Roadfood: The Coast-to-Coast Guide to 900 of the Best Barbecue Joints, Lobster Shacks, Ice Cream Parlors, Highway Diners, and Much, Much More, now in its 9th edition by Jane Stern & Michael Stern

Author:Jane Stern & Michael Stern
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780770434533
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2014-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

Charlie’s Fish Market

813 Richland Ave. E.

Aiken, SC

803-649-2131

L | $

There are a few tables at Charlie’s Fish Market, but hardly anybody eats here. Some come to buy raw fish—bream, whiting, mullet—for cooking at home; others have their fish fried and wrapped, ready to eat. It’s a bare, no-frills sort of place with nothing by way of decorative charm, but the cook, Maria Kye, is warm and hospitable, informing us, when we ask her advice, that mullet is definitely the best-tasting of the bunch, so good that she has it almost every day for breakfast.

Mullet it is—two pieces. Maria goes to the case where the fish have been semi-filleted (with easy-to-eat-around bones remaining), picks a couple of hunks, briefly dredges them in cornmeal, then tosses them into a huge black skillet full of boiling oil. While discussing the big pieces of pineapple upside-down cake on the counter, which she says she accidentally made with chocolate cake rather than yellow (how can such an accident occur?), she uses long tongs to poke at the frying mullet and roll it over in the oil, and pretty soon it is done. She hoists out both pieces at once, gives them a quick shake for excess oil to drain, then lays them down on a sheet of butcher paper, which has been placed atop a large page of newsprint. “Mustard?” Yes, indeed. She squirts the fish with zesty yellow sauce. “Hot sauce?” Yes, that, too. Atop the sauced fish go two slices of white bread. The package is gathered up in the butcher paper, then in the newspaper, and it is ready to take to a table, the car dashboard, or somewhere else to eat.

The mullet is oily and unctuous, a very rich fish, but also mild-tasting, scarcely fishy. It is much more about the delectable contrast of creamy meat and crunchy crust than it is about overwhelming flavor. It makes for an extremely messy and very satisfying sandwich. And that chocolate pineapple upside-down cake? We prefer the traditional yellow-cake version, but next time we visit, we’ll be happy to eat a few pieces of the chocolate one if Maria has once again made her baking mistake.

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