Conway celebrates ‘Eat South Carolina Grits Day’

Pam Soles doesn’t need National Grits Day to savor the creamy porridge of the South.

Could be a Saturday, or a Wednesday. Or, as was the case last week, Friday, when she enjoyed some jalapeno grit cakes at Conway’s Rivertown Bistro.

“I’m Southern bred,” said the Tabor City, N.C., native. “I’ve eaten it all my life. I mean, I love grits. ... I grew up eating them, just boiling them in a pot.”

As for National Grits Day, Soles got a kick out of the fact that April 14, Tuesday, is set aside for the celebrating the country staple.

For the uninitiated, grits are, simply put, ground corn. Yet they are treasured in South Carolina, where the annual World Grits Festival was held in the town of St. George last week.

Locally, Conway Mayor Alys Lawson made the day official last week, signing a proclamation establishing Tuesday as “Eat South Carolina Grits Day.”

Like many Southerners, Lawson was raised on the comfort food.

“Oh, lord yeah,” she said. “I had them almost every morning, grits or oatmeal one, but grits particularly.”

While Lawson’s mother preferred standard boiled grits seasoned with salt and pepper, the mayor likes hers with chicken stock and cream cheese.

“You always have to add a little heavy cream and some butter to make sure they’re creamy enough,” she said. “That’s the way my kids like them. I really jazz them up like that.”

Grits mean more to the Dormans of Galivants Ferry than most folks in Horry County. Their livelihood comes from grinding corn at Palmetto Farms, which sells grits to grocery stores and specialty shops, as well as ex-pat Southerners living abroad.

Devin Dorman, who works for the company with his father and brother, said his great-grandfather started milling corn in the 1930s. That tradition has continued, and over the last 10 years it’s evolved into a retail store and wholesale business.

Palmetto Farms goes through about 20,000 pounds of corn every two weeks. The company makes yellow grits, white grits, cornmeal and other mixes.

Before he joined the family business in 2011, Dorman worked in the IT field. He admits that when he was younger he didn’t expect to be making grits age 27.

“People ask me what I do,” he said. “The answer normally is, ‘Well, I grind corn.’ And that’s sort of a simplistic answer. .... It doesn’t sound like a very glamorous title, but I’d say I feel more fulfilled doing this than anything else that I’ve done.”

Soles, of Tabor City, said many years ago her family grew their own corn and ground their own grits on their farm. But now, like most Southerners, she just eats them, usually with a lot of butter or stewed tomatoes.

“It’s one of my favorite foods,” she said.

Her lunch partner, Stacie Banks, also slathers her grits in butter or margarine. Although Banks lives in Austin, Texas, now, she grew up in the Carolinas and prefers her grits the way she’s enjoyed them since childhood.

That, she said, has as much to do with what you won’t add to them as what you will.

“True Southerners don’t really use the sweet stuff,” she said. “A lot of people like maple syrup. We don’t do that. That’s up North.”

This story was originally published April 14, 2015 at 8:00 PM with the headline "Conway celebrates ‘Eat South Carolina Grits Day’."