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MOUNT PLEASANT — Boats sat idle in Shem Creek around noon July 2, as diners sauntered into restaurants along the crowded strip to peruse menus featuring all kinds of seafood, from crab to flounder to grouper.

Shrimp, a hotly debated topic in recent weeks, is offered fried, boiled, blackened or piled onto grits at many of the establishments in this popular tourist section of the Charleston area.

Just beyond Shem Creek's restaurant row, manager Sarah Fitch assisted customers outside Mt. Pleasant Seafood, a family-owned retailer founded in 1945. The market currently sells three types of shrimp.

One is locally sourced. Two are imported.

Mt. Pleasant Seafood's signage does not denote its shrimp as local or imported, but the staff is transparent with customers about where it's coming from, Fitch told The Post and Courier within earshot of patrons waiting in line.

But not every local business is being open about its sourcing methods, members of the shrimping industry allege.

About six miles away at another popular tourist area in downtown Charleston, the S.C. Shrimpers Association and its lawyer announced they had added the names of 25 Charleston area restaurants to an existing lawsuit that accused 40 establishments of selling imported shrimp while advertising them as being local or wild caught.

The 25 restaurants cited by name extend from Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant to downtown Charleston, up to North Charleston and Summerville, across West Ashley and out to Folly Beach. Some are widely known, with others less so.

Addressing reporters in front of the Pineapple Fountain at Waterfront Park, Bryan Jones and Rocky Magwood of the S.C Shrimpers Association and the organization's attorney, Gedney Howe IV, criticized the practice of passing off imported shrimp as local.

"It's obviously the shrimpers, like myself, Rocky, and the entire fleet throughout South Carolina, that are affected when they're undercut by restaurants not buying our shrimp and then purchasing imported shrimp and selling it as local," Jones said.

Those claims met pushback from members of the seafood industry, including some of the restaurants that have been singled out — with many denying they have done anything to directly mislead customers.

The cost of imported shrimp is significantly cheaper, said the managers at Red's Ice House, Tavern & Table and Sunsets Waterfront Dining, all located along Shem Creek. At other establishments, including Mt. Pleasant Seafood, owners said cost coupled with a lack of local availability create a need for imported shrimp.

The release of restaurant names came weeks after 40 out of 44 restaurants tested in the Charleston area were alleged to be misleading customers with the sale of imported shrimp. In announcing the initial results in June, SeaD Consulting of Texas publicly identified the four restaurants found to be selling local or wild-caught shrimp, and accurately advertised as such. Left out were the names of the 40 other establishments.

SeaD's testing was commissioned by the Southern Shrimp Alliance, an industry trade association based in Tarpon Spring, Fla. SeaD officials declined a Post and Courier interview request.

The names of the remaining 15 businesses aren't expected to be released in the immediate future.

Owners spotlighted by the research firm largely refuted the claims that they mislead customers. Questions remain about how SeaD Consulting carried out its testing, as well as what criteria were used in determining which restaurants to test and how conclusions were drawn.

Ongoing litigation

Testing results culminated with the Shrimpers Association filing a federal lawsuit on June 13 against all 40 restaurants initially accused of selling imported shrimp. An updated complaint was filed July 2 to name 25 businesses, but not the remaining ones.

It's unclear what the association, as well as SeaD Consulting, consider to be fraudulent. Howe said the Southern Shrimp Alliance, the group that funded the study, provided the restaurant list to the S.C. Shrimper’s Alliance.

SeaD officials would not address how the 44 places were selected to be tested, nor what the company considers to be fraudulent. SeaD's testing took place in late May, about a week before the commercial trawling season opened.

The lawsuit accuses the restaurants of false advertising and violating South Carolina's Unfair Trade Practices Act and the Lanham Act, a federal law that prohibits false advertising. According to the lawsuit, restaurant defendants "falsely advertised shrimp served in their establishments as 'local,' 'Carolina-caught' (and) 'fresh South Carolina shrimp,' among other misrepresentations."

"The SeaD Consulting results that we've been provided do not specify … which of the specific rules may have been violated to indicate that that facility had a violation. We've checked on every one that we've named, and we found things that we believe violated with the state of federal law," Howe said.

These are restaurants that SeaD Consulting determined were not actively advertising their shrimp as local, Howe said. Following a thorough review of menus, restaurant décor and marketing materials, The Post and Courier found no indications that many of the 25 restaurants explicitly claim to be selling wild-caught shrimp.

Some of the restaurants may not be familiar to the average Charleston diner. But the testing results paint a broad picture of alleged deceit in a restaurant industry reliant on places serving seafood.

SeaD’s list featured Dockside Charlie's, a virtual kitchen operating out of O’Charley's. It is only available through online delivery services.

"We take the quality and standards of our seafood very seriously," a spokesman for Dockside Charlie's said in a statement. "We have yet to be served anything related to the lawsuit in question and, as such, cannot comment on something which we have not seen. If and when we receive more information, we will, of course, investigate it fully."

The complaint also listed Poseidon's Playground, a food truck in North Charleston, that serves shrimp tacos. Its menu makes no claim that they are made with wild-caught shrimp.

Teri Turner, manager of a Cajun seafood restaurant in North Charleston called Crab Du Jour, said they make no such assertion. The business does not sell locally sourced shrimp and doesn't claim to, she said. Their shrimp comes frozen from an outside provider.

Turner said the restaurant only claims to offer fresh seafood, so she can't figure out why the group was targeting them.

"I think it is unfortunate that they have to lie," she said. "We do good business here, and we are very honest with our customers."

Red’s Ice House lists "local peel ‘n eat shrimp" in its Lowcountry boil, even though the restaurant acknowledged they are sourced from outside the U.S.

"That should have come off our menu a long time ago," said Skipper Kress, a manager at the Shem Creek restaurant. "We don’t get local shrimp right now."

Hyman’s Seafood, a downtown mainstay which draws a line down Meeting Street most days, does not claim to sell wild-caught shrimp in marketing materials. Some of its social media posts in the past, however, have alluded to local sourcing. Hyman’s ownership recognized that those posts implied that “we were serving fresh shrimp, when in fact we were serving imported shrimp at those times."

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Friday is the Fourth of July and Charleston Fire Department officials say they are gearing up and staying prepared for the long weekend ahead.

Before you light up the sky, it’s important to know the rules and regulations surrounding fireworks in your local area and keep in mind safety tips.

Although it is legal in the state of South Carolina to purchase fireworks if you are above the age of 16, some cities and counties still have their specific regulations and laws that limit both the sale and use of fireworks.

For example, you can set off fireworks in areas of Charleston County, but fireworks are not allowed within Charleston City limits, which includes most of the islands.

So, while the City of North Charleston and the Town of Mount Pleasant generally allow fireworks with some limitations on Independence Day, the rules are not the same for downtown.

The City of Charleston prohibits the use, sale, possession and discharge of any explosive fireworks within city limits. This does not apply to smaller items like sparklers or snap pops, but officials at the Charleston Fire Department warn these can still be dangerous.

“Kids love to use sparklers. They’re very popular at events and at barbecues, but they do burn very hot and the metal rod that is left over can actually be hot for quite a while. So every year, that’s actually one of the items that creates a lot of injuries for young kids. It’s not only the sparkler itself injuring somebody, but also the leftover rod that’s actually often dropped on the ground,” Mike Julazadeh, Deputy Chief Fire Marshall for the City of Charleston, said.

Julazadeh recommends watching professionally permitted shows instead of discharging fireworks yourself. He says the department is prepared for the holiday celebrations and will be out patrolling, but that it is still important to try to stay safe, follow ordinances and call 911 if necessary.

“One of the key things we do is monitor the planned shoots and activities... We often find [that] we’ll have an increase in call volume often for outside fires because people are discharging near dry brush grass or woodland areas and it is dry, it could be windy, and those fires can take off pretty quickly. So we got to be very careful on where you’re using items, not only in the city, but in the surrounding areas because that hazard is present for everyone,” Julazadeh said.

Julazadeh says if you disobey the ordinance within the City of Charleston, you could have the items confiscated and be charged with a misdemeanor. The charge can come with an over $1,000 fine and up to 30 days behind bars.

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MOUNT PLEASANT — Diners sat down for lunch at Tavern & Table moments after a July 2 press conference commenced that would rock Charleston's restaurant scene.

Wimbledon played on a row of screens behind the bar, where a few guests had grabbed a seat. Most had chosen tables with prime views of Shem Creek.

The 11-year-old restaurant pairs the waterfront scenery with crispy shrimp with Calabrian chili honey; peel and eat shrimp; and shrimp and grits, a Lowcountry staple.

Nowhere on the menu does it say the shrimp it's serving is local or wild-caught.

The restaurant doesn't — and has never — advertised the use of local shrimp, owner Andy Palmer told The Post and Courier. Tavern & Table sources a mix of U.S. and imported shrimp from US Foods, a restaurant supplier headquartered in Rosemont, Ill. Reasons for this include the large amount of shrimp the chefs roll through on a weekly basis and the cost of imported shrimp versus the catch brought in by South Carolina shrimpers, Palmer said.

Palmer was among other Charleston-area restaurateurs who fought back against claims they are misleading customers by passing off imported shrimp as local. The weekslong debate about a common practice across the Southeast came to a head July 2 when the S.C. Shrimpers Association and its lawyer announced they had added the names of 25 Charleston area restaurants to an existing lawsuit accusing 40 establishments of selling imported shrimp while advertising them as being local- or wild-caught.

Tavern & Table was among those named in the ongoing litigation.

"We don't say anywhere that we use locally-caught shrimp, so I'm not sure how we would mislead anybody," Palmer said. "We use as much local ingredients as possible."

The release came weeks after 40 out of 44 restaurants tested in the Charleston area by research firm SeaD Consulting were alleged to be misleading customers with the sale of imported shrimp. The Texas-based firm only publicly identified the four restaurants found to be selling local- or wild-caught shrimp, and accurately advertised as such, when the initial announcement was made in June.

SeaD's testing was commissioned by the Southern Shrimp Alliance. SeaD officials have declined a Post and Courier interview request. The Tarpon Spring, Fla.-based industry trade association has also failed to provide basic information about some of the restaurants they tested.

Page's Okra Grill, for instance, operates two brick-and-mortar restaurants in the Charleston area as well as a food truck, but SeaD has not stated which one was tested.

This, coupled with a lack of information about how the 44 places were selected to be tested and what SeaD considers to be fraudulent, has led to public outcry among local restaurateurs who said they have been unfairly targeted. In interviews with The Post and Courier and responses via social media, they defended their practices, sharing the reasons why they and others have come to rely on imported shrimp or a mix of imported and U.S.-caught.

Perhaps the most vehement of denials came from the owners of Page's Okra Grill, a mainstay eatery with locations in Mount Pleasant, Summerville and Moncks Corner that was among the 25 added to the suit. Its shrimp and grits has been featured on the Travel Channel and in Southern Living magazine.

In a July 2 Facebook post, ownership said it was "floored" to be named in the lawsuit and agreed that restaurants should not advertise the use of local shrimp on their menus. Page's does not make that claim, the owners wrote in a message that was met with more than 400 comments.

The restaurant serves wild-caught East Coast shrimp and "responsibly farmed imported shrimp," they said, adding that "hundreds of thousands of dollars" will be spent on wild-caught shrimp this year.

Page's serves about 3,000 pounds of shrimp each week, making sourcing a challenge, they said. Ownership previously tried using 100 percent East Coast shrimp several years ago, calling the experiment "a disaster from a supply standpoint and a severe hardship on labor to cut and devein shrimp often dropped on our doorstep hours before service."

Given this, they plan to continue using a mix of wild-caught and imported shrimp, and notifying customers who ask about this practice.

"We prefer to just focus on us and providing great Southern hospitality and serving up great quality Lowcountry recipes at fair pricing so people can afford a great dining experience when they walk through our doors," ownership wrote. "Like all families, our priority is supporting the 300 Lowcountry locals under our roof that make up our team at Page's."

Other restaurants respond

The 25 restaurants cited by name July 2 extend from Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant to downtown Charleston, up to North Charleston and Summerville, across West Ashley and out to Folly Beach. Several of the 25 readily admitted to using imported shrimp after the names were released at a press conference in downtown Charleston.

"We definitely don't do local shrimp, that's a fact," said Sunsets Waterfront Dining manager Adam Moran while referencing a menu that makes no mention of local shrimp.

The Shem Creek eatery has not served local shrimp since opening in 2023, Moran said. Frozen, farm-raised shrimp is purchased from a handful of large food purveyors, including Sysco, mostly because of costs and challenges with sourcing locally, Moran said.

Wreckfish Bar and Grill, operated by Charleston Hospitality Group, also acknowledged the use of imported shrimp while denying any claims that they have promoted or advertised it as wild-caught.

"We consistently use imported shrimp because it offers reliable quality, year-round availability, and is more cost-effective," ownership said via email in response to a series of questions from The Post and Courier. "We have never promoted our shrimp as wild-caught on any public platform — this includes our social media, website and press materials."

The S.C. Shrimpers Association's complaint, which was updated July 2 to include the 25 names, also listed Poseidon's Playground, a food truck in North Charleston that serves shrimp tacos. Its menu makes no claim that they are made with wild-caught shrimp.

"I am not sure why these claims were made or why the 'testing' was done from the start if our menu does not claim 'locally harvested,' 'local seafood,' local shrimp' or any related terms," owner Jonathan Castro wrote in an email.

A day after the restaurants were named in the lawsuit, attorneys for the S.C. Shrimpers Association announced that they’ve already reached a resolution with one restaurant, Hyman’s Seafood.

Owners of the well-known Charleston seafood establishment told the Post and Courier an outside marketing team shared social media posts that implied Hyman’s was serving local shrimp. Hyman’s menus and marketing materials, however, do not claim to sell wild-caught shrimp.

A July 3 press release from Gedney Howe IV, attorney for the SCSA, announced the organization reached a resolution with Hyman’s, whose owners “reaffirmed their commitment to transparency.”

“While we understand the concerns raised, we’ve also listened, learned, and made the decision to do more, because we believe in doing right by our customers, and by our community,” owners Victor and Tobias Hyman said in the press release.

In a coastal city with a reputation partially built on its shrimp and grits, Charleston favorites like Hyman’s Seafood, Page’s Okra Grill and Charleston Crab House are now under fire for alleged misrepresentation of product.

In May, 44 randomly selected restaurants in the Charleston area were part of an eight-state testing commissioned by the Southern Shrimp Alliance to identify the origin of the shrimp served.

According to test results by SeaD Consulting, four of the 44 restaurants were selling locally caught shrimp and the rest were selling imported shrimp. Thirteen restaurants were unnamed because they didn’t advertise their shrimp as local, according to a news release from SeaD Consulting. But 25 others were called out for misrepresenting the origin of their shrimp. An SC Biz News glance at the social media and online menus of some of those restaurants, including all three named above, found no claims that their shrimp were local, however.

After results were released, the South Carolina Shrimpers Association announced a federal lawsuit concerning the misrepresentation of shrimp origins, according to Bryan Jones, the vice president of the SCSA.

“There have been a lot of restaurants who have reached out that want to do the right thing,” Jones said. “One question I would have for some of the other restaurants, particularly if it becomes an availability issue, is why choose imported instead of getting shrimp from Georgia, North Carolina or the Gulf when its readily available?”

Jones said the shrimpers in the association have tied up boats and stopped working overtime because of an increase in imported shrimp. All shrimpers with the SCSA are small businesses.

“Any restaurant can sell whatever they want, but they have to be honest about it,” said Gedney Howe IV, attorney for the South Carolina shrimpers. “We don’t have a problem with people selling imported shrimp, but we do have a problem with them selling imported shrimp that they say are local.”

The SCSA lawsuit claims violations of both the federal Lanham Act and the South Carolina Unfair Trade Practices Act.

“It’s become clear to me that this is not an isolated problem,” Howe said. “We are witnessing an issue of misrepresentation of outsourcing and a disregard for the people who have fed our communities for generations.”

Jones said even though switching to imported shrimp might be more convenient, the practice also runs the risk of health problems such as bacteria resistant to colistin, a last-resort antibiotic.

“There is absolutely a public health concern,” Jones said. “One of the things we would hate to have happen is somebody gets sick believing they are eating our shrimp when they have consumed imported shrimp unknowingly,”

The four restaurants in the sampling who were selling locally sourced shrimp in Charleston are Acme Lowcountry Kitchen, Coosaw Creek Crab Shack, Grace & Grit and Rappahannock Oyster Bar, according to the study.

In some cases restaurants on the water, such Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant, were selling imported shrimp while customers are overlooking shrimp boats.

In the eight-state study being conducted by SeaD Consulting, laws are shown to make a difference in holding restaurants accountable for what their menus advertise. States lacking restaurant labeling laws have shown to have an 80% inauthenticity rate vs. only 34% in states that have restaurant labeling laws in place, according to the release. Currently, there is no restaurant labeling law or pending legislation in the state of South Carolina, the release said.

The list of restaurants that SeaD says was not selling local shrimp includes:

The other 15 restaurants in the sampling process are unidentified. The SCSA suggests customers request to see sourcing containers when ordering shrimp claimed to be locally sourced.