Story by Page Leggett | Photos courtesy of Peter Frank Edwards
Talk of great food cities in the two Carolinas always includes Charleston. It frequently includes Raleigh and Asheville, and, in recent years, Greenville, South Carolina.
Rarely does it include Florence, the Pee Dee region city of 40,000 that’s two hours and 20 minutes from Raleigh. Unless you’re talking to Matt Lee or Ted Lee, brothers and food industry A-listers, that is.
The authors of James Beard Award–winning cookbooks and 2019’s Hotbox: Inside Catering, the Food World’s Riskiest Business are Charleston natives. But they’re also longtime evangelists for Florence’s food scene. Matt called the Pee Dee “a distinct cultural region unto itself.” He and Ted have been repeatedly drawn back to it ever since their first visit for an assignment for Travel + Leisure in 1999.
They’ve known since then what I only discovered on my first trip in 2024. I went for festival headliner Vivian Howard and came away wowed—by her and Florence.
Florence “has a vibrant, nascent food scene with real energy, and special spaces even Charleston doesn’t have,” Ted says. That’s a reference to a ramen shop tucked in the back of a gaming parlor. (See? Florence is full of surprises.) Heroes Hideout looks like it wouldn’t have anything more than a vending machine sandwich. Instead, you’ll find wakame seaweed salad, mochi ice cream, and other delicacies.
So when “The Lee Bros.” were approached about headlining the Florence Wine & Food Festival a few years back, they said they wanted more than a one-time gig. They joined as executive producers, lending the fledgling festival instant credibility.
Blenheim and a ‘boggy’ favorite
They already knew the Pee Dee had distinct foodways that “spring from the soil, the rivers, and the climate,” Matt says. “There’s a longstanding dryland rice-cultivating tradition; a wealth of dove and deer; a shad run in the spring.” He also cites chicken bog, a stew that originated in the area. Made with chicken, rice, and usually smoked sausage—although some versions omit pork—it’s typically made in a big pot and cooked “low and slow” for hours. When served at a church supper or Jaycees fundraiser, as it often is, a giant vat is required.
Then there’s Blenheim Ginger Ale, bottled just down the road in Hamer, South Carolina. Pee Dee residents are as proud of it as New Bern folks are to claim Pepsi and Atlantans are Coca-Cola. Created in the 1890s by Dr. C.R. May when he mixed Jamaican ginger and sugar with local mineral water, it’s a spicy tonic that’s a very distant cousin from any grocery store ginger ale.
Flo: Just right for a festival
Downtown Florence has undergone a gradual renaissance over the past three decades to become what Matt calls “a perfect arena for many types of festivals, but especially a food and wine festival, given the concentration of culinary excellence.” If good things come in small packages, then it follows that top-notch food festivals happen in small towns.
“At larger festivals, sometimes the quality—especially of the wine—can suffer because of the volume,” Matt says. “At our scale, hovering at around 3,000 tickets for the weekend, it’s a wonderful experience for ticket-holders. It’s magic to be served something by the person who made it,” he adds. “That’s the quintessential festival moment. And if you can have that while not waiting in a long line and without too much background noise, it’s a special luxury.”
That’s what this festival offers.This year marks the fifth year the Lees have been involved and brought in a big-name headliner. Nathalie Dupree, the late chef, cookbook author, and promoter of Southern cooking, was the first. She was followed by restaurateurs and celebrity chefs Katie Button (Asheville’s Cúrate), Vivian Howard (Lenoir in Charleston, The Counter @ Chef & the Farmer in Kinston), and Rodney Scott (Rodney Scott’s BBQ in Charleston).
Sean Brock headlines this year. The 2010 James Beard Award winner for “Best Chef/Southeast” (perhaps best known as founding executive chef at Charleston’s Husk) has other ventures, including Joyland, which puts a fancy twist on fast food.
Drink up
Wine still plays a big role in the weekend, but “it’s not a bacchanal,” Matt says. “Festival founders [Tim Norwood and Frank Chisholm] mandate that the beverage part be as educational as possible.” Micky Finn’s, an alcohol distributor/retailer and the festival’s largest supporter, “fuels a great focus on wine education and ensures we have the best quality of everything,” Matt says.
Ray Isle, the executive wine editor of Food & Wine and wine and spirits editor for Travel + Leisure, has led wine tastings every year since 2022.
It’s rare for a festival this size to have a beverage director, but this one has Sam Tinsley, “a well-known wine expert, importer, and sometime bartender at Apple Annie’s [Deli & Pub], a classic, beloved dive bar in Florence,” Matt says. Another big name attached to the 2026 festival is Danica Patrick, this year’s wine headliner. Best known for her success as a Nascar driver, Patrick is now retired from racing and owns a winery, Somnium, in Napa.
Come hungry
The festival offers plenty of events to choose from, but not so many that you’ll leave exhausted. Meat & Meander, the Thursday evening welcome party, is a movable feast with tasting stations that emphasize outdoor cooking, grilling, smoking, and barbecuing. After Friday’s headliner event, the Sip + Savor Wine Stroll allows you to stroll downtown Florence, popping into boutiques and other retailers for wine and appetizers.
Saturday’s Grand Tasting is what Matt calls “the heart of the festival.” If you can go to only one event, this is it, because, he said, “For a very reasonable price point, you can experience so much—tastings, entertainment, demonstrations, music—it’s all there. And it’s all you can eat and drink over three hours.”
Two downtown hotels—Hotel Florence and Hyatt Place Florence Downtown—make a great home base for your Florence stay and allow you to walk to all of the festival events.
Savor the flavor of the Pee Dee. Learn more and buy tickets for the festival that celebrates Florence’s food scene at florencewineandfood.com.
GOOD EATS YEAR-ROUND
The festival offers a great introduction to Florence’s foodways. But it’s not the only time to visit for unforgettable dining.
If you have two nights to spend, dine at Town Hall one night and Victors, the independent restaurant inside Hotel Florence, the other. Both do farm-to-table and seasonal beautifully. And Victors has a new look after a major renovation and a new menu.
The Dispensary, the rooftop bar above Town Hall, offers the best views in town.
Some of the city’s casual spots are culinary standouts. Matt likes Buddy’s (buddysflorence.com) and its companion, Martha’s Ice Cream, as well as the pizza from the woodburning oven at Rebel Pie. Palmetto Bakeshop, another Matt-approved spot, is a “one-woman operation open just Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The laminated pastries are what you’d expect to find in Paris or London.”
He calls Chocobella one of the top chocolatiers in the nation, adding that “everything is made in-house, and it’s very fancy and delicate Swiss-style couverture.” (That’s chocolate that owes its creamy texture and flavor to its higher percentage of cocoa butter.) The owners experiment with unusual flavors. For instance, to honor The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, they created a boiled peanut–flavored bonbon.
Grab a craft beer at Local Motive Brewing Company. And if you ever dined at Asheville’s iconic-but-now-closed Buxton Hall Barbecue, you’ll rejoice that Elliott Moss—the James Beard–nominated chef/pitmaster who ran the kitchen there—moved back to his hometown and opened Elliott’s BBQ Lounge inside the sprawling brewery.
The next time the topic of great food cities in the Carolinas comes up, don’t let Charleston grab all the glory. Florence—the other Florence, that is—is becoming a dining destination.
