutdown period between meals.
Built as a spacious and grand Victorian home in 1888, the historic
house on Queen Street first opened as a restaurant in 1976. Reportedly, the home’s
owners sold the house and moved away, but a stray dog named Poogan stayed
behind. Poogan was a neighborhood fixture for years, wandering from porch to
porch in search of back-scratches and table scraps, endearing himself to everyone.
The restaurant owners honor Poogan’s memory by incorporating his story into the
restaurant’s name. Poogan’s Porch is a family business, and the current manager
began working there as a delivery boy at the age of 13. He worked his way up
from dishwasher to busboy to server to manager, and he has worked in NYC at
Jean-Georges (Vongerichten), Momofuku Noodle Bar (David Chang), and Aquavit
(under Marcus Samuelsson). The chef attended Johnson & Wales University,
and he worked as executive chef in many restaurants in North and South Carolina
before settling down at Poogan’s Porch. Martha
Stewart Living magazine, Wine
Spectator, and The Travel Channel have
recognized the restaurant.
Poogan’s offers both indoor and outdoor dining, as well as
private dining space for up to 20 people. Al fresco dining is available on the first-floor
porch, second-story piazza, or on the wrought-iron fence-enclosed front yard patio.
A tiny deck adjacent to the rear dining room offers additional outdoor seating.
Indoor dining spaces include a front dining room, a center bar room (with
dining at the bar or at high-top communal tables), or in one of the dining
rooms on the second floor that you reach by climbing a high wooden staircase.
You must also climb a high set of stairs to reach the first/main level of the
restaurant, so we are not sure that this restaurant is not handicap-accessible
(except for perhaps the street-level patio).
Poogan’s Porch serves Lowcountry cuisine, including
specialties such as buttermilk biscuits, sausage gravy, she-crab soup, shrimp
and grits, and buttermilk fried chicken. Poogan’s offers a full bar, including
beer and cocktails; their wine inventory includes 28 wines by the glass and a 1500-bottle
wine cellar. We shared the pimento fritters and the macaroni and cheese as
appetizers. Initially, we ordered the she-crab soup instead of the mac and
cheese, but our server said that the restaurant had run out. When he later
realized that more soup was ready, he brought us a complimentary cup to try. We
eagerly anticipated tasting their famous biscuits, but regrettably, we had to
ask our server at least three times before we received any; unfortunately, they
arrived along with our entrees. (We would have savored the biscuits, served
warm and accompanied by a whipped sweet butter spread, more if they had arrived
while we were perusing the menu, or even while we were eating our starters.) As
main courses, we ordered the shrimp and grits and the fried chicken
(accompanied by mashed potatoes and collard greens). The shrimp and grits was
different than we expected because the delicious creamy grits were covered with
tails-off shrimp, sausage slices, and sautéed onion and red and yellow bell pepper
chunks swimming in a brownish gravy. Portions were enormous; in fact, we were
so stuffed afterwards that we returned to our hotel for a nap, and we cancelled
our evening dinner reservations because our stomachs were still too full to
contemplate another meal even six hours later. (Although some diners might find
that degree of fullness desirable, but we were disappointed that we had to
cancel our much-anticipated dinner reservation later than evening at a “hot”
Upper King Street restaurant.)
We were happy to have tried some Lowcountry dishes at
Poogan’s Porch, but we should have exercised some constraint and not gorged
ourselves!
