Overlooked no more: Major award nods rocket Columbia’s restaurant scene into the spotlight

The Oxford Dictionary defines a trend as the “general direction in which something is developing or changing.”

And those who have been paying attention to the Columbia culinary scene the last couple of years have likely seen a trend emerging, particularly when it comes to being in the running for some of the highest and most prestigious honors in the restaurant industry.

Three Columbia-area restaurants have been named semifinalists for the 2024 James Beard Foundation Awards, which are seen by many as the preeminent honors in the food world. Midlands semifinalists this year include Main Street’s Lula Drake Wine Parlour, for Best Wine and Other Beverages Program; Robbie Robinson of West Columbia’s City Limits Barbeque, for Best Chef - Southeast; and Kitwanda “Kiki” Cyrus and Tyrone Cyrus of Kiki’s Chicken and Waffles, for Best Chef - Southeast.

Finalists for the Beard honors will be announced Wednesday, April 3, and winners will be crowned in a June ceremony at the Lyric Opera in Chicago.

But the spurt of Beard nominees for the Columbia area this year isn’t a one-off. This marks the second consecutive year that Columbia has had three semifinalists in the running. The 2023 semifinalists included City Grit Hospitality Group’s Sarah Simmons, Aaron Hoskins and Elie Yigo; Jessica Shillato of Spotted Salamander Cafe and Catering; and Lula Drake, which was nominated for Outstanding Hospitality the first time around.

The two-year run of national notice has been something of a cathartic moment for the capital city’s dining scene. After years of seemingly being overlooked and watching as bushels of restaurateurs and establishments from neighboring Charleston and Greenville picked up highlights from the Beard Foundation, Columbia is beginning to forge its own path onto the big stage.

Like Andy Dufresne near the end of “The Shawshank Redemption,” standing shirtless in the rain, with his hands and face to the sky, free at last, it feels like the Columbia culinary scene has finally broken through.

In this moment, Columbia restaurant and civic leaders are taking stock of what the acknowledgment means for the city and what it says about the perception of the scene going forward.

Columbia has an opportunity to leverage the spotlight from Beard as a draw for tourism and for attracting budding restaurateurs who might want to make a name for themselves, according to S.C. Restaurant and Lodging Association President and CEO Susan Cohen.

“Charleston has had it for a long time,” Cohen said of Beard Award acclaim. “Then you saw Greenville suddenly emerge. Now it appears Columbia is starting to edge into that. You saw some (nominees) last year, and all of the sudden now we have them again this year.

“I think that’s a great trend. I certainly think it is a deserved trend. I think there’s lots of really dedicated foodies in town that really want to raise the bar on what we have to offer here in Columbia. It’s a win-win for everybody, for locals and for people who are visiting.”

Other leaders are quick to opine that Columbia’s had an evolving dining scene for a while, and it has simply been aching to be discovered in a larger way.

“The beauty about Columbia is, we’ve just been under the radar and done our thing,” said Carl Blackstone, the longtime leader of the Columbia Chamber. “On the food scene, we’ve been batting above our weight class for years. What’s good is, once you get recognition for these certain restaurants, others are going to try to out-do each other. A little competition works. You are going to see more of this, I believe.”

And for this year’s Columbia-area Beard semifinalists, it’s a moment where they are juggling an infusion of new business that comes with the national acclaim and working to continue providing customers the kind of experience that earned them an award nod, while also taking a second to bask in the honor and reflect on how they got there.

‘I was shaken’: Adjusting to a Beard nominee reality

Robbie Robinson was like an artist at his palette when reached by a reporter from The State on a recent morning. The barbecue pitmaster was at City Limits in West Columbia, making brisket frankfurters for the coming weekend’s Sunday hot dog service.

That Robinson would be hands-on in making the franks is emblematic of the ethos that has turned City Limits into something of a slow-smoked urban legend in the Midlands. Robinson started City Limits as a food truck back in 2016, and the business made a name for itself with both Texas and Carolina style barbecue. Then, in 2023, City Limits found a more permanent, brick-and-mortar location on Methodist Park Road in West Columbia.

The response from customers has been rapturous, with long lines waiting for smoked goodness each Saturday and Sunday. (Those are the only days of the week City Limits is open.)

Robinson said he was floored when he learned in February that he was a James Beard Award semifinalist.

“I was shaken,” Robinson said. “I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. I can’t believe that.’”

While news of the honor might have shaken him, Robinson also admits that, for years, he has tried to hold himself to a standard of producing the kind of slow-smoked and hand-crafted delicacies that might earn wide acclaim.

“When I got into the barbecue thing, one of the goals I thought about was, ‘What’s the standard of excellence? What is the Super Bowl?’” Robinson said. “As I started looking at Beard, I thought, ‘They represent excellence.’

“As unrealistic as it was, in the back of my mind — and sometimes in the front of my mind — the Beard symbol of excellence really dovetailed and synced with what I was trying to do from day one, which was trying to create a better barbecue product, with more attention to detail.”

Meanwhile, Kiki’s Chicken and Waffles has long been a widely known name on the Columbia food scene. Kiki and Tyrone Cyrus opened the first location in the Spring Valley area in 2012, later moving it to Parklane Road. And in 2019 they added a second location, on Bower Parkway in the Harbison shopping district.

Kiki’s has been a go-to stop for political luminaries, with Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden having dined there. Legendary University of South Carolina women’s basketball Coach Dawn Staley has long been a Kiki’s fan, and the restaurant currently has a partnership with USC point guard Raven Johnson, offering the “Hollywood Raven Special.” (It’s chicken and waffles drizzled in honey hot sauce, with a side order of collard greens.)

Kiki Cyrus said she’s thrilled to be a semifinalist and recognizes the prestige the James Beard Awards can bring — she calls them the “Oscars of the food scene” — but has largely kept her focus on turning out waffles, fried chicken and other soul food staples at the two Kiki’s locations.

She said he never imagined she’d be a semifinalist for a Beard honor.

“When you have a restaurant, you just get so busy making sure the delicacy of the food is great and the customer service is good,” Kiki Cyrus said. “In your day-to-day you don’t really look to win certain awards. I never really thought of it. I really didn’t know about (being named a Beard semifinalist) until that morning when someone texted me, ‘Congratulations on James Beard.’ I was like, ‘What?’”

The experience of being a Beard semifinalist is just a little bit different for owner Tim Gardner and the crew at Lula Drake Wine Parlour, the tony, cozy wine bar in the 1600 block of Columbia’s Main Street, if only because this marks the second year in a row that the establishment has received a nod.

Still, Gardner stresses that he understands just how special the moment is.

“This one was just as big a surprise for us,” Gardner said. “Last year came out of the blue. And I said to the staff, ‘Let’s enjoy this ride because this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.’ And then lightning struck twice. We have just really enjoyed this one in a way that I don’t think we were able to the first time around.”

Gardner opened Lula Drake in November 2016, and in the years since it has become widely known for its unique, precisely curated wine offerings. He talks about wine with clear passion, in the way Steven Spielberg might talk about cinema.

“I decided I wanted to open a place that really focused on the things that were important to me in wine, and that’s sustainable, organic and bio-dynamic wines, wines that are created by people who not only love wine, but that want to make sure what they are doing is good for the planet, is good for people,” Gardner said. “And it requires a really, really good winemaker to do the things that we are looking for.”

While Lula Drake was nominated for Outstanding Hospitality in 2023, Gardner admitted he’s enthused to see the wine parlour as a semifinalist for Outstanding Wine Program at this year’s Beards.

“It’s really sweet, because that’s our focus,” he said. “To be recognized among the best in the country at that is just so rewarding, and I’m really, really proud of the staff.”

‘Bastard child’ no more

While having consecutive years of Beard Award semifinalists is certainly meaningful for the chefs, restaurateurs and establishments that have been honored, the notice it brings has the ancillary effect of perhaps signaling the arrival of Columbia’s food scene in a larger stratosphere.

It puts the city’s name in competition with restaurant scenes across the nation, and, here in the Palmetto State, finds Columbia elbowing its way to a stage where Charleston and Greenville have already long been shining.

Gardner said in the last two years he has constantly had conversations with new customers who have told him they are visiting Lula Drake specifically because they heard about the wine spot through its proximity to the James Beard Awards. While some of those new customers have been local, Gardner was quick to note many are from out of town, with some even saying that they were on a tour, of sorts, to visit Beard nominees across the U.S.

“We’ve always been the sort of bastard child city of South Carolina,” Gardner said. “You either flew into or drove into Charleston or Greenville, and you stopped in Columbia to get gas. I’ve heard this from people. Now, it’s wonderful to think that these six nominations (the last two years) have had an impact on our tourism industry.”

Experience Columbia, the visitors bureau that promotes tourism in the region, was quick to tout Columbia’s back-to-back years of having multiple Beard nominees in a January news release, with CEO Bill Ellen saying that “having not one but three James Beard semifinalists for a second year in a row speaks to the strength of our region’s culinary talent and offerings.”

Shillato, the Spotted Salamander Cafe owner who was a Beard semifinalist in 2023, said the glow from the nominations can draw tourism to the region and even play in the minds of people who might be considering moving to the area.

She’s also glad to see Columbia is “finally being recognized” for a food scene that has been emerging for some time.

“I think it’s been there, but maybe it hasn’t been noticed,” Shilatto said of the scene. “I’ve lived here for almost 20 years now. The level of quality at some restaurants that are here is just great. And they never got recognized or noticed (outside the Columbia area). But now maybe that’s starting to change. I just love a lot of our little, local restaurants.”

Originally from Charleston, Kiki Cyrus came to Columbia 20 years ago to go school at USC. She said she’s watched the capital city’s culinary scene grow, in quality and creativity, in the two decades since, especially in the realm of locally owned spots.

“Most people go to Charleston because they have so many restaurants to choose from,” Cyrus said. “But now we’re giving Charleston a run for their money because we have a lot of restaurants to choose from. ... So I love to see the mom-and-pops and people supporting us throughout the city. And we’ve got people from outside the city traveling in and trying different restaurants. That’s always a great thing.”

Robinson said the impact of having multiple years of James Beard semifinalists could be “astounding” for the Columbia area.

He noted South Carolina has seen an influx of new residents — the state has seen its population grow from 4 million to more than 5 million since 2000, per the census — and that has potentially led to an increased demand for unique, creative restaurants.

“What I’ve seen is that we have people coming in here (to live) that want something a little bit more, and places are stepping it up a little bit,” Robinson said.

Cohen, the state Restaurant and Lodging Association leader, said that restaurants are a factor travelers use as a determinant when choosing a city they’d like to visit.

“We know from research that people travel to somewhere for experiences like dining out in a place that has been recognized,” she said. “That will be a ripple effect. The more attention (the restaurants) get, the more we’ll attract.”

Gardner said Columbia’s restaurant scene has been evolving to this moment. He’s watched as post-graduates from USC have segued into young professionals and have sought out Lula Drake and other restaurants making their mark in the city.

“It speaks to the culture of diversity we have in this city,” Gardner said. “There’s a passion here for food, and I think it comes from, ‘Hey, we are passionate, we love what we are doing, and you don’t just have to go to Charleston or Greenville.’

“There’s something really interesting and fun happening in the Columbia area.”