Gullah Grub

This place looks like a hole in the wall, because it is. The host is extremely friendly and inmediately helped us out. The sweet tea is great, and we had warm corn bread as soon as we sat down too.
I ordered the fried shrimp and the person with me got the barbeque chicken. We went in the off-​season so it was not busy and I think the food was warmed up for the most part. An OK experience.

Took a friend here. It was all our first time. Food was cold, and super expensive for the amounts and quality. Most of what we had was not freshly prepared.
Very disappointed.

We had a great lunch from a very good cook, cooking with tender loving care. Everything was great, but I wish the peach cobbler had not been so hot. Would rather have had it chilled. The iced tea was really good!
Bill and the waitress were very friendly, kindly tolerating my many questions.
We shall return!

Yummy little family owned place. It’s nice to find places that still have that home style feel to them. Doesn’t happen often enough! Brian served us. He’s very polite and on a first name basis with everyone who came into the restaurant. Lovely experience. I highly recommend the crab soup and squash casserole! Yum.

Scott w. Was spot on in his review. The food was all reheated in the microwave and not fresh. The ribs were not good quality cuts and were not cooked low and slow enough, the result was a tough rib that lacked any flavor beyond the sauce. The shrimp gumbo may as well have been vegetable soup, it contained only two small shrimp pieces, and lacked any depth of flavor I expect in gumbo. Half of the barbecue chicken piping hot while the other half was cold. The corn bread was dry. The mac and cheese was the highlight of the meal, while we all agreed we make better at home, they’re style was acceptable but nothing you’d want to eat twice.

I had the unfortunate experience of eating at the Gullah Grub at the insistence of a friend that thought she would be getting authentic low country cuisine. WRONG! I was so disappointed with the food. I should’ve known not to go since a friend of mine that is from St Helena didn’t even mention this place. They have BBQ on the menu but I didn’t smell any smoke or notice a BBQ pit anywhere. My friend ordered the fried shrimp that came with greens, cornbread, red rice for $ 17.99. The greens were sweet, the sweet tea wasn’t and the shrimp (not much bigger than salad size) were underwhelming. I ordered the shrimp special with red rice ($ 9) and I had the same number of shrimp that she had. She paid twice as much for her food for two more sides. SUMMARY: Lackluster food that’s not worth the prices. Stay away!

Tasty. Very friendly family-​owned restaurant. Stopped on a whim on the way back from Hunting Island State Park. Dishes were definitely a different style than what you might typically expect: for example, the peach cobbler had almost a bread pudding texture. I had the crab soup, which was very good –heavy on the pepper, but it still allowed the sweetness of the crab to shine through. Spouse had the fish chowder, which had a kick to it. Salads tasted like they were made from vegetables that were picked that morning. Reasons to go include the atmosphere, the folk art, the desire to try something new. Oh, also the tasty food. Reasons to avoid include needing to keep to a schedule and preconceived notions about what the food/​service should be. This is a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere that has two people doing everything: cooking, serving, washing dishes, ringing you up, etc. Plan accordingly, relax, and enjoy your visit. And for the record, two locals popped in for lunch while we were there; they were both just as friendly as the owners.

I should have known something was up. Bourdain prides himself on saying he does not lie on the food he samples. I don’t know how consistent this practice is, but I do know that while being filmed eating at Gullah Grub he made no real commentary on the food itself. In fact, he spent more time riding horses with the owner than eating. I mean, it’s the Travel Channel, I know, but come on.
The menu reads good and the food is deceptively prepared. Fresh out of the back of an establishment that used to be a house, I was certain the clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen was signaling a course of dishes fired over the cast-​iron heirlooms of a family steeped in history and gritty, backyard-​culled recipes. Based on what hit the table, I think the staff was banging the pots and pans to hide the sound of the microwave ding.
I ordered the ribs, potato salad, cornbread and shrimp gumbo. «No», «eh», «no» and «eh» respectively. The ribs were boney shoulder pads and the cornbread was on the dry side the way a camel’s nuts are «a little dusty.» The potato salad was average, and for a seaside community they are surprisingly stingy with the shrimp in a shrimp gumbo. Maybe they’re used to people wanting more soup out of their gumbo than meat. They didn’t have the advertised greens. Mind you, the place opens at noon. How you gonna’ be out of stuff when I just saw you open the door? And greens, no less? How you not gonna’ have greens in-​house? I’m reasonably sure I drove past a few hundred stalks of them coming into town.
I ordered the «Swamp Water» (rim shot) to drink. I am reasonably sure that this is made with actual brackish sewage. The tea tasted like it came out of a garden hose, which is fine when you’re seven and have a culinary palate tweaked by Space Rocks and Nerds, but less so when you’re a grown foodie. A fellow newcomer informed me that the Swamp Water tastes like lemonade mixed with sweet tea. Wait, what? Any golfer can tell you that’s an Arnold Palmer. I drove eleven hours into Gullah country to have a nasty Arnold Palmer? I rounded the meal out with a peach cobbler that was flaccid and breaded with whatever is in moth balls that makes rats die. The menu offers tossed salad, which I didn’t order, but certainly felt like I’d experienced.
Here’s an observation for my readers in the Klan: Gullah Grub doesn’t serve fried chicken. They sell a barbecued chicken, but not fried chicken. They sell a DVD of the owner teaching you how to prepare Grandma’s pan-​fried chicken and they don’t sell fried chicken. They have this same DVD playing on a small TV in the dining area on a loop, but they don’t sell fried chicken. They sincerely hope you enjoy the DVD because it’s as close as you are getting to fried chicken. And I don’t mean they were out (though at this point I would have hardly been surprised). I mean it wasn’t on the menu. There is a KFC nine miles away that has better chicken than a world-​proclaimed, southern low country cooking restaurant, winning the contest handily via the mere act of serving it at all. That puts the «low» in «low country cooking.»
So: missing items off the menu at opening, screw-​you service, locals that do come in getting their food to go. The local who bumped the back of my chair going out the door gave me more attention than my waiter. All that glitters on the Travel Channel is not gold.

I thoroughly enjoyed the crab soup and the cornbread. My friend found the BBQ chicken to be well-​seasoned but pretty dry. She found the salad to be surprisingly good. I would recommend sticking to their specialties.
The chef was very friendly and it definitely had the feeling of being in someone’s home as other reviews mention.

This was the perfect lunch to have in beaufort. Just delicious food all around and very relaxing atmosphere.
When you first walk in its a little daunting because it’s a badly renovated house to restaurant with very minimum when it comes to décor. There was one waiter for the whole place so as it was filling up the service got a little slow but not bad enough to think about where is my waiter.
We started off with some corn bread. I rode deed sweet tea and the bf got the pond water (half sweet tea half lemonade). The corn bread was perfectly salty and buttery I just wanted more.
I just heard great reviews about the she crab soup so we tried that. It was delicious and creamy and perfectly balanced with a nice fresh fish taste.
I got fried fish Mac and cheese and the bf got BBQ ribs and Mac and cheese. He ended up loving my fish and I loved his ribs more. The chef even came by and said if the ribs were too dry to let him know and he will grab a new batch. Overall all delicious and I wish there could be somewhere nearby this yummy.

Our dining experience here was one of the worst we ever had. There was only one other table there when we arrived yet they somehow could not manage to serve us. I am not sure if something was amiss that day, but there was no acknowledgment of or attempt to apologize for the terrible service. Our server was incompetent, and I am not saying that to be mean but, she could not remember to bring drinks and half the table was finished with their meal before the other half’s food made it to the table. The food was not good enough to excuse the service.

I had fried fish, greens, and red rice. All were excellent– fish fresh and light, greens vinegary and flavorful, rice rich with flavors I wouldn’t know how to make myself. The tea was delicious. Service was friendly if amateur, but not a problem. Ambience is cool old-​timey low-​country style with a focus on Gullah history and art.

It is what it is… an interesting place to visit. Out of the food, mac and cheese is probably the best thing they’ve got. Everything else is just ok. If you’ve never had fried shark, you can find it here but don’t expect to be blown off your feet. The prices are definitely not cheap.

The perfect sweetness to their sweet tea, nice peppery Mac and cheese and the BEST crab soup I have ever had… hands down.

Absolutely one of the best, most authentic regional Low Country cuisine places in the vein of the Gullah tradition. The she-​crab soup has no match, everything grown and raised within a few feet of the very rustic general store setting of the restaurant. A sweet grass basket maker, Ms. Jerri, is your landmark as she is often making them on the front porch! I’m eating the shark strips and fried shrimp dinner with red rice, Lima beans, potato salad and if that weren’t enough, the mac-​n-​cheese!

I had to work with a caterer to feed 21 vegetarians/​vegans for a whole weekend on the island. Bill and Sara, the owners, not only worked with me, they designed a special menu for our group and met us personally at dinner and lunch. If you are vegetarian and have trouble finding food in the south, please go to Gullah Grubs. The food was excellent and there was plenty!
I was also able to special order some of their seafood for myself and other meat-​eaters in the group. The fried fish I had was sooo delicious.
This is a family-​owned, family run business with great food and it bears the mark of their intentional care and thoughtful hospitality. They opened the restaurant after hours for our enormous group and even invited us to local events going on on the island the weekend we were there. I didn’t feel like a customer when I was there, I felt like a part of their family. Gullah Grub is not just a restaurant, it’s an institution.

I had seen this place on No Reservations and figured it must be good, but that was a mistake. Our first clue to the less than stellar food should have been that there wasn’t a single local in there, but we blindly pressed on.
When we sat down a friendly young lady promptly took our drink order and then just as promptly forgot about us (we never saw her again). About thirty minutes later an older woman came over and we reordered our drinks and took our food order.
We ordered Shrimp gumbo ($ 15.95) and Fish chowder ($ 10.95). Mine came with red rice (they were out of white rice) and collard greens. The red rice tasted as if it came out of a card board box and was hours and hours old. The collard greens were okay. The fish chowder sides were slated on the menu to be corn bread, white rice and a salad. Instead they served reheated red rice and collard greens.
My gumbo came in a medium sized bowl had maybe six pieces of shrimp in it. The overall quality was edible, but less than impressive. Her fish chowder «was fine», but didn’t have much fish. It did have an inch sized bone in it.
In all we were in there for an hour and a half and fifteen minutes of that was used for eating.
The people were really nice, but nice isn’t good enough at their prices. Overall a disappointing outing. Tourists beware!!!

Gullah Grub was a fun place to lunch while we were on vacation with the family…
Our friend wanted to try it after learning that Chef Green has been featured on several programs including Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Martha Stewart Living. We didn’t argue, and we had a pleasant dining experience.
Our server was friendly and attentive… He was the only one working the day we were there, but still managed to keep our swamp water (aka Arnold Palmers) refilled promptly.
We feasted on a ton of low country cuisine including cornbread, squash casserole, mac n cheese, shrimp gumbo, crab soup, and more. My only complaints were that the cornbread was dry and that they were out of collards!
Even so, it’s worth mixing things up and checking out Gullah Grub when you’re in the area. Not only is it Anthony Bourdain and Martha Stewart approved, it’s Unilocaler approved too!

Yum!!! Gullah Grub is a great, comfortable place to eat. It’s located right at an intersection but is still somewhat overlookable since it’s in an old house that doesn’t immediately look like a restaurant. Inside, it smells like my grandmother’s kitchen and has the feel of a neighbor’s dining room. The staff is wonderfully warm and considerate — they’ll talk to you as much or as little as you seem to want to be talked to. And the food is excellent. It might sound odd, but this is _​not_​food that I’d see coming out of a standard restaurant kitchen — it’s not an elegant presentation with ‘creatively’ put together menu items. Instead, this is straightforward food that people actually eat in their homes, and it’s wonderful and served in overflowing bowls and plates. I’d visit again!

My friend and I stopped here to eat while on a SC beach/​camping road trip. I had found this place through some sort of web search for restaurant recommendations in the area on the way to Hunting Island. I am surprised to find that it has no reviews since this place and the chef (Bill Green) have been featured on Martha Stewart Living and No Reservations. If you check out their website you will see they sell cooking videos and rubs and sauces, but I have no experience with that stuff, so anyhooo…
The food was delicious! I had sweet tea and my friend had swamp water (iced tea and lemonade). Both good. The meal came with cornbread which came out first. It was moist and delicious and I could have eaten three pieces. My friend ordered the bar-​b-​que chicken with two sides (lima beans and collard greens). I ordered a side of ribs and squash casserole and we just shared everything. I am not sure what prompted me to order ribs, because I am not a big fan of ribs, but oh man, were they ever awesome. I would order the ribs again. They were so meaty and succulent and flavorful. I would order all of it again.
The atmosphere is casual and comfortable and the server was a super sweetheart of a young woman.
And we ordered a desert sampler to go. It was a peach cobbler and a sweet potato pie. We ate them in our tent a few hours later, since we were too full to fully enjoy them at the restaurant. If you are in Beaufort area or heading in or out of Hunting Island you should definitely check this place out. Delicious food with great culture and history.