Sugar and spice and so very nice

In the 1970s when Jane Stern and I wrote the first edition of a restaurant guidebook called “Roadfood,” we thought we were bad-asses. Having just finished a book about wildcat truck drivers, research for which led through the disreputable side of highway culture, we imagined traveling a similar path writing about diners.

Sure enough, we often found ourselves in sleazy eateries in scary backwaters; got chased out of some at gunpoint because taking pictures of breakfast in the pre-Instagram era pegged someone as suspicious, and sometimes tangled with small-town police, who considered us intruders.

Still, as we found restaurants worth recommending, we began to see an underappreciated, friendlier side of America’s vernacular cuisine. Oh, sure, Roadfood continued to sing praises of dives and déclassé diners (if the food was good and the proprietors didn’t want to kill strangers). But our vision expanded to include eateries that were nice.

Joyful Café is nice, very nice. Opened just this summer and named for its owner and chef, Joy Spires, it occupies a wood-frame, tin-roof cottage just off Charleston Highway in the South Carolina hamlet of Windsor (population 121). Little rooms with fireplace mantles that display books and personal bric-a-brac remind visitors that it was once a family home. It’s not prissy or overly precious, but it sure isn’t a diner, dump, or dive.

Toward the back in a semi-open kitchen, Spires creates what she calls a “mashup menu of bougee and country foods.” That means downhome with a twist—a twist that’s as much Louisianan as it is bourgeois. “I grew up poor in Louisiana,” she says. “The poorer you grow up, the more creative you become as a cook.” That might help explain her skills, but the truth is that I’ve yet to meet a cook from Louisiana who makes humdrum food.

At breakfast, Spires tops waffles with strawberries and shaved chocolate, but early one morning, waffles weren’t available because she didn’t have heavy cream to whip for a proper garnish. It would be wrong to omit it, and in this kitchen, squirting its facsimile from a can would be sacrilege. Instead of waffles, she suggests egg-white bites of Gruyère-and-ham, paired with avocado toast.

It is possible to start the day the forthright way with Spires’ biscuits and sausage-crowded pepper gravy—a simple luxury. On the other hand, it’s hard to resist shrimp-and-grits in which shrimp share the bowl with bacon, ham, and andouille sausage in creamy Parmesan Cajun cream sauce.

Although it’s on the breakfast menu, the Monte Cristo is more like brunch: a splendid multi-layer, butter-grilled sandwich of ham, Swiss cheese, and turkey. A thin film of raspberry jam inside and a sprinkle of powdered sugar on top accentuate its savory wallop.

More mashup cuisine: a BLT adds fresh basil and buffalo mozzarella to the usual formula. An occasional special known as the Big Boy Plate offers a smoky mountain of brisket and pulled pork gilded with sweet-hot “swamp sauce.” Slices of heat-softened provolone sandwich salty, peppery folds of brisket in a grilled bun.

Nearly all regular menu items come with a side dish, the best of which is baked potato soup. Potato chunks, tiles of cheese, and curls of bacon pack a bowl of pureed buttered baked potatoes.

An interesting side dish—especially interesting because it is served as a side dish—is  beef stew. It’s the Full Monty: beef, carrots, potatoes, beans, and onions. A small portion of it is to Sunday supper what a bouillon cube is to broth: concentrated essence.

One day, a little blackboard on the kitchen counter suggests carrot bread, which Spires says was made by a nearby baker. It goes with breakfast but also serves as after-lunch dessert. More a spice cake with a bit of carrot than the other way around, its ginger tickle is muffled by cream cheese frosting whipped into a frothy cloud. Another time, the featured dessert is pineapple upside down cake—a home-cooking classic that begs no chef’s interference.

Beyond food, Joyful Café’s appeal has a lot to do with how meals are presented, at place settings with soft cloth napkins and on pretty china. Each table is outfitted with a little battery-operated tealight candle. Mason jars hold tea. Nothing is put haphazardly on a plate or in a bowl. What comes from the kitchen is in no way affected, but it’s always nice to look at.

Hot coffee and cold brew from a company called Chaos Calming Coffee (run by Kimmy Stevens, who works at Joyful Café) are available with six flavored syrups, five sauces, and four kinds of cream. A friend of Stevens makes intensely fruity almond-meringue macarons (like macaroons, but lighter and not coconutty) that are a grand coffee companion.

To linger over coffee in one of its cozy dining rooms—or, weather permitting, in rocking chairs on the porch or at an al fresco table—is to realize: Joyful Café really is a nice place.

Joyful Café: 529 Middleton Dr., Windsor, South Carolina, website