#19   SOUTH CAROLINA – Breakfast With The Lycra Crowd

It was a beautiful Saturday morning in Greenville, South Carolina and we wanted to get out and walk after breakfast before getting on the road to our next destination. Breakfast needed to be quick and easy without having to deal with the usual Saturday morning crowded restaurants. We decided to forego the usual breakfast practice of being seated, perusing a menu, and giving our order to a server.  Instead we decided on a place that was half café, half grocery store.

Swamp Rabbit Cafe
Greenville, South Carolina

AMBIENCE:  The Swamp Rabbit Café, located just outside downtown Greenville, sits next to a 20 mile rails-to-trails paved path called the Swamp Rabbit Trail. The café and the grocery store share the same building but are in different connecting rooms. There are a few tables inside the café and a couple of picnic tables outside. You get in line and order at the cash register which is parked next to a glass case containing all sorts of enticing baked goods. Then you wait until a young man with a voice that could sink a ship yells out your name and hands you the goods. 

As we ate and sipped our beverages, we watched the people in line and it became very apparent that the café’s customer base was made up entirely of walkers, joggers, and bicyclists, from the trail. There was enough spandex in that line to stretch from the café to the North Carolina border. There were singles, families, and small groups, all who looked extremely fit and healthy. These looked like the type of customers who might truly enjoy drinking one of the Café’s offering: The Vegan Hulk Smoothie made with almond milk, avocado, apple, banana, and kale. These looked like the type of customers who could order an organic pastry (is that an oxymoron?) without any guilt because they just biked 20 miles pulling a trailer filled with rosy cheeked toddlers.

We really liked the informality of the place. Everyone was polite, cheerful, and sweaty.

5 out of 5 stars.

FOOD:  I got in line to order our breakfast while The Healthy One went over to the grocery store in search of yogurt.  She wanted me to get her a cinnamon bun roll. I guess with no granola on the menu, a cinnamon bun was the next best thing. As I neared the register I noticed this free sample of bread and olive oil:

This was like putting treats in front of a dog. Fortunately, there was a family of five in front of me putting in a large order so that I had time to dunk four or five of these babies in olive oil and ingest. I hoped no one was videoing taping this frantic action.

I did notice on a chalkboard above the counter that there was one non-pastry breakfast item – an egg and cheese sandwich. Since I half believed the Healthy One would give me part of her cinnamon bun, I eschewed the pastries and ordered the sandwich.

The egg and cheese sandwich came on Stecca bread which was unfamiliar to me (but may have been what I was tasting in line). Google told me that Stecca is Italian for “stick”, reflecting the baguette style of the bread. This bread didn't look like a stick but more like a branch or small log. The sandwich was excellent with the bread being the highlight.

When The Healthy One came back with her yogurt she had a funny expression on her face. “What’s wrong?”  I asked.  She said that the little 6 oz. container cost $3.00. “Are you kidding me?” I said. She wasn’t kidding me. This was Atlanta Fresh Greek Yogurt – Artisan. I believe “artisan” is Latin for overpriced. Trader Joe’s Greek Yogurt is about 19 cents an ounce. This stuff was 50 cents an ounce! I guess that’s the price you pay for probiotic rich, non-GMO yogurt made from humanely treated, fully pastured, grass fed Georgia cows. We hoped at 50 cents an ounce, it had the ability to counteract the calories in the cinnamon bun.

She reported that  the yogurt tasted fine and the cinnamon bun was delicious and she even let me have a substantial piece.

4 1/2 out of 5 stars

COFFEE:  The Swamp Rabbit Café served Counter Culture Coffee.  This coffee roaster, based in Durham NC, has a national reputation among coffee aficionados.  It was excellent. Too bad they didn’t give free refills but I’m starting to realize that usually free refills = mediocre coffee. The Healthy One got a de-caf cappuccino made with Counter Culture Coffee and Happy Cow Milk. No word on whether these were happy Georgia cows or happy South Carolina cows.

 5 stars out of 5

SERVICE:  Self-serve.

COST: $17.58 with tax.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT GREENVILLE:  Greenville is an impressive little city of 62,000 people. It has been lauded in a number of publications for everything from its quality of life to its impressive economic growth.

Throughout the late 19^th century and until the 1960s, Greenville was widely known as the “Textile Center of the World”. During the 1960s and 1970s many cities, including Greenville saw their manufacturing jobs evaporate, leaving vacant factories and stores, and causing massive population migration out of the central downtown areas.

The city leaders didn’t sit idly by but began to envision a plan to revitalize the downtown area. Thirty years of urban planning and public-private investment partnerships have paid big dividends. Downtown Greenville has busy restaurants and retail stores, high-end hotels, bars, theaters, residential offerings, public art, and riverfront pathways. Businesses located in Greenville including Michelin’s North American headquarters and Lockheed Martin’s Aircraft & Logistics Center.

The centerpiece of the downtown area is Falls Park. The park showcases the Reedy River and large waterfalls that once powered some of the textile mills. Forty years ago, the falls were hidden beneath a four lane highway bridge. That was demolished and replaced with a dramatic pedestrian walkway over the falls.

The Swamp Rabbit Trail is a big deal. It’s used by more than 400,000 people a year and has spawned a significant number of small businesses along the trail. A swamp rabbit, by the way, is a large cottontail rabbit found in the swamps and wetlands of the Southern United States. Those of a certain age may remember that President Jimmy Carter was “attacked” by a swamp rabbit while fishing from a boat.  We didn’t encounter any swamp rabbits when we used the trail.

BURN THOSE BREAKFAST CALORIES OFF:

We rented bikes and road the 40 mile round trip Swamp Rabbit Trail. We also took a side trip off the trail and rode through the campus of Furman University. We did some walking around downtown Greenville.

November 5, 2016

NEXT UP: North Carolina