Action Heating & Air Conditioning in Charleston, SC

A humble South Carolina soul food restaurant was named one of the best places to eat in the nation.

Hannibal’s Soul Kitchen in Charleston is among the top U.S. restaurants that The New York Times is “excited about right now.”

Hannibal’s was the only South Carolina restaurant to make the list, which the newspaper said was created after sending “critics, reporters and editors around the country to find the 50 most vibrant and delicious restaurants in 2021.” From coast to coast, eateries that serve up a variety of dishes received recognition.

“Some are classics, still great after decades,” The New York Times reported Tuesday. “Others are in their prime, restaurants at their practiced peaks. And still others are newcomers, intrepidly making their way through the roughest stretch the restaurant business is likely to endure.”

Restaurants have been hard hit during the coronavirus pandemic, with some forced to close and now having trouble finding adequate staffing.

Hannibal’s received a nod for its blue crab dish, with meat that’s “pan-fried so it’s crispy but still retains bits of soft flesh, piled generously over white rice.”

In addition to serving crab, the restaurant says its menu has other Gullah-style seafood and Geechee-style meat dishes and sides.

The Gullah Geechee are descendants of enslaved people first brought from Africa to work along the South Carolina coast in the 1700s. Many of their traditional dishes have spread across the region, including gumbo and shrimp and grits, according to the Discover South Carolina tourism website.

Similar to the restaurant’s namesake “Hannibal” Huger — whose name evokes the man remembered for leading an army that delivered the Romans a shocking defeat in the year 216 — the restaurant said it has overcome the odds to succeed.

“Hannibal’s Kitchen isn’t one of those fancy restaurants with an exquisite atmosphere and finery, but it serves some of the best soul food cuisine in the area,” the restaurant said on its website. “Owner L.J. Huger says the family owned & operated restaurant has ‘been feeding the soul of the city’ for more than 40 years because what the restaurant lacks in ambience, they more than make up for in taste.”

It’s not the first time a South Carolina restaurant has made a national list.

Halls Chophouse in Charleston, Jack of Cups Saloon in Folly Beach and Rainbow Donuts in York all made Yelp’s list of top 100 U.S. restaurants this year. For those rankings, the restaurant review website in February said it asked users about restaurants they couldn’t get enough of and evaluated the most popular spots.

This time around, other restaurants in the Carolinas that were named among The New York Times’ favorites were Chai Pani in Asheville and Kindred in Davidson, The Charlotte Observer reported.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina has put up a portrait of a Reconstruction-era Black lawmaker in the state Senate chamber — part of an effort to recognize a broader array of historical figures in a place that once flew the Confederate battle flag at the Statehouse.

Some lawmakers who worked for the recognition of the late Sen. Stephen Atkins Swails said they are unhappy the painting went up without a ceremony, The State reported.

“I think it deserves more recognition than a last-minute, knee-jerk email from the president of the Senate under the cloak of darkness,” said Democratic Sen. Sen. Marlon Kimpson of Charleston.

The newspaper reported that after an email about the portrait was sent to senators and staff Thursday, one white state senator hit “reply all” with a comment about Swails' complexion.

“That sure is the whitest looking black guy I’ve ever seen,” Republican Sen. Sandy Senn of Charleston wrote, adding an emoji of a person shrugging. “Anyway, thanks for sharing!”

Reached Friday, Senn told The State she could not believe her response had become “this big news story.”

“I really cannot understand why one of my Senate colleagues would think my observation, which was spot-on, was anything inappropriate or sinister because it wasn’t,” Senn said.

Kimpson said he didn't want to discuss Senn’s comments.

“I think it distracts from the historic significance of this portrait," Kimpson said. “There ought to be a front-page story about Sgt. Swails, not these sideshow comments.”

Swails was born in Pennsylvania to a Black father and a white mother in 1832, and went to South Carolina in the military. He stormed Fort Wagner on Morris Island as part of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, one of the nation’s first Black fighting units whose story was immortalized in the film “Glory.” In 1865, he became the first commissioned Black officer in the Union Army. After military service, Swails stayed in South Carolina to work for the Freedman’s Bureau.

He was also a businessman, newspaper editor and lawyer. He served in the South Carolina Senate from 1868 to 1878, becoming its first Black president pro tempore.

In a 2008 resolution, state lawmakers said Swails provided leadership “during the turbulent years of the Reconstruction period, in which the struggle for civil rights began in earnest.” Their resolution sought to honor Swails with a portrait in the Senate chamber, which has rows of pictures, most depicting white men.

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Two South Carolina cities were tallied among Conde Nast’s best small cities for 2021, which was announced Tuesday.

Charleston slipped to No. 2 on the list of best small cities in the United States after holding the No. 1 spot last year. It’s been on the list for 10 years.

Greenville, meanwhile. moved up to fifth from sixth. Greenville has been on the list for five years.

Topping the list was Aspen, Colorado.

Conde Nast Traveler wrote that the winners were culled from 800,000 votes by readers. It is the 34th annual report.

The magazine used the same words from 2020 to describe Charleston.

“Charleston may be a small town, but this city punches well above its weight,” the magazine said, noting history, culture, food and charm as Charleston’s top qualities.

It also encouraged people to try to resist moving there after having oysters and a drink on an outdoor terrace.

Charleston is South Carolina’s largest city, and its population increased by 25% in the last decade to 150,227.

Greenville, the state’s seventh-largest city with half the population of Charleston, was once again described by Conde Nast as a secret destination on the “cusp of stardom. “ The magazine lauded the city’s farm-to-table food scene and encouraged a stop at Vault & Vator, the city’s first speakeasy.

“Its craft beer scene is seeing a similar explosion,” the magazine said.

Once, again the magazine highlighted Falls Park in downtown Greenville and the Prisma Health Swamp Rabbit Trail, which starts in downtown Greenville and runs 22 miles north to Travelers Rest.

“Greenville is no longer a ‘well-kept secret’ or ‘hidden gem,’” Mayor Knox White said in an statement. “Visitors from around the world have fallen in love with our walkable Main Street, bikeable trails and shoppable boutiques.”

Others on the list of best small cities were No. 3 Alexandria, Virginia; No. 4 Santa Fe, New Mexico; No. 5 Carmel-by-the-Sea, California; No. 7 Key West, Florida; No. 8 Savannah, Georgia; No. 9 Jackson Hole, Wyoming; and No. 10 Newport, Rhode Island.

Laguna Beach, California, dropped off the list, and Newport was added.

The best large cities list was also announced with, once again, Chicago coming in at No. 1. Nashville was the only southeastern city to make the list. It was 10th.

Other cities were No. 2 New York City; No. 3 New Orleans; No. 4 Boston; No. 5 Santa Fe; No. 6 Washington, D.C.; No. 7 San Diego; No. 8 Portland, Oregon; and No. 9 Honolulu.

San Antonio, Tucson and St. Petersburg dropped out of the top 10. Santa Fe, Portland and Honolulu were new for 2021.

CHARLESTON COUNTY, S.C. (WCBD) – Nearly a year has passed since forestry officials first started working to eradicate the Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB), an invasive pest that is killing trees in a nearly 75 square mile quarantine zone down Savannah Highway.

This infestation in portions of Charleston county is the only known population of this beetle in the state, and one of only 4 areas regulated for the invasive insect in the country.

“At this point we have just over 5,000 trees that we know about, roughly half of those have been removed,” says Dr. David Coyle, a professor of Forest Health and Invasive Species at Clemson who has been leading the charge to remove this pest from the Palmetto state.

“So we’re making pretty good progress, but the problem is that a lot of the trees that remain standing that are infested are in areas that are much more difficult to get to.”

Each infected tree, marked for death with an orange dot, must be cut down and destroyed but many fall on their own as “This thing basically makes swiss cheese out of the inside of the tree. The branches fall off, the stems fall off, essentially the tree just falls apart because this thing is just eating wood all the way through there.”

After feeding for months as a larvae, the Asian Longhorned Beetle then emerges as a grown adult- boring a perfectly round hole to go on to the next host. Thankfully this big black beetle isn’t too mobile, unlike another invasive species that’s making headlines recently: the spotted lantern fly. Thankfully this devastating pest hasn’t yet made it to South Carolina but is spreading like wildfire throughout the Northeast. Coyle believes that it will eventually make its way south, saying, “I think lantern flies are always going to be in North America at this point. I don’t see us ever getting rid of it. I have a different on Asian Longhorned Beetle. I do think we can eradicate it from North America- it’s just going to take a long time.”

This likely years-long mission begins by eliminating them here- possibly with other insects joining in on our side of the fight, “There’s a little wasp that’s present throughout Eastern North America, it’s not anything non-native it’s something we already have here. They have shown that it will readily attack ALB in a lab setting. Next year we’re gonna try to see if we can use them to combat some of these Asian Longhorned Beetles.”

While David Coyle and his colleagues at Clemson and the U.S. Department of Agriculture continue to clear this infestation, they urge all Lowcountry residents to keep an eye out just in case any beetles make it out of the quarantine zone- which thankfully looks to be holding strong with no other sightings reported outside the area as of October 2021.

For more information on the signs of an Asian Longhorned Beetle infestation- watch our previous “Moment of Science” segment here. If you believe you may have ALB in your yard or neighborhood, email invasives@clemson.edu or you can call the Clemson Department of Plant Industry at (843) 973-8329.

Storm Team 2 Meteorologist David Dickson

A representative of the State Ports Authority said a proposed hurricane surge wall for downtown Charleston conflicts with the agency’s plans for two properties on the Cooper River.

One of them — Union Pier, is where cruise ships used to dock before the coronavirus pandemic and where SPA is working on a redevelopment plan that will eventually put the land in private hands.

The other, Columbus Street Terminal, is used to export Volvos and BMWs that are built in South Carolina and holds $600 million in autos at any given time.

Jordi Yarborough, senior vice president of external affairs at SPA, made the comments Sept. 22 at the public meeting of a committee convened to give input on the $1.1 billion wall plan from the Army Corps of Engineers. Yarborough was protesting a proposed path for the wall that would leave the terminal and pier on the outside.

“As it stands now, we can’t be supportive of this,” Yarborough said.

The comments are some of the most significant opposition to the plan so far as the Corps has slowly refined it for the past year and a half. They also underscore the challenges of placing a wall around a city where many businesses rely on access to the water, even as sea level rise and hurricanes pose a persistent threat.

The Corps’ plan, designed to protect Charleston from the surge of ocean water that comes with a cyclone, includes a wall that rises about 8 feet past the point where the city floods from tides. It would wrap around the city for 8 miles, include dozens of gates that would stay open during dry times and 10 pumps to evacuate rainfall when those gates are closed to rising tides.

Yarborough also said during the meeting she hasn’t been able to get a clear answer on whether the agency could convince the Corps to move the wall later if the city proceeds with the plan and engineers start a more detailed design.

Dale Morris, Charleston’s chief resiliency officer, responded that the wall’s path can be moved in that next design phase, preconstruction engineering and design, also referred to as PED.

Corps spokeswoman Jaclyn Pennoyer confirmed this in an email, and said the wall could be moved because of new building technology, the results of further engineering analysis, buried cultural resources, buried utilities or situations where the Corps can’t secure the land it needs to build.

But there are significant challenges for where to put a wall at the ports’ sites, Morris added.

Right now, the wall would run landward of SPA’s facilities, along Morrison Drive and East Bay Street west of the Columbus Street Terminal, and along Washington Street west of Union Pier.

Moving it into the water, on the opposite side of the terminal and pier, would likely spur strong objections from state and federal agencies that regulate the environment, Morris said. (Indeed, those groups objected last year when parts of the wall were placed in water or marsh.) Building in water can also be three times more expensive than building on land, Morris and Pennoyer said.

In an interview after the meeting, Morris said it’s a goal of the city to protect the ports’ sites, especially Union Pier, where there could one day be a mixed-use development of housing and commercial space. A better option might be a wall that crosses the sites at the high water lines, he said, leaving some of the facilities protected but avoiding the issues with building in the Cooper River.

“The port’s concerns about being outside of the structure are legit, and we’re with them,” Morris told the Post and Courier.

Yarborough did not respond to a follow-up phone message after the meeting.

In an email, SPA spokeswoman Liz Crumley wrote, “SC Ports will continue working with the City of Charleston and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to provide input on the sea wall proposal to ensure no adverse impacts to marine terminal operations on the peninsula.”

The committee where Yarborough made her comments was convened in the spring and includes residents, businesspeople, and members of the environmental and preservation communities in Charleston. It is due to give Charleston City Council a recommendation on whether to pursue the wall plan this autumn, though the date for that presentation has been pushed a few times.

City Council is also expected to vote on whether to pursue the wall plan into the more-detailed PED step by the end of the year. If it does so, it will have to certify that Charleston can pay for its part of the project, about $384.5 million.

On Sept. 22, several members of the advisory group said there was still more investigation needed before making a recommendation on the plan, and that it had been hard to get answers on details of the wall and how the city of Charleston will fund its portion of the work.

“The answers that we’re getting are ‘Don’t worry, it will be handled in PED,’ ” said Dan Battista of real estate developer Lowe. The company is helping SPA prepare plans for Union Pier.

“Under the current due diligence, a lot more needs to be done,” Battista added. “I don’t want to be rushed to have to make a decision.”

But Morris said that without moving forward into the next step in the engineering process, Charleston would never get an answer on whether there is a wall alignment that would work in complicated settings such as around the SPA terminals.