Frommer's Review
Chef Ken Vedrinski is one of the most remarkable cooks in Charleston. You have to drive over to Daniel Island (once owned by the Guggenheims) to sample his wares, but it's worth the 5-mile trip from the city center. Although Vedrinski might have been born into a Polish-American family, he learned the culinary secrets of his Italian grandmother. The mixing of old world and new world is the motif of the restaurant, the design reflecting traditional Italian style through brick archways and the Wine Cave. Urban materials such as the copper tile wall behind the bar make the place more contemporary. The dining room showcases bamboo flooring, a dropped ceiling, and an open-air kitchen. Sculptures and other artwork can be seen throughout. The chef likes flavors that pop off the plate, as exemplified by the braised veal-cheek stuffed shells in a porcini broth, or the grilled rib-eye with an olive-oil potato purée and smoked portobello mushrooms with a Barolo wine reduction. We'd returned again and again for the slow-cooked ranch pork in three preparations with dried-cherry barley risotto, and we fell in love with the highly perfumed Moscato vinaigrette -- we could pour it over almost any main dish.
Want some real Low Country eating that will put hair on your chest? Opt for the pork and shellfish combo in the form of an intensely flavored piggy guanciale composed of hog jowls and lightly cooked shrimp over hand-cut noodles. That's what we like about Dixie.
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