CHARLESTON — Longtime television weather personality Al Roker used a weekend visit to Charleston to spotlight two of the peninsula’s dining institutions, telling followers on social media that he had been served up great food at Chez Nous and Hannibal’s Kitchen after his appearances at the Up, Up & Read! Children’s Literary Festival.
Roker was in the Holy City from Sept. 10 through Sept. 12 as a featured guest of the free festival, which is hosted by the Charleston Library Society and The Book Drop and is aimed at helping children discover new books and connect with authors. His scheduled appearances included a Sept. 11 event tied to his animated children’s-television series and a Sept. 12 game-table session for the same show, in which he voices a meteorologist and father figure named Al Hunter.
His restaurant stops came in between those events. In a post the day after his Friday-night meal, Roker described a deconstructed shrimp niçoise and what he called the biggest pork chop he had ever eaten at Chez Nous, and on Sunday he singled out the crab rice at Hannibal’s Soul Kitchen.
Chez Nous, tucked into a hidden Payne Court cottage south of Broad, has been serving dishes drawn from southern France, northern Italy and northern Spain since 2014, and its handwritten daily menu changes with what is available at the market. Hannibal’s Kitchen has run out of its Blake Street home since 1985 and was once named to a national newspaper’s list of the country’s top 50 restaurants, a distinction that has kept a steady line at its lunch counter for four decades.
The festival also drew a slate of children’s authors and creators alongside Roker, including Chris Singleton, Antwan Eady and Lowey Bundy Sichol, all of whom appeared for the weekend’s book programming. Roker himself brought his latest release from the Weather Hunters series to the event, which uses characters from the animated show to introduce younger readers to weather science.
Both restaurants remain on their published operating schedules following the visit.
