African restaurant Bintü Atelier and Filipino eatery Kultura were both included in Esquire’s list of the Best New Restaurants of 2024. This year, the magazine honored 35 restaurants, anointing them the best new restaurants in the country according to their editors.
Here's what local chef and writer Amethyst Ganaway had to say (in part) about Bintü Atelier:
"You might walk right past it: a white-and-yellow house across from a church. In its tiny kitchen, chef Bintou N’Daw, her husband, Tracey, and their crew are hammering out some of the best food in Charleston—and it happens to share a link to the food that created Charleston hundreds of years ago. During the slave trade, the city became an economic powerhouse by using the forced labor of enslaved West Africans to grow crops like Carolina Gold rice, indigo, and cotton. The Gullah Geechee culture of South Carolina’s Lowcountry, and its cuisine, can be traced to the coast of the African continent, so you might say that Bintü Atelier is bringing back a connection that has always been there, even if people sometimes walk right past it."
Part of Ganaway's piece on Kultura reads:
"Caring for others has always been Nikko Cagalanan’s ethos, but working long days and nights as a nurse began to take a toll on him. Finding comfort in the recipes of his lola, or grandmother, he took a leap of faith and left his career in nursing to start a series of pop-up Filipino dinners in Charleston. After gaining national attention, he opened Kultura, where the menu qualifies as a proud asseveration. In tribute both to Filipino cuisine and to the southern city that Cagalanan fell in love with, the chef weaves local ingredients into traditional dishes."
You can see the full list here.
