Heather Hutton goes rogue with Roxa
Heather Hutton is really sinking her sweet tooth into her Roxa Charleston pop-up since launching it with Paula Kramer of Baguette Magic and Kultura in May 2024.
In an expansion, Hutton creations are now on the dessert menu at Felix and Middleton Place. While she’s careful to stress these wholesale accounts receive what she calls “straightforward desserts,” she says, “They are still ‘Heather.’”
Hutton, who has a degree in baking and pastry arts from Johnson & Wales University, is best known for her seven years as executive pastry chef of Edmund’s Oast. There, her menu often included more than five different plated desserts, melding global flavors with comfort classics: Think ube sticky toffee pudding or local peaches with lemon verbena baked Alaska. She left that post for a yearlong stint at Honeysuckle Rose and its sister restaurants before last summer making a full-time commitment to Roxa Charleston.
Possibly most exciting of all (just ignore my sugar high): she’s offering custom desserts to order, perhaps for your next home kitchen counter party.
“Through our website, you can order petit four displays, custom cakes, things like that,” she says. “So, I always have revenue streams as we grow.”
The centerpiece of Roxa Charleston, though, remains its weekly pop-up dessert bar. As Connelly Hardaway of Charleston City Paper detailed in her December 2024 profile, Hutton and team offer both an a la carte menu and $55 multicourse tasting after hours at The Market from Seed Catering at 218 President Street. It’s one of the most culinarily creative experiences in the city, with delicious, elaborate, plated desserts built around a monthly theme.
For example, the current theme, “Pure Imagination,” is inspired by Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and features, among other things: foam, flambe, the tiniest little rainbow sherbet ice cream cake, and a take-home Snozzbery chocolate.
Although Kramer and members of the Baguette Magic team are on hand to help, it’s really Hutton’s show, and we’re the lucky audience; Hutton says it has been rewarding to have personal interactions with guests during service.
“We really strive to make people feel comfortable,” she says, though she admits the service style—multiple courses of dessert—is “unchartered territory“ in Charleston.
“Yeah, it’s weird,” Hutton says. “We’re good with that. We just want it to be fun with fancy desserts.”
Cline puts a cork in Uncork ownership and opens Daniela’s
King Street restaurateur and front-of-house face Natasha Cline is now taking your orders for latte or marinated tofu sub sandwiches on Spring Street. Last week, she and her business partner Ken Schneider sold Uncork Charleston, the King Street wine bar and restaurant.
“For me personally, my business partner is more behind the scenes, so I’m in operations,” Cline says. “Years of being in a bar, and then [on] King Street late at night, trying to go home, it did have its tolls.”
Cline and Schneider’s newest venture is Daniela’s Downtown, a corner market and deli at Ashley Avenue and Spring Street (most recently 132 Spring Coffee Bar & Kitchen, which closed in May 2024). According to The Post & Courier, the two originally anticipated a summer opening for Daniela’s when they announced their plans in May, but in the shuffle of businesses and buildings, just recently opened on December 26.
The space offers made-to-order breakfast and lunch items, coffee, wine, fresh produce (enoki mushrooms anyone?), local packaged goods such as Marsh Hen Mill grits, and even gourmet baskets. Named after Cline’s German-born mother, Daniela’s was also inspired by Cline’s warm memories of her stepdad’s deli in Washington, D.C. And although the mix of perishable retail goods and small ticket items can be a tough financial row to hoe in downtown Charleston’s tourist-heavy and high-rent neighborhoods, Daniela’s looks to have an ace in the hole: counter service hot breakfast and lunch options.
“With everyone that lives in this neighborhood, and because of the Airbnbs, we have plenty of people coming in,” Cline says. In fact, the place was bustling when I visited shortly before closing on Wednesday.
As for Uncork, the new owners are Kathryn and Raj Manglani. For now, Uncork’s menu and style remains the same.
The Bread Line
Nora Granger and Eric Casella of Counter Cheesemongers in North Charleston alerted me to what Granger calls their “small but mighty bread program.” They make and sell focaccia, by the whole, half, and quarter, as well as rugbrød, a Nordic-style seeded rye that is very dense and great with cheese–conveniently also available in the shop.
Tiller Baking Co. bread is also available, and if you miss them at the shop, which is open Thursday through Saturday, they set up with cheese and focaccia at Sea Island Farmers Market and Mount Pleasant Farmers Market in season.
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