He Cooked in New York and San Francisco. He Came Back for the Shrimp

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James London has cooked in two of the best food cities in America. He owns Chubby Fish, which landed on the New York Times list of the 50 Best Restaurants in America this year. And he wrote a piece in the Post & Courier this week explaining why he is here instead of there.

The short version: the ingredients, and the rent.

Why it matters: Charleston spends a lot of energy worrying about whether its success is pricing out the thing that made it successful. London’s answer is more complicated than either side of that argument.

He was born here, left as a young child for the Upstate, came back for the College of Charleston, and decided in the middle of a fast-changing dining scene that food was going to be the whole life. What he remembers is what came through the back door. Sacks of shad roe, glistening neon orange. Bushels of live blue crabs. Grouper with bright red gills. Flounder still stiff with rigor.

“Maybe it’s the pluff mud, maybe it’s our tidal creeks, but somehow the shrimp that come out of our waters just taste better,” he wrote in the Post & Courier.

Then he went to New York to train, and the supply chain went quiet. No fishermen at the back door. No farmer turning up unannounced with what he picked that morning. Once he was an executive chef, his best source of on-the-fly inspiration was the corner bodega.

There was no escaping the city on a day off either. Three and a half hours to actually leave it, and you spent the day grinding anyway.

Eight years of that, then San Francisco, then home to open Chubby Fish.

Here is the number that explains the rest of it. His first rent at Chubby Fish was $4,000 a month, roughly what a one-bedroom in San Francisco had been costing him. The same space in a bigger city would have run four times that.

That margin bought things most restaurants this size cannot afford. Higher pay. Benefits that are close to unheard of in a room this small. Two consecutive days closed every week so the staff actually rests, and a shutdown around the holidays so they can be with their families.

And a life outside the building. The beach is fifteen minutes away. He has a boat and a house. One of his 22-year-old line cooks recently bought his first home in Summerville, which London says he is proud of, and which is the line that will land hardest with anyone who has tried to hire in this town.

He does not dodge the tension. He names it directly: the demand that makes it harder for Charlestonians to get a table is the same demand keeping those restaurants open and those people employed.

That is the trade. He took it, and he is staying.

This is a summary of an article published in the Post & Courier. Click here if you’d like to read that article.