South Carolina's Okàn Puts Southern and World History on a Plate
Hearth Okra with okra, harissa, lemon.
IF YOU’RE HEADING OUT OF SAVANNAH, string together Highways 17 and 46, bending toward the town of Bluffton, perched on the May River. This is all deep in the Lowcountry, the coastal landscape where Georgia and South Carolina entwine in a Southern picturesque of live oaks, Spanish moss, and massive verandas—ethereal, yet haunting in its antebellum echoes.
Okàn opened last June on a quiet Bluffton street, a few blocks off the river, the work of executive chef Bernard Bennett, a James Beard semi-finalist with a long track record in Chicago. Along with business partner Matt Cunningham, Bennett is thoughtfully guiding his diners through 400 years of culinary and agricultural history. “Okàn” is Yoruban for “art” or “soul,” and its menus pay homage to foodways linking continental Africa to the Caribbean, South America and the American South as a result of the Transatlantic slave trade. (A layer of irony: Okàn stands on a street named for slave-owning 19th century politician John C. Calhoun.)
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"Most of our ancestors landed in the Caribbean and Brazil," explains Bennett. "To me, we don’t claim that in our ancestry. And I wanted to create dishes that honored that."
Bennett’s seasonal menu includes Caribbean staples such as Jamaica’s curried oxtail and Haiti’s pork griot—his personal translations of iconic dishes. A starter from a menu section called “greetings” might include berbere-spiced watermelon and blue crab salad. Entrees are categorized as Hearth, Land, Sea, and Earth, with dishes such as pastelon—a hearty square of Puerto Rican “lasagna” layered with strips of plantains, ground beef, tomato gravy and goat feta—or a lobster tail cloaked in a velvety cashew curry.
Bennett's inclusion of four starches on the menu, including Carolina gold rice (first cultivated by enslaved Africans), Sea Island peas and rice, and fonio (a Senegalese ancient grain resembling couscous), tells the story of how essential grains are to sustaining Africans and their descendants throughout time and place. This is a restaurant where you also must order the bread, especially the tender coco rolls baked and served in cast iron skillet alongside a seasonal jelly like pepper or tomato. A fall menu might include Bennett’s interpretations of egusi stew, traditionally thickened with melon seeds, along with fufu, an elastic, pounded starch that functions as a flavorful vehicle for scooping.
Sunday evenings, Okàn regulars head straight for the bar to catch up and settle in for a four-course prix fixe and “tiny bar concert” of sweet soul music. To Bennett, the scene embodies his vision for this restaurants nestled in a storied landscape. “I want to build community and give people an experience,” the chef says. “I also want you to be blown away by the food.”
