July 02, 2008 Food+Drink » Restaurant Reviews

RESTAURANT REVIEW: Alluette's Cafe 

Geechee Girl: Soul food meets whole food at Alluette's Cafe

by Robert Moss

Latest in Restaurant Reviews

click to enlarge Alluette's CafÉ, like the proprietor herself, is warm and welcoming, and her food is wholesome, holistic, and tasty too - Leslie McKellar
  • Leslie McKellar
  • Alluette's CafÉ, like the proprietor herself, is warm and welcoming, and her food is wholesome, holistic, and tasty too

Alluette's Café
Vegetarian/Organic
80 Reid St., Downtown
(843) 577-6926
Entrée Prices: Moderate ($8-$15)
Serving: Lunch & Dinner (Mon.–Sat.), Brunch (Sun.)

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.

Alluette Jones opened her café on Valentine's Day of this year, with Chef Absalom Thomas by her side in the kitchen. The restaurant attracts a slow but steady stream of customers from various walks of life. On a recent visit, I shared the tiny peach-colored dining room, which has just four small tables, with two committed vegans and a pair of business travelers from North Carolina who had dropped by after hearing a friend rave about the fried shrimp. I know all this because Alluette's is the kind of place that puts its guests surprisingly at ease and gets everyone talking to each other, including Alluette herself.

click to enlarge geecheegirl1.jpg

The North Carolinians' tipster was right about the fried shrimp ($14.95). I might even go out on a limb and declare them the best fried shrimp in the city — and that's no small accomplishment. Freshly caught in local waters, they are butterflied and lightly coated in an herbed batter then fried in organic oil. They come to the table golden brown with flecks of green dill and a sprinkling of chives over the top, and there's a little cup of spicy, remoulade-like sauce for dipping. The minimal batter is just right, enhancing but not overwhelming the flavor of the shrimp, creating a dish that's crispy and satisfying and doesn't leave you weighed down with grease.

As you might expect from a "holistic" restaurant, Alluette's has plenty of vegan options on the menu. Some of these, like the lima bean soup ($5.50 cup/$7.50 bowl), are quite remarkable. There's no chunk of fatback or ham hock lurking in the broth (the menu board proclaims in large letters, "This is a no pork café!"), but the soup is still rich and complex. It's flavored with red pepper flakes and a hint of sesame oil, a note continued by the benne seed crackers that come on the side.

Also vegan friendly is the tomato and basil sandwich ($8.50), a perfect choice for a hot summer day. Served on toasted multigrain bread (which, like all of the café's breads, hails from Saffron bakery), it has slices of local organic tomatoes layered with basil leaves, mesclun, red onions, and alfalfa sprouts. The kicker is the layer of hummus that's spread on both slices of bread. I suppose this takes the place of mayonnaise and keeps things vegan, but it also adds a nice zip to the sandwich and really makes the whole thing come together.

The vegetarian offerings are almost good enough to make a committed barbecue nut say, "Who needs meat, anyway?" But, unrepentant carnivores need not worry: the Geechi Girl Burger ($9.75) is made from ground Black Angus sirloin with cheddar or Swiss cheese and a side of hand-cut fries. From organic potatoes, of course.

Alluette's offers just a small selection of beverages: water, fruit juice, coffee, or Aunt Mary's iced tea ($2). It wouldn't be a soul food joint without sweet tea, but in natural-foods fashion there's no cane sugar involved, just a blend of fruit juices. Aunt Mary's recipe is supposedly a closely guarded secret, but through charm and deduction I was able to uncover at least part of the formula: pineapple juice, and maybe a little grape, too. It's a delicious and refreshing take on the old southern standard.

All told, you leave Alluette's feeling light, refreshed, and — dare I say it — even a little bit healthier than when you went in.

It seems a perfect time for a café such as this to arrive on the peninsula. From the shrimp, limas, and rice to the brilliant colors of the Diane Britton Dunham prints on the wall, Alluette's has a distinct Geechee-Gullah Lowcountry style. It showcases the best of local ingredients, with most of its produce coming from Joseph Fields Farms on Johns Island and its fresh seafood from South Carolina waters. And it's a friendly, welcoming place to grab a wholesome meal.

Alluette may not have caught the attention yet of the Southern Foodways Alliance or the roving cameras from the Food Network, but it's only a matter of time. (In fact, rumor has it that the FN boys are slated to do a feature in July.) When that happens, look out: the place is so small there'll be a line halfway down Reid Street waiting to get in.

Beat the rush and try it now.

Comments (5) RSS

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Great food...great service. They have a regular customer for as long as they're open.

Posted by PAPA ROBBIE on June 8, 2009 at 8:59 PM | Report this comment

My husband, 4-yr-old daughter, and I enjoyed a wonderful dinner there tonight. We are visiting Charleston from the midwest, and found out about Alluette's after searching the web for vegetarian-friendly, organic restaurants. The ambience is very casual and friendly. I had the lima bean soup (which was very flavorful... not bland at all), and a huge mixed-greens salad with vegetables that were super fresh and high quality (best tomatoes I've had in a while). The owners clearly go out of their way to get the freshest ingredients from local farms. My husband had the fried shrimp and gave it a rating of 5 out of 5 stars. He raved about the house dip. My daughter gobbled up a wholesome PB&J on wheat. We also recommend the sweet tea -- sweetened with fruit juice rather than a processed sugar. A++ food, an all-around delightful experience. We will be back!

Posted by madtownwisc on June 4, 2009 at 10:22 PM | Report this comment

I really wanted to like this restaurant, but unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations. The food was very expensive for the portion size (18.95 for a shrimp dinner, $30 for a seafood platter - fried fish, maybe 6 shrimp, and a tiny crabcake). The service was extremely slow, and even though there are only 6 tables, we sat for a long time - at least 15 minutes - with nothing to drink. When we finally got refills, they didn't give us ice. After spending quite a lot of money and time there, we had to go home and have a sandwich.
I wish it was better, but it wasn't. I won't go back.

Posted by Ayarkay on July 12, 2008 at 12:18 AM | Report this comment

I'm a past vegan and have eaten here twice. The two vegan soups I've had we're a bit on the bland side and forgettable - for example, despite what the reviewer mentioned above, the lima bean soup was a bit bland for my taste and needed something; however, their vegan and non vegan entrees more than made up for that soup - their quiche, salads, etc we're good to really good; so I regularly recommend Alluette's Cafe to others - the food's decent and the prices reasonable; Alluette obviously reduces her food profit in order to offer folks tasty, reasonably priced, honest to goodness organic and or locally grown vegan alternatives; Alluette and her staff are very nice, social, friendly and accommodating so it's a nice place to relax and eat and most important to our family one of only a handful of restaurants (Whole Foods/Earth Fare don't count) that actually offer healthy food alternatives in Charleston. So if we're on J.I., Daily Dose, in Mt. P., Sprout, downtown - Alluette's Cafe!

Posted by ndelson on July 7, 2008 at 10:01 PM | Report this comment

I tried to go to this restaurant last Saturday night and it was closed! As a vegan, I was really excited to try it out. Hopefully, they were just taking the holiday weekend off and they will be back soon?!?

Posted by m_veg on July 7, 2008 at 7:41 PM | Report this comment

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