Bowens Island in its earlier days.
Near Charleston, South Carolina, a city with a booming new restaurant scene, Bowens Island has stood like a beacon of slow-idling time for seventy-five years. Since opening in 1946, the gritty fish camp fantasia on the way to Folly Beach has seen half a dozen major hurricanes, a devastating fire, a global pandemic, and herds of diners who make the pilgrimage to the thirteen-acre hammock island for the promise of piles of steaming oysters and cold beers in a space that can only be described as shanty chic.
If hunger is the best sauce, then sweating and salivating over the smell of fried hushpuppies and flounder while waiting in line to enter the scruffy space is a local rite of passage. Travelers lucky enough to go find the space just as legendary. It’s a story to tell when they return home to Milwaukee or Missoula or Kansas City. A story about a place where, “hand to God,” you can almost hear them say, the fish comes in fresh from the water
Fieldshop, in the lobby);
the Renaissance, where the North Carolina chef Vivian Howard just opened her newest restaurants
Lenoir, which pays homage to the agrarian South, and
Handy & Hot bakeshop. Just across the bridge in Mount Pleasant, the charming
Post House Inn recently opened in the quiet and leafy Old Village. And if you’re game for a drive, the
Sanctuary at Kiawah Island Golf Resort, just twenty-five miles from downtown, offers beachfront views, five-star dining, and world-class golf courses.
photo: Katie Charlotte Photography
WHEN TO GO
Spring and fall are generally considered the city’s best seasons, but with the ocean breeze and plenty of waterfront hangouts, even the sweatiest dog days of summer hold their own appeal. If you would still like to hook your trip to a happening, though, these events occurring in typical, non-COVID times deliver: