Charleston's Best Food Tours

Beignets, Benne Wafers and Pralines: Is This Still a Charleston Donut Tour?

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Sort of. Charleston was a port long before it was a postcard, and the food that came in on those ships is what we taste. Some of it is fried dough. A lot of it isn't.

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Meeting Street to the Pineapple Fountain

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You begin on Meeting Street at Toast! All Day with warm beignets and coffee, a nod to the French influence that runs all through Lowcountry cooking. A few blocks on, Ephesus Mediterranean Delights sets out Turkish sweets like honey balls and baklava. River Street Sweets follows with pralines, a recipe that made its way from France to the American South and settled in for good.

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Then the route cuts through the Historic City Market. Those long brick sheds have hosted vendors for generations, and this is where your guide explains benne wafers, the thin sesame cookies whose roots go back to West Africa. Callie's Hot Little Biscuit serves a Southern classic, sweet this time. Tinto y Crema brings Dutch mini pancakes, which nobody expects in South Carolina and everybody eats.

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The last stretch is the pretty part. Cobbled lanes, Philadelphia Alley, rows of pastel houses, and finally Waterfront Park, where you finish beside the Pineapple Fountain with the harbor in view. Your guide will tell you why the pineapple became Charleston's symbol of hospitality. It's a good one.

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Why we went beyond the donut

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Every city we run has its own sweets, and Charleston's are unusually well traveled. French Huguenots, West African cooks, Caribbean trade, Southern home kitchens: each tasting on this food tour lines up with a chapter of that history, so by the end of this walking tour you've walked the story as well as eaten it. If you're in on a cruise with an afternoon in port, the Charleston Historic Downtown Sweet Treats Tour fits neatly between the ship and the dinner table.