Charleston's Next Hot Spot Opened in 1992

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Charleston loves a grand opening. A new spot posts a teaser reel, the reservations vanish, and for about six weeks it's the only table anyone wants.

Meanwhile, at 12 Anson Street, a restaurant that opened in 1992 keeps doing the hard part: getting it right, every single night.

Here's my case. The restaurants that have lasted deserve at least as much of the spotlight as the ones that just opened. I spent three decades leasing space to restaurateurs in D.C., and the pattern was the same there. The new place got the buzz. The place still packed on a Tuesday ten years later got taken for granted. Staying power isn't luck. It's execution, repeated thousands of times.

Anson has more of it than almost anyone in town. The Balish family opened it in the City Market in 1992. A Christmas Eve kitchen fire shut it down in 2013, and it came back in 2015, rebuilt with bricks and beams saved from the blaze. Most places get one shot. This one got knocked down and came back for more.

Kim and I went to see what three decades of practice tastes like. We were led upstairs to the Red Room at 6:30, and from there the night was flawless. The service was top-notch, and Executive Chef Shaun Connolly walked several appetizers out to our table himself.

Then the food. The pesto gnocchi set the tone. The watermelon salad, piled high with tomatoes and sweet corn, was out of this world. Kim's halibut and my spaghetti puttanesca closed it out without a single wobble. By the time we headed downstairs around 8, the main room was roaring. It's "a different dining room completely," as Shaun put it.

The Chicago lesson

Shaun grew up in Chicago, has worked in kitchens since he was about 15 and finished culinary school in 2004. He came up in Michelin-level kitchens there, moved to Charleston in 2018 to open Josephine on Spring Street, and lost it to COVID in early 2020. After a year of consulting, Anson hired him in November 2020.

Those Michelin years taught him what flash can't buy. The buzzy newcomers, he told me, "pulled it off for a month, and they couldn't keep doing it." His rule now: "It's got to be the same every time they come in, no matter who's there, what day of the week it is."

He thinks the old guard is becoming cool again, pointing to New York institutions like Balthazar and Gramercy Tavern. When a place has lasted 30 or 40 years, people trust it. "They don't necessarily have to think about whether their money is going to be well spent," he said. "They know they're going to have a good time."

What's on the plate now

Ask Shaun to define Anson and he keeps it simple: "kind of like an à la carte steakhouse with a lot of seafood." He has modernized the Southern menu without stripping out its roots, adding a pasta program, more seafood and flavors picked up on his travels. Small plates like the crudos change often. The steaks and entrées stay put, because the regulars want their favorites.

Insider tip: the pork chop is a mainstay, even though it isn't on the menu.

Kim's halibut tells you how he thinks. It sits on a risotto made with broken rice from White House Farms, a family rice farm in Georgetown County. The rice stays and the season changes the rest: corn in the summer, roasted squash right now, English peas in the spring.

There's also some quiet engineering most diners never notice. Shaun builds dishes so many of them are gluten-free or allergy-friendly exactly as written. Tamari instead of soy sauce. Vegetable stock instead of chicken. Dashi or a smoked vegetable instead of bacon for that smoky note. "All that stuff is way behind the scenes, and no one really knows about it," he said.

The crowd is a mix you rarely see. Three generations of one family at a table, next to travelers from New York, D.C., San Francisco, L.A. and Chicago, plus a younger crowd that's found it over the last couple of years. Anson barely bothers with social media. Word of mouth does the work.

Charleston will keep chasing the newest thing. Fine. Just save a night for the place that's been getting it right since 1992. Ask for the Red Room. Ask about the pork chop.

Sources: My interview with Executive Chef Shaun Connolly, plus Charleston Style & Design (1992 opening, the fire and rebuild), Charleston City Paper (2015 reopening, Balish family) and Hammock Coast SC (White House Farms)