After a long week filled with paper-writing procrastination, excess stress, and the joys of monthly female agony, I've been craving the comfort food of my down-South (former) home of Charleston, SC.Trapped in New England as I am, however, there aren't many good prospects for Southern cooking in the neighborhood and I can't flex my (minimal) comfort food cooking skills without a kitchen.
In a moment of inspired internet searching at work, I came across rave reviews for Tupelo (pronounced TOOP-ell-oh), described as a Southern/Cajun style restaurant. The menu had me excited; pan-fried catfish, cheddar grits, and gumbo sound heavenly to a misplaced quasi-Southern girl, and after a rough week I just really needed to bask in the fatty glow of fried food. I grabbed a friend, hopped on the #69 bus, and took a ride down Cambridge Street to the Yelpingly four-star Tupelo, a cute little restaurant with comfy chairs, funky walls, pretty tables, and the friendliest waitstaff I've encountered north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Now I lived in New Orleans, LA for four years as a young child and have spent the past eight years in Charleston, SC, so I have twelve collective (if not entirely well-remembered) years of Southern living. I'm not easily impressed by restaurants serving "soul food" or "southern cooking," even in the South, and so was pretty skeptical heading into Tupelo.
My Southern friend and I took a gamble and ordered sweet tea, which turned out to be good sweet tea by any standards, not just northern ones. I was pleasantly surprised and began building up anticipation for the rest of the meal to come. Nailing the sweet tea test is hard; if that one is down, half the battle for Southern authenticity is already won.
The cornbread really sealed the deal. Fluffy, warm, and heavenly, especially when slathered with the accompanying butter, it whispered to me, between eye-rollingly delicious bites, that Tupelo was the real deal and my meal would be almost at the level of orgasmic. I believed it down to the very last crumb.
Unfortunately, the sweet tea and the corn bread were not good barometers for the rest of our dining experience. The crispy fried cheddar grits, a staple of Tupelo and one of those dishes that you "have to try," were far too salty, over-spiced, and textually bizarre. They were crispy, salty, and overflavored on the outside while overwhelmingly creamy and minimally cheddar-flavored on the inside. Boo.
I ordered pan-fried catfish and my friend ordered gumbo; both dishes were as underwhelming as the crispy fried grits. The catfish was on the bland side, nicely fried but without any other distinctive flavors. I honestly think the catfish at campy Border Cafe is better than the catfish at Tupelo. The bed of cheddar grits was completely and unfortunately drowned in butter that tasted like olive oil straight out of the bottle. I could barely take a bite and ended up leaving the grits mostly untouched because of the repulsive pool of oily butter. The gumbo that I sampled was mediocre. It wasn't particularly flavorful, spicy, or thick, but would probably impress someone who hadn't ever had real gumbo before. I was less than thrilled.I was too overwhelmingly full to try the desserts, as was my friend, and I left Tupelo considerably fuller, considerably poorer, and disappointed that I didn't find the good down-home cooking promised by the deceptive sweet tea and corn bread openers. I guess I'll have to go back to Charleston and Hominy Grill to get good southern cooking at a restaurant, although I'd go back to Tupelo in a heartbeat just to experience the wonderful attitudes of the waitstaff again.
Conclusion: 3/5 stars. Probably deserves another shot; I've heard brunch and dessert are amazing.
