The ladies who bang the pots in Bertha’s open kitchen distill generations of local culinary knowledge into each plate they serve. Robert Stehling of Hominy Grill was the first Charleston chef to tell me about Bertha’s. He was not the last. Thinking chefs, especially those who work at the white-tablecloth end of the spectrum, pay deference to the vernacular cooking they interpret. And they pay their respects at lunch, when their own restaurants are often closed. One afternoon, I sat at a back booth in Bertha’s, beneath a TV set blaring a rerun of the 1970s-era series S.W.A.T., and watched as Ken Vedrinski, the chef at Trattoria Lucca in Charleston, came piling in with a bunch of younger chefs in skinny black jeans. They looked doe-eyed. They looked happily lost. They looked hungry.

Vedrinksi’s crew ate stewed chicken necks and gizzards, served over red rice. They ate pork chops, as rivulets of juice traced down their chins. They slurped bowl after bowl of okra soup. They fought over the crust that topped a serving of macaroni and cheese, their appetites testament that Bertha’s is a place of pilgrimage for curious eaters in search of the honest roots of modern Lowcountry foodways.