189: Angie Bellinger, Workmen's Cafe (James Island, SC)

Restaurant work is hard work. It's long hours, hot cooking into hot clean up over a dishwasher steaming with every round, and then there's the service, the planning, the ordering, the management, and the bill-paying. But that game becomes even harder when you're the only one playing it. Angie Bellinger of Workmen's Cafe on James Island, SC, is a one-woman show of soul food greatness tucked into a small white building just off Folly Road where the sound of beach traffic mingles with semis whizzing past. Even now, long after development, there are fields just around the corner where cicadas shed their skin on long blades of grass, and when the breeze is right, you can still catch a whiff of the salt air over the Stono River. From butter beans to fried chicken, pork chops to collard greens, Angie's known for it, but it may be the spirit of care she puts into her cooking that keeps the door bell ringing more than anything else.