Lore

Best of Charleston 2012

Posted on 03/07/2012 by blueion

Today is the day that the annual “Best Of Charleston” issue of the Charleston City Paper hits newsstands. I voted for many of the categories (mainly the ones involving food), and I’m happy to see that many of my picks were also voted by other Charlestonians as the city’s best. I’m a fan of this year’s Unicorn theme…it brings me back to the Lisa Frank days of my youth.

Although I quite enjoy perusing the Readers’ Picks section of each of the major feature pages, I have to say that my favorite results are the Critics’ Picks. Not only are they informative, they’re often quite humorous. Here are some examples:

Best Glitter Bomb was awarded to Rick Santorum, a reference to the glitter that was thrown on him in the days before the SC Republican Primary.
Best Third-Place Finish was awarded to the city of Charleston for recently being voted the Third Best City in the world, right behind Florence, Italy (#2) and Sydney, Australia (#1).
My personal favorite award category was (of course), Best Argument, which was awarded to The Case For Quidditch, where the City Paper “ate crow” after badmouthing the College of Charleston Quidditch team in last year’s Best Of, calling it “The Best Indication that College Kids Have Way Too Much Time On Their Hands” and this year deciding Quidditch was actually kind of cool.

I mean, what about this DOESN’T look awesome?!

My favorite section is, obviously, the Eating and Drinking Out section. I mean, I spend my free time blogging about Charleston restaurants, so obviously this section has my name written all over it. I was happy to see that my local obsession, Chef Sean Brock, won the award for Best Chef (did you catch him on Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern the other night? Now *that* is quality television).

I was also really happy to see that they added the “Best Food Truck” category this year (and congrats to Roti Rolls for winning), since Food Trucks are becoming so prevalent in Charleston’s culinary culture.

My goal for the rest of this year is to try out all of the restaurants on this list that I have not already visited. So that’s (surprisingly) about 80% of the listings on the page…. Looks like I’ve got a busy year ahead of me.