For decades, the historic old Deer Tongue Warehouse on May River Road had served as a silent reminder of Bluffton’s deep history – but little else. In a town whose population had exploded over the past five years, it was to newcomers simply an abandoned building.
To some who had been around a little longer, it was the old Pepper’s Porch, a restaurant that had somehow managed to squeeze itself into what was essentially an old shed. To a select few, memories still remained of a time when deer tongue plants hung in long lines, drying out to be blended in tobacco.
Abandoned or not, it was and is a piece of Bluffton history. You can imagine the reaction when it up and disappeared one day.
Thankfully, the panicked theories that it was being bulldozed under the march of Bluffton’s progress were quickly quelled. The Deer Tongue building would return, we learned, as the centerpiece of a magnificent new attraction geared toward telling the story of Bluffton’s Gullah Geechee. And at the center of it all would be a person who has a deeper respect for the town’s history than most, Bridgette Frazier, whose roots stretch back into forgotten history.
“I wanted a place where people understood that Bluffton is not a blip on the map. You can’t ignore us when you’re talking about Gullah culture,” she said. “The history here is rich, the culture is rich, the accomplishments are rich. And the area itself is just beautiful. I wanted people to fall in love with it in a way that those of us who get to see it on a daily basis fall in love with it.”
Bridgette Frazier is photographed at Ma Daisy’s with the Fish & Grits, a house specialty.
Surrounding the refurbished Deer Tongue building, Frazier and her partner in the business, Billy Watterson (the entrepreneur behind Burnt Church Distillery), have built an entire campus that celebrates Bluffton’s proud Gullah traditions. These traditions are so much more than a historic fascination; they represent a living, breathing culture that continues to evolve through food, music, and stories.
“The stories are being told. The history is being remembered,” Frazier said. “Those who were here to see it say that we are our ancestors’ wildest dreams. And here I am, actually having the opportunity to bring that back.”
Just to be clear on the nomenclature of the place, Ma Daisy’s Porch refers to the entire campus that has sprung up around the Deer Tongue building. That historic structure now serves as the Bluffton Gullah Cultural Heritage Center, filled with fascinating insight into the story that often goes untold of a people who were left here to fend for themselves when the scourge of slavery was wiped away. From the formation of the Gullah Co-Op oyster plant to Calhoun Street’s “Black Wall Street” and into the modern era, the building’s rich history serves as a fitting backdrop to an often-overlooked story of self-determination.
“When people come in here, we want them to be able to access and touch the culture in a way that’s still alive,” Frazier said. “The sense of pride that has been restored in so many people is inspiring to watch, because it’s like our stories are finally being told.”
Behind the Deer Tongue building, a soaring barn structure serves as a scaled-down version of Charleston’s famed city market. Like that Holy City landmark, this is a place where natives can keep the art of their culture alive, selling crafts and seagrass baskets that follow an artistic thread back to West Africa.
Beside it, a wide set of doors opens into Backus Bakery. Drawing inspiration from a nickname for Frazier’s father, the legendary Oscar Frazier, the bakery delights with the smell of fresh-baked baguettes, sourdough, focaccia, and muffins along with sizzling fresh doughnuts and beignets. Generally, people don’t associate Gullah food culture with baking, and that’s exactly the notion that Frazier wanted to challenge with this bakery.
“It’s kind of a reminder that our culture is not monolithic. The only thing that is consistent is that we’re going to create with whatever we’re given,” she said. “We’re just about the flavor profile, the adventure, and the journey of where it’s going to take us. But everything’s just made with love and that creativity.”
The centerpiece of the entire campus is a restaurant that serves as a four-walled love letter to the culinary creativity and endless hospitality of Frazier’s grandmother. Towering over the main dining room at Chef B’s, Ma Daisy smiles down from a mural, wearing her signature rubies and surrounded by the bounty of her cooking.
Her grandmother’s real influence, though, can be found on the plate, where Frazier has taken the elements of Gullah cooking, rooted in African tradition and refined by the rich harvest of the Lowcountry, and transformed them into something completely new. Classic Gullah dishes like red rice, gumbo, delicately fried shrimp, fried chicken layered in blissfully savory “Gullah sauce,” sweet potatoes, oysters, and catfish share a menu with more contemporary fare like B’s Vegan Burger, Da Geechee Jerk Salad, and truffle fries.
And because this is a Gullah restaurant, you’re going to need to learn a little of the vocabulary to order. Appetizers here are “Stawtem,” with lunch plates available as either the “Yawd Lunch” (De Biddie Plate, meaning chicken) or the “Crik Lunch” (creek lunch – think shrimp, clams, oysters, catfish). And be sure to ask about the “Rice ob de day.”
Juneteenth Summer Smash
“I love that because the menu also tells the story through the dialect,” Frazier said. “And even through things like the drink we have, the Blue Moon, which was one of Bluffton’s most well-known juke joints. You have little things like that which spark curiosity and lets us continue the story.”
She puts her own spin on Ma Daisy’s classics with dishes like the Geechee Surf and Turf – oxtails and shrimp on grits, topped with crab butter – or the spicy sweet Geechee wings.
“It’s kind of like Ma Daisy 2.0. The base of everything was inspired by her, and then as a mad scientist myself, I fuse it with other things,” Frazier said. “Because that’s what she did, creating new things from what came before. So, it’s like me taking it a step farther as well.”
On the plate and on every corner of the campus that surrounds Frazier’s restaurant, she has crafted a vision of what Gullah culture will look like as it endures. That vision is firmly rooted in, and reverently respectful of, the generations that came before her. It acknowledges their sacrifice and struggle, but lays the path toward a future where that sacrifice and struggle pays off – where the past, present, and future of a unique culture is celebrated.
