Chimney Sweep in Knightsville, SC

SUMMERVILLE — Tables begin to fill up just past noon at a restaurant 31 miles from downtown Charleston.

Surrounded by chain eateries in a Publix-anchored strip mall, La Cuisine Du Chevalier — or La Chev, as most call it — has the buzz of an energetic lunch crowd ready for some midday human interaction.

A trio of women attempt to corral four children while dunking grilled bread into large white bowls of bouillabaisse, brimming with mussels, shrimp and white fish, all steeping in saffron broth.

Empty black shells are pushed aside at another round mahogany table, where two friends catch up over mussels and glasses of iced tea.

A man sitting solo at a two-top finishes his meal and tells the server he will be back next week.

These are the sights and sounds of a restaurant that’s become a neighborhood lunchtime favorite less than a year after quietly opening in November 2022.

I would have never found La Chev without a tip from a colleague, but I’m glad I came. That satisfaction extends to residents of the Knightsville and Summerville area, who have thanked owner Jason Tucker for bringing his Southern take on French cuisine to them rather than downtown Charleston.

“A lot of people were confused about why I did it here,” said Tucker, a Summerville resident. “I saw the direction of where the homes are going.”

Tucker struck out on his own after cutting his professional teeth at restaurants in Charleston’s French Quarter. Inside the strip center space that previously housed a Ladles sandwich and soup shop, the Johnson & Wales University graduate is teaming up with La Chev’s chef de cuisine, Jonathan DuPriest, who grew up in Knightsville.

Whether it’s crab dip with grilled bread or seared scallops over French onion cheese risotto, DuPriest is consistently coming up with new daily specials that the restaurant posts on its Facebook page, which takes the place of an actual website.

La Chev boasts separate lunch and dinner menus, but there are several crossovers, including the shrimp and grits, crab croquettes and yellowfin tuna — a dish that stood out after two visits to the restaurant.

The lightly-seared tuna, served cold, rests on a steaming hot medley of chopped asparagus, corn, confit tomato and cubed bacon. A speckled cream sauce pulls the vegetables together, adding sweet smokiness to the fresh but mild fish.

“It doesn’t just play with your taste buds, it plays with the temperature sensitivities of your palate, as well,” Tucker said.

With a nice crust and firm pink center, the tuna hits all corners of my mouth, leaving soft, peppery spice behind. Though served as an appetizer, I enjoyed it as my full meal with an order of duck coq au vin dumplings — a fun riff on a French classic — on the side.

During dinner, the white tablecloths are brought out and topped with larger appetizers and mains that allow for some “Lowcountry liberties,” Tucker said.

For instance, crab croquettes are more petite crab cake than filled-and-fried roll, but the flawed descriptor doesn’t take away from each delicate bite. Paired with a light and bright diced cucumber salad, the patties’ crab-to-filler ratio favors the former.

A trio of cheese-adorned meatballs, floating in tomato ragù and served with small wedges of garlic bread, is another appetizer that satisfies without reinventing the wheel.

The same can often be said for the restaurant’s dinner entrees.

Roasted salmon, stuffed with crab and served atop crisp green beans, is one example of an expertly cooked daily special. On the side, Carolina Gold rice is bound with cheese to form a thick patty, bringing substance and salt to the Southern grains.

Steak, which appears to have been marinated and spent some time in the oven, makes up for a lack of crust with a juicy, tender texture — almost reminiscent of the roasted filet of beef my mother serves at Christmas.

Of the six dishes I sampled at La Chev, each one left me without complaints.

There isn’t much in the way of décor, more noticeable during a Monday night dinner service that saw just two occupied tables between 5:45 and 6:45 p.m. This was a far cry from the crowded lunch service I witnessed weeks before, making me ponder if ownership might consider closing their doors on Monday, typically the slowest dining day of the week.

It also made me wonder if this type of restaurant — a place that skirts the line between neighborhood establishment and one worthy of a special night out — can work in this location.

I remain optimistic.

While it’s just four miles from the town’s top restaurants — Laura, Bexley and La Rustica, among others — it’s less crowded and closer to home for many Summerville restaurants.

And as those who have dined at La Chev have likely realized, there isn’t anything like it in Knightsville.

Dorchester County is continuing with its plans for a large-scale rezoning effort to stop the over-building of additional apartment complexes and townhomes.

At a County Council meeting Monday, members voted and approved the rezoning of dozens of parcels of land from multi-family residential to mostly single-family. Under single-family zoning, property owners aren’t allowed to build apartments or townhomes.

Knightsville LLC is a property owner with plans for building townhomes that was exempt from the rezoning ordinance after filing a complaint in county court. County officials say there have also been some additional complaints from residents about the rezoning.

“The complaint from Knightsville LLC held more significance because of the level of investment involved,” said Kiera Reinertsen, the county planning and zoning director.

In 2004, the county’s zoning ordinance was amended and led to an increase in approvals of multi-family zoning.

After hearing complaints about traffic, infrastructure and flooding during the organizing of its 2018 Comprehensive Plan, the county announced mass rezoning plans for multi-family spaces.

According to officials, most of the property owners under the rezoning project already live within single-family spaces. The project will help bring property owners who have spaces for commercial use into compliance. Using a property for commercial use is not permitted in a single-family residential district.

The project will also help balance population densities and available county infrastructure.

Some of the multi-family areas highlighted for rezoning include property southeast of Ladson Road toward North Charleston and between Ladson Road and Central Avenue in Knightsville.

In April, Knightsville LLC filed a complaint in the county court over proposed rezoning. The owner had purchased three parcels of land off of Central Avenue in Knightsville with the goal of building townhomes.

In the complaint, the owner alleged that the rezoning plans undermined and violated their investment-backed expectations and denied them the right to pursue a planned development project.

During the Monday meeting, attorney Ellis Lesemann spoke on behalf of Knightsville LLC. He said they paid just under $1.1 million for the land in 2019. He also argued that there is enough infrastructure in place to develop the project.

“They’ve been incurring permit fees, legal fees, engineering, doing a wetlands delineation and going through other types of carrying costs to bring that project forward,” he said.

Lesemann said his client learned about the rezoning plans for their property in February. After a Monday executive session, the council agreed to exclude property under Knightsville LLC from its rezoning ordinance.

“We were pleased to be able to resolve the matter with the county,” Lesemann said.

Future approval of multi-family zoning will be based on the county’s available infrastructure and future land use.

The area above Central Avenue in Knightsville is next on the county’s list of mass rezoning. The county’s planning commission is scheduled to meet on Oct. 8 to review proposed rezonings.

A County Council public hearing is expected to follow on a later date. Officials say property owners impacted by the rezoning should’ve already been notified.

Many owners have likely received a flier on their property notifying them about the rezoning.

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. (WCBD) – It was 1973 when Shirley McGreal, then living in Southeast Asia, saw beady bright eyes staring back at her from between the slats of a wooden crate.

The eyes belonged to a gibbon — a primate native to the region — who had fallen victim to the dangerous world of the pet trade, where gibbons were being sold into homes, zoos, or labs, only to later be discarded.

In 1977, McGreal created the International Primate Protection League (IPPL) in Summerville as a gibbon sanctuary. The now 47-acre property remains nestled in a quiet area of the Lowcountry that is illuminated by the sounds of the primates singing to one another.

Meg McCue-Jones, the Compliance and Outreach Manager, explained that the land was a sod farm in the late 70s and started taking in the gibbons that needed help soon after.

One of the sanctuary’s residents, Gibby, is one of the oldest known living gibbons at over 60 years old.

Like most of the gibbons at the sanctuary, his life started off rough.

McCue-Jones said that Gibby was wild caught, and “with every gibbon wild caught, they shoot mom out of the tree, hoping baby falls, and then they take the baby.”

He was first sold into the pet trade in by a Bangkok dealer, but that was just the beginning. Gibby went to labs at Hofstra University and the State University at Stony Brook.

Researchers embedded electrodes in his skin as part of a locomotion project.

The electrodes and thin wires were inserted into his muscles and connected him to a suit that would measure his muscle movements. McCue-Jones explained that this was obviously not an ideal situation on any aspect, whether it be a human or animal.

At 44, Gibby made it to his first sanctuary, but the conditions were hard on his body. In March of 2007, just four years after his arrival, the IPPL reached out to the sanctuary to relocate not only Gibby, but several other gibbons.

For Gibby, like the other 29 at the sanctuary, Summerville is his last stop. McCue-Jones says that the sanctuary is their forever home.

But with the pandemic, their home has become more difficult to manage.

With fear of COVID-19 spreading to the primates, volunteers were no longer allowed to assist with the many daily tasks necessary to keep the place running.

From hosing the outsides of the enclosures, to raking, food prep, and even assistance inside the office—the staff was left with mounting responsibilities.

The economic impacts of the pandemic left donors and community partners reeling financially, but the bills at the sanctuary remained steady.

As a non-federally funded organization, the IPPL relies heavily on donations to meet the needs of the animals.

Stacy Lambert, a Senior Animal Care Giver, said that since a lot of their population has started to reach geriatric ages, their vet bills are getting bigger as they are having more interventions and medications, different procedures, and checkup appointments with Dr. John Ohlandt.

While expensive, their system of care has proven to work.

Lambert says that in the wild, gibbons usually live about 30-35 years. However, in captivity, gibbons living into their 40s is normal. However, the IPPL has quite a few gibbons that are up in their 40s and 50s while, of course, Gibby is 62.

Although the interventions from the IPPL show the ability of the sanctuary, McCue-Jones said all those at the IPPL ultimately wish there was not a need for them at all, and that the gibbons could live freely in the wild.

McCue-Jones said, “as Shirley has spoken of before, if you really think about it, do humans need sanctuaries, should we have them? Should we be treating the animals this way?”

To send the Gibbons a care package full of nuts, click here.

To donate to the IPPL’s missions and day-to-day operations, click here.

To send specified items needed by the IPPL via Amazon, click here.

Jason Tucker reports that business is booming at the boîte known as La Cuisine du Chevalier, or La Chev, by the locals. The 40-seat restaurant, which translates to “the knight’s kitchen,” garnered rave reviews by online contributors when it opened in November at the former soup restaurant called Ladles in the Shoppes of Summerville.

It only recently held a grand opening celebration.

Tucker, who has lived in Summerville for the past 16 years, is no stranger to the restaurant business.

“My background is extremely diverse and it started back when I was 15-years’ old scooping ice cream in Central Pennsylvania,” he said.

Over the years, Tucker has worked in numerous restaurants, from chains like Buffalo Wild Wings, Cracker Barrel and the Hilton, to groups like Charleston Hospitality and more. After bartending his way through college in Virginia, the hard-working transplant accepted a management position from his employer, which took him to Summerville, where he has been ever since.

The father of two boys is also the operating partner at Wine & Tapas in Summerville and was buoyed by the popularity of the business. This inspired him to open a new restaurant, this time with a French flair.

“They call the area the French Quarter, but it lacked a French-themed restaurant, which never made sense to me, especially with the growth we are seeing in this area,” he said.

Tucker said that La Chev was designed to evoke the feeling of walking down the Champs-Élysées.

“It’s a cute café that’s quaint and all about the food and wine,” he said.

It doesn’t hurt that Tucker worked in the wine distribution business and is well-versed on what’s exceptional. He said that his goal is to bring people in by rivaling the quality that a customer would get in downtown Charleston.

“It’s all about the ingredients and there’s a lot of precision and thought that goes into each of our dishes,” he said, adding that chef de cuisine Jonathan DuPriest, who grew up in Knightsville, is Johnson and Wales-trained.

When it comes to dishes, Tucker said that the most popular lunch items that they serve are the French Dip and the shrimp and grits.

“A lot of people judge the quality of the restaurant by their shrimp and grits,” he said.

As for dinner, Tucker offers quite a few specials, ranging from steak dishes, to surf and turf, scallops, crabcakes, and salmon.

“Everyone says that it’s the best salmon served in the Atlantic Coastal area,” Tucker said.

For now, La Chev is taking reservations, except for the bar and outside area, so last-minute plans to dine can be accommodated if guests don’t mind sitting in either area.

Tucker also recently announced that they will be open on Sundays for brunch.

“We’re currently working on the menu which we will implement sometime around the end of July,” he said.

Kurry Seymour was a Ladles customer who was wowed by his first visit.

“This place brings a refreshing vibe to the Knightsville area and I am impressed by the décor, which was converted into a very fine, but very cozy dining experience,” he said.

Reviews like this are music to Tucker’s ears.

“I never thought I’d be in a situation where I’d be running two separate restaurants, but I love the feeling one gets when someone is happy with an experience. Making moments special is the best feeling in the world and having the opportunity to have someone really love what you’re doing, well, it doesn’t get any better than that,” he said, with a smile.

Stefanie Kalina-Metzger is a contributing writer for SC Biz News.

SUMMERVILLE — Jennifer Klich grew up with Dorchester School District Two. She’s a product of DD2 schools and now teaches Spanish at Ashley Ridge High. All three of her children go to Beech Hill Elementary.

Throughout her time in the district, it would be impossible to not notice how much the district has grown over the years.

“There’s that huge neighborhood down Delemar Highway, and it used to feel like you’re driving out toward the middle of nowhere (to Ashley Ridge High School): ‘Oh look, there’s this random high school here in the woods,’” Klich said. “But now it’s neighborhood after neighborhood after neighborhood.”

Superintendent Shane Robbins, who is finishing up his first year overseeing the district, said DD2 has been able to predict through calculations and analytics that there will be an increase of 14,000 students from 2022 to 2032, ranging anywhere from 1,100 to 1,800 students each year for the next nine years.

With the growth, Klich is starting to worry about how the school district is managing the predicted influx of students in the coming years.

“I don’t think we’re being realistic enough about that,” Klich said. “Nobody’s even seriously talking about a new high school. There are trailers (being used as classrooms) everywhere. We’re just not taking it seriously.”

Ashley Ridge High School is the newest of the three high schools in the district, opening in 2008. Robbins noted that building a new school would take approximately three years.

The district also opened its newest school, East Edisto Middle, last fall, just in time for the 2022-23 school year.

Robbins said he and the board have talked about establishing a long-range planning committee, which would be a joint committee comprising the Dorchester County Council and the school board. He said while he understands the county has a lot on its plate already, the board will need the council’s support on any decision the board makes moving forward.

“We also want to be able to demonstrate that we are exhausting all options to be as fiscally conservative with taxpayer dollars as possible,” Robbins said.

Dorchester County Administrator Jason Ward confirmed that the County Council will meet with the school board. He said the first meeting on June 27 at 12 p.m. — which will be open to the public — will be showing the board a tool the county has used to help project growth based on residential subdivision development.

There will be more joint meetings following the first one, Ward said. These will be ongoing meetings and they will be scheduled periodically.

“We know that a lot of people are attracted to the county because of the quality in the schools,” Ward said. “We don’t want to do anything that would be detrimental in terms of the schools.”

Robbins added that he and the board are also looking at short-term solutions, like bringing in mobile units to be used as classrooms and moving attendance lines, though nothing is set in stone yet. Robbins acknowledged that moving attendance lines wouldn’t make everyone happy, but he’s trying to support the needs of the district as best he can.

He echoed Ward’s assertion that part of the area’s growth is due to the school district’s reputation. According to the 2021-2022 South Carolina Annual State Report Card, DD2 increased its graduation rate to 93.3 percent. It’s the fourth consecutive year of improvement for the district.

“We want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to maintain that world-class education that we provide our families,” he said.

During the May 22 board meeting, board member Justin Farnsworth said the district has developed to the point where he didn’t know where else they would be able to find land or buy it. Robbins responded by saying there is some property set aside at Summerville development The Ponds — what Robbins considered to be the center of where a lot of the growth is happening — to build a school.

Ward confirmed Robbins’ statement, adding that the county will be following up with him to see what would best fit in that property.

The numbers Robbins showed the board at the May 22 meeting indicated that Fort Dorchester High School and River Oaks Middle School — both in North Charleston — were predicted to have a slight decrease in population, whereas every other school would experience an influx of students.

Robbins said the North Charleston school population numbers are based on how they’re zoned in the district.

“The North Charleston area that feeds into Fort Dorchester … there’s just not a lot of residential growth,” he said. “There are subdivisions that are actually in North Charleston, that are designed to go to Ashley Ridge High School.” Ashley Ridge High School is located on Delemar Highway in Summerville.

“Nobody knew what growth was going to look like 15 years ago in Dorchester County, and so now all that growth is starting to occur,” he added.

Robbins said he’s feeling optimistic about the district’s plans to manage the growth they’ll be experiencing.

“Is it going to be a challenge and a struggle? One hundred percent,” Robbins said. “But I do believe that from my perspective, from the K-12 education sector, the people in this town really care about the quality of schools that they have for their kids. And because of that, I feel very confident that our conversations are going to be productive.”