Technical College of the Lowcountry opens student-staffed restaurant. What’s on the menu?
Nestled in Bluffton’s Buckwalter Parkway is the Technical College of the Lowcountry’s Culinary Institute of the South which features state-of-the-art kitchens and gives students the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of the food industry.
The institute has a student-staffed cafe, restaurant and a soon-to-open food museum, affectionately coined a “foodseum” by Miles Huff, the culinary school’s dean. It will showcase southern comfort food and traditional Gullah recipes with their roots in the area.
The food will feature ingredients from local vendors and is described by Huff as “southern food with a professional chef’s twist.”
“The food is cooked by students and it is served by students,” he said. “We let them guide seasonality and then put that professional tweak on it and how it is going to look.”
The $15.3 million, two-story culinary institute opened on Nov. 18 with a ribbon cutting, according to previous reporting by the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. The building is over 30,000 square feet.
The restaurant and cafe were born out of a desire to make “every inch of the building a classroom and educational tool” Huff said. The fully operational eateries on the first floor across from Buckwalter Place Park also enable students toward the end of their culinary training to learn business management and hospitality skills.
Huff, who grew up in the South with a big family, is especially looking forward to a 12-foot long table that will be installed in the museum where he hopes people will share their own memories around food.
“My mother is one of 12, so having that home table with everyone gathered around it and sharing food is what we want that warm feeling to be about,” he said.
Scholarships
Items on the menu at the school’s restaurant, The Bistro, include white bean soup, herb-crusted pork loin with wild rice and shrimp and grits. The restaurant charges $25 per person for a three-course meal with drinks, according to its website. At the Clist Cafe, Huff said, the menu is based on the curriculum and the desserts in the display case reflect what students are learning that week about cakes, pastries or breads.
“We have to be careful not to let sales drive our curriculum,” he said. “We have been selling out with people wanting more and more and more.”
All the proceeds from the restaurant and the cafe are funneled back into the school to pay for food, ingredients and scholarships. Students are responsible for buying their knives and other supplies, but tuition is currently free.
When asked how long that would last, Huff said at least another year and maybe two. “Hospitality is the lifeblood” of this area, he explained, and the hospitality industry desperately needs workers during the pandemic. Getting to this point, he said, is a proud moment that has been a long time coming.
“It was kind of hard at the beginning when you’re standing in front of council members and people asking about donations or whatever and you say ‘envision this,’” Huff said. “We don’t have to envision anymore, we’re standing in it.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2022 at 10:40 AM.
