O Magazine

salad

O Magazine Review

Back in my hotel room that afternoon, I leafed through a book called Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America, by Frederick Douglass Opie, a professor of history at Marist College. I learned that for thousands of years, the traditional West African diet was predominantly vegetarian, centered on things like millet, rice, field peas, okra, hot peppers, and yams. Meat was used sparingly, as a seasoning.

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Travel & Leisure

alluetteTravel & Leisure  Magazine Review

Street-level art is a hallowed tradition in Charleston, and the next time you visit, be sure to take note of the fantastic and often florid hand-painted lettering, in calypso colors, on the sides of the taxis in town. That same lettering can be found on the blackboard menu at Alluette’s Café, on Reid Street, where Alluette Jones-Smalls, chic and impeccably dressed, cooks her “Holistic Soul”: vegetable-centric, truly luscious, Southern food (you can still have a mean fried chicken here) that is perhaps closest to what native Charlestonians actually eat on a regular basis.

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Southern Living

burger1Southern Living Review

With only three gummy worms on hand and nearing the bottom of my bag of sour cream and onion potato chips, a pit stop was in order during my recent trip through Charleston.

I remembered from a Chowhound search a place called Alluette’s Café. It was said to serve something called “holistic soulfood,” which to me seemed a contradiction in terms (hormone-free pigs feet?) but interesting nonetheless. I’d scribbled the address on a hotel notepad and decided to investigate.

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Chow Hound

humusChow Hound Review

Our first visit to Charleston, travelling from metro NY region for a long weekend mini-vacation, and I came prepared with a good-sized list of recommendations from Chowhound to fit our needs (moderate to bargain, walking distance from historic district). We're still here until Monday, but I had to de-lurk and write my first Chowhound post to exclaim in amazement about the dinner we just had at Alluette's Cafe, which I discovered not on Chowhound but through a blog posting on Holly Herrick's blog, Charleston Chow

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City Paper

alluette2City Paper Review

Alluette's Café belongs to a genre all its own: holistic soul food. This means a lot of different things rolled into one. It's fresh, local produce and seafood. It's slow food. It's organic vegetables and hormone-free, antibiotic-free meat. It's Geechee-Gullah soul food served up with a New Age, whole-foods sensibility.

And it's just plain good. If you want to fully understand what this means, you'll have to visit the little pink building next to Burris Liquors on Reid Street and try it for yourself.

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