You’d be hard pressed to find someone who does more to preserve Gullah Culinary Culture in the Carolina Lowcountry than BJ Dennis. A Charleston native who now lives in the Greater Bluffton Area, BJ joins us to talk about the month-long Gullah Celebration on Hilton Head Island and what he has in store for the upcoming Seafood Festival.

Jesse Blanco: All right, welcome back to the Eat It and Like It Podcast. We have a special guest joining us this time around looking forward to a huge couple of events coming up here in Hilton Head Island later in February. This is Chef, Caterer, and Gullah Historian, BJ Dennis. How are you, sir?

BJ Dennis: Good, good. How you doing, Jesse? Happy to be here, appreciate you having me.

JB: I’m good. My pleasure, my pleasure. Yeah, it’s been a minute. Usually I see you at a Hilton Head Seafood Festival every year, but were you there last year? I don’t think you were.

BJD: I wasn’t there last year. Yeah, it’s been a couple years. I think we ran into each other in the street somewhere at some point last year, but I can’t remember. Oh, probably at the street market maybe, at the Port Royal. I can’t know, but I’ve seen you last in the last couple months.

JB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Might have been. Yeah, I get around, so do you. (laughing) So tell us, before we get into all the fun we’re gonna have on the island here coming up, tell us what you’ve been up to. You were telling me before we got rolling that you don’t live in Charleston anymore. The last half-decade you’ve been down close to our way, south of the Broad River, safe to say.

BJD: Yes, sir. Right there now, where the old people say ‘low bottom’, Okatie. So I’ve been here five years next week–sorry, next March will be five years. So yeah, I’m here. I still cater. I’m a personal chef caterer, you know, speaking engagements. Still mainly mostly doing work in Charleston, but I do engage a little bit in Hilton Head. I’m gonna start doing stuff with the Black Chamber in Beaufort; they’re gonna revamp their kitchen to an event space, so I’m gonna be doing stuff with them there. But I’m here. I’m here, and I wanna do more in the area. 

JB: Very good. Very good. How long–you probably got that route to Charleston on cruise control. What does it take you? About an hour 45 still?

BJD: No, you know, to get to my parents’ house, because they live in West Ashley, before you get downtown. No traffic, I get to my parents’ house hour and 15 minutes. I learned to take it a little easy on that stretch. So I used to get there in about an hour and ten, hour and five, and I got a ticket the other month, so I’m like, let me slow down a little bit. But no, just about an hour and 20 minutes, and I’m in Charleston.

JB: Gotcha. Yeah, I got, I got a ticket on that long time ago, long time ago, I got a ticket. I was up in West Ashley recently at a Palmira barbecue. I’m sure you’ve had it.

BJD: With Hector? Yes sir, yes sir. Yeah, good.

JB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s really good stuff. He got nominated as a semi-finalist for a James Beard Award, which is pretty cool. But so, very good. So coming up here, you’re involved in all kinds of things here on the island this month, the Gullah Celebration, celebrating 30 years here on the island, and also the Hilton Head Seafood Festival. We’re going to talk about them separately, but first I want to ask you about Gullah culture in general. You know, there are few people when it comes to the food side of things, you and Sally Ann Robinson doing her thing here on Defusky and on the Island, a few people in this area who are farther out in front of the Gullah-Geechee culinary culture. Oh, and Chef Bernard over at Okan in Bluffton. Do you feel like it has evolved a little bit in the public consciousness the last few years?

BJD: Yeah, I think there’s a lot more awareness of it. You know, I think I’ve been at it now… wow, this will be 2026. Almost 15 years, I’ve dedicated myself. You can say the last decade has been solid, just digging deep. So I can honestly say, particularly the last five years, five to ten years, there’s really, really been a reawakening. And we still have a long way to go for people to understand, you know, we get so many people moving to the area, and it’s just weird to continue to put it out there and let people know, and let people understand the history, because the food tells a story. And it tells the story of the Lowcountry. Good, bad, ugly.

JB: Yeah, yeah, that is for sure. And I would bet when you get around a group of people, let’s say you have a speaking engagement and you get people who aren’t really well versed on the history of the culture and the foods and all that, I bet you every single time, when you explain the background and the stories and the influences of this food, you get a lot of people who are like, I had no idea, right?

BJD: All the time, all the time. And it’s right under our nose, right here. The area’s changing so much, the waterways are changing so much, but you still see messages of it all over the place. But when you come somewhere, you don’t know, and not everybody’s looking for it, people are just doing their thing. So you gotta remind people of where they’re at. It’s good to know where you’re at. I wanna know the history of the people who made this place what it is. So, it’s very important.

JB: Yeah, yeah, no kidding. No kidding. All right. So you are going to be at the Gullah celebration. We’re having an event on the 21st at Mitchellville Freedom Park, correct? 

BJD: That’s right. Yeah, Roots and Recipes.

JB: Roots and Recipes is what it’s called, correct. I was told you’d be cooking, but you may or may not, or you might do a little something, something?

JB: Right? No kidding. Yeah. Those tickets are for sale at gullahcelebration.org, the admission comes with a couple of tasting tickets. There’s going to be a number of different chefs, I think four or five different chefs, doing their thing there. And you and I–from what I understand, I just do as I’m told–we’re going to be judging these. There’s going to be a public vote, and then there’s going to be judges, and it’s going to be me and you going around eating some of this food and being judgmental. So that’ll be a good time. Beyond that, on the 28th, we have—the 28th obviously is toward the end of Hilton Head Seafood Festival, which is a huge event, and it’s become so much bigger and so much of a huge footprint that entire week. But this year, for the first time–what’s the word I’m looking for? They’re kind of blending the Gullah culture with the regular Seafood Festival crowd, if you will? What have you been told about what that’s gonna look like on that Saturday the 28th?

BJD: Yeah, so, you know, everybody knows that the big event, the kind of quote-unquote “big public finale event” for the festival is at Honey Horn for Hilton Head Seafood Festival. And this year, they’re merging with the Gullah Celebration, NIBCAA, to put a Gullah village, per se, inside of the Hilton Head Seafood Festival at Honey Horn. So you have a village, I’m doing a live demo, Kardea Brown from the Food Network, who has the show Delicious Miss Brown, she’s going to do a live demo, you’re going to have live cultural reenactors, cultural vendors–cultural food vendors AND cultural arts and craft vendors. So it’s going to be a nice little installment inside the whole Grand Seafood Festival. So it all interconnects those families, you know, the Carmines and the old native families. So it’s an intersection there. So I’m interested to see. It’s going to be a great time.

JB: I completely agree. And when I was first told what this was going to be on the Saturday main event, if you will, for Seafood Festival, “no, we’re going to do a Gullah village right inside there, Honey Horn, and we’re going to have demonstrations and we’re going to have people walking around in period attire and we’re going to have educational stuff.” And my eyes kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I thought, why hasn’t this happened for the last 10 years? This is an absolutely brilliant idea, because ultimately so much of Gullah cuisine is seafood. Right?

BJD: That’s right. That’s right. The waterways made us.

JB: Yeah, it blew my mind when I heard that I said, “This is brilliant. This is perfect.” And it brings–I want to be careful with how I say this, but I hope everybody understands it brings two different populations of the Island together in one spot. Two different segments. Because Gullah has its month-long celebration, and everybody does that, and some people may overflow, but it’s largely two separate celebrations, and I love the fact that these are going to be together in one spot. The arguably biggest food event of the year, wouldn’t you say? I mean, you live down this way, you know. I don’t know that there’s a bigger one-day event than Seafood Festival, yeah?

BJD: I don’t think so. 

JB: I don’t think so. So it’ll be a very good time. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate. We’ve gotten a couple of years where it gets a little too warm. It’s like, you know what? I can deal with 10 less degrees. But that’s part of it.

BJD: As long as the rain stays away, we’ll be good to go. And no snow, no random snow again, we’ll be good.

JB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think I’m done with the snow. Did you make a snowball last week?

BJD: I didn’t. I walked out one time and was like, I’m good. It was so cold, man.

JB: Right? I enjoyed Saturday night here in Savannah, where I live, I enjoyed just sitting there. I was watching something on Netflix, which I never do, and I’m looking out the back door and I felt like I was up North, because the snow was falling. I’m like, oh! This looks like a postcard. But that was it. I was done with it. Very good, okay, so, we will see you on the 21st, we will see you on the 28th. You’re not doing anything midweek, correct? At Seafood Festival? No.

BJD: No, no, I’ll be there on that 28th, live and in person.

JB: On the Saturday. Very good. Very good. That will be a good time. Anybody who’s interested in tickets for that, hiltonheadseafoodfestival.com, if you want tickets to the Gullah event on the 21st at Freedom Park, that is GullahCelebration.org, he is Chef BJ Dennis, he is an iconic in this region. Good to hear that you’re back in this area, looking forward to seeing you do some more great things. And I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.

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