Chomp! By Ron Aiken

By Ron Aiken
June 7, 2013

New App Brings S.C. Food, Chefs, Farms to Your Phone!

I like to be a helpful sort. I especially like to be a helpful sort who helps other helpful sorts whenever possible, because in a world filled with sorts who aren’t always so helpful (and who always seem to find their way right in front of me on the interstate), well, us good sorts need to stick together and promote each others’ efforts.

One such helpful sort is our friendly neighborhood state Department of Agriculture, and one of their most recent helpful efforts is the super-cool, ultra-hip, uber-local new app called Fresh on the Menu, in which you can find local restaurants across South Carolina using Certified SC Grown ingredients. How sweet is that? Peachy-sweet, that’s how sweet.

Also, you can personalize the app to take a tour of the tastes of the state, customize it  to save a list of favorite restaurants and your own favorite recipes and use it as a social media platform to share tips, recipes, farms and restaurants with friends. There’s also a roots section to see a list of the farmers producing the food you love and a chefs section to see who is cooking what and where.

Is it the coolest food app in South Carolina? Try saying it isn’t, and see what a fat lip feels like. Spoiler alert: It hurts your face for a week. You want that? You want a fat lip wrapped in a Certified South Carolina-grown knuckle sandwich? I thought not.

So there you have it. The best food app in South Carolina brought to you by South Carolina, for South Carolina and letting you, the South Carolinian (whether by birth or residency), shop, cook and eat local. It does not get any better than that. To download the app, visit http://www.freshonthemenuapp.com/ from your computer or mobile device and follow the instructions. Do it now, or do I have to remind you of that whole fat lip business again?

 

I Can Has Pimento Cheese Reeyaxshun!

So it’s safe to say last week’s column taste-testing a horde of local pimento cheeses was both fun and popular (if you missed, it, check it out, then get your butt back here: http://midlandsbiz.com/news/midlandslife/3061/ ) both in terms of readers and in feedback.

Columbia’s fantastic Shop Tart herself, Anne Postic, shared a recipe she created on the fly while craving pimento cheese in Italy that is so scary-good I’m still drooling (http://theshoptart.com/2012/07/ricette-dallitalia-as-promised/), and another local do-gooder/restauranteur/local food advocate Ricky Mollohan of Solstice, Mr. Friendly’s and Cellar on Greene, chimed in with some helpful clarifications about his restaurant’s pimento cheese stylings. He points out rightly that both their offerings, the French Quarter Blue Pimento Cheese and the Applewood Bacon Pimento Cheese are most properly enjoyed with the dishes they’re specifically paired to complement – the filet and burger for the French Quarter, where it’s heated and almost used as a sauce, and the fried green tomatoes/pimento cheese BLT for the Applewood, where its thickness is necessary to keep the green tomatoes standing up. Mollohan also says he’d be happy to whip up a traditional pimento cheese that would rock Chomp’s world, and Chomp doesn’t doubt that one bit.

What’s most cool is simply being able to engage people in Columbia about our local foodery, and I encourage people to write in with suggestions for future columns. Chomp loves you, even when you’re not at your most loveable, like that time when you forgot to pick Chomp up from school in the third grade and he waited and waited until it was dark and you never came and he finally walked home.

Above Photo: This is a picture of The Shop Tart’s stunning Italian pimento cheese. Check the link in the story to see how she made this fantasticosity!

 

Harvest Week Awesomeness + Motor Supply = Hells to the Yes, Sir, Thank you, Sir!

Motor Supply Co. is so dang terrific I can’t begin to go into all it’s terrificacity here other than to say I adore the owner, Eddie Wales, and chef Tim Peters, who I loved having as a writing contributor for me when I was food&drink editor at Free Times. Peters is as meticulous and passionate and madly skilled and creative as they come anywhere (his handmade charcuterie is a delight, and his skill with meat and butchery is sublime), and so when you hear me say something to the effect that June 11-16 is Motor Supply’s biannual Harvest Week – their way of thanking the sustainable farmers with whom they do bidness – then you should pay close attention and mark your calendar accordingly this minute.

What do they do to celebrate such a thing, you ask? The feature dueling ingredients on their dinner menus from local sustainable farms AND farm-fresh cocktail specials, including a Meet the Farmer Happy Hour on June 11 from 5:30-7 p.m.

One of the best parts about Motor is its ever-changing menu, and that will again be spotlighted with local ingredients this week even more so than usual. But who are these local producers they use, you wonder aloud? These folks:

Caw Caw Creek Pastured Pork
Doko Farm
Freshly Grown Farms
Trail Ridge Farms and Dairy
City Roots Urban Farm
Wil-Moore Farms
Cottle Farms
Cowassee Produce
Gnome Grown Mushrooms
Shady Grove Farms
Floral and Hardy Farm

So what are you waiting for? Make a reservation by calling 803-256-6687 or visiting http://www.motorsupplycobistro.com/.

Above Photo: Look at these happy, blurry people! They are loving Motor Supply Company! Why aren’t you there right now?

Follow Chomp! on Twitter @RonAiken and on Facebook. Email Chomp! at [email protected]. He even answers his phone sometimes: 803-200-8809. Cheers!

 

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