Delectable Delight

***THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED***

On Edgefield’s town square in a storefront so small that it’s easy to walk right past without noticing, Delectable Delight is a modest place with a kitchen that is constantly amazing. That’s not to say that the menu is exotic or cutting-edge. On the contrary. This is people’s food, ordinary fare, but ordinary fare made with extraordinary skill.

That’s ordinary by deep-Dixie standards, which for people from other parts of the country can be a culinary adventure. For instance, tomato pie — a rarity in most of the U.S. — is not uncommon in these parts, where produce grows so well and through such a long season. Delectable Delight’s tomato pie is one of the best. Laced with herbs and vividly spiced, it balances sweet tomatoes, creamy cheese, and savory crust in symphonic harmony.

Vegetable casseroles also are a typically southern thing, known for their inclusion of all sorts of luxurious non-vegetable enhancements. The broccoli casserole served here (for Sunday supper) is a powerhouse, rich with cheese and veined with strips of saltine cracker that soften into a wonderful wheaty complement for bite-size green crowns that retains just the right al dente crunch.

On the subject of broccoli, broccoli salad might be the #1 must-eat dish on the everyday menu. For all its ribbons of bacon and an abundance of sweet craisins and bits of red onion, it remains a celebration of broccoli, the flavor and texture of which dominate.

The goodness of broccoli salad signifies what is unique about Delectable Delight food. Even those menu items that don’t promise to be special turn out to be different enough from ordinary versions to be memorable. Every dish has a vivid personality that reveals a fine hand in the kitchen. Examples: peach cobbler with pastry so soft and elegant you want to call it foamy; pulled pork that veritably hums with the perfume of sweet mesquite smoke; brisket spiced with a rainbow of flavors that are reminiscent of Jamaican jerk seasoning; chicken salad sweetened with bread & butter pickle bits; pimento cheese with olive snap; Sunday-supper roast beef so ridiculously tender that even a fork edge seems brutal.

Chef / owner Terrell Bush watches over her little domain with welcoming good cheer. She knows many of the customers who come for lunch and nearly all who stop by for Sunday supper. The Sunday I visited, three different tables were occupied by three separate families, each of which had come to celebrate a birthday.

Delectable Delight is a feel-good place with food in a class of its own.