South Windermere’s stylish new spot aims to reshape West Ashley’s culinary identity
by Lorne Chambers | Editor
It’s 9 a.m. on a Friday, and The Lick, West Ashley’s swankiest new dining spot, doesn’t even open its doors for another seven hours. But head chef Chris Johnston is an early riser. He’s already hard at work this morning, preparing for the weekend rush that will have a line forming outside before the doors open at 4 p.m. and carry straight through Sunday brunch and into the next week.
There are trays of Chef Johnston’s crave-worthy milk bread already proofing on the racks. Several burners are fired. He walks by and stirs the pots while discussing scheduling and other day-to-day issues with owner Christopher Betros, who’s also at the restaurant early. He’s busy placing wooden spacer blocks between the tables, making sure each one is exactly the correct distance apart. It’s this sort of attention to detail that makes The Lick, a newcomer to the local dining scene, the hardest table to score in West Ashley, maybe in all of Charleston.
Betros’s phone keeps buzzing as friends and family text, asking if he can help them score a reservation this weekend. There isn’t much he can do. There are 20 bar seats and only so many tables in the intimate space, and those tables can only turn so many times each night. Resy is already chock-full of booked reservations, and there are even more people on the virtual waiting list. There have literally been lines out the door most evenings as people try to get in and experience what all the buzz is about.
His phone buzzes again and Betros smiles. He knows that there are worse problems to have.
“I’m excited about the response,” says Betros, a longtime West Ashley resident. He’s also excited to bring something like The Lick to this part of town. He sees it as something that could help elevate the food game for the area.
“We’ve never had a culinary voice in this town. All the big investment money that was coming in was targeting downtown, Mt. Pleasant, or the islands. West Ashley was very much forgotten,” he says. “West Ashley will be forgotten no longer.”
Betros, who comes from a corporate background, almost accidentally became a restaurateur. A few years ago, he was looking for a real estate opportunity and inquired about purchasing the building that housed O’Brion’s Pub & Grille in Mt. Pleasant’s upscale neighborhood I’on. He ended up buying the restaurant, too, a turnkey situation he couldn’t pass up. He invested his own capital in revamping the space, turning the pub into something much more than just a pub.
“I basically took the best part of O’Brion’s and made the investment for the building to match the neighborhood around it,” says Betros. He’s done it again. But this time, it’s for the part of town he’s called home since before Hugo.
“I had a concept in my head from a recent trip I took to Ireland,” he says. “I was sitting in this swanky tequila bar at the bottom of my hotel in Dublin, and I thought, ‘I want to do something like this,” he says. “A place that you feel something as soon as you come through the door. I want you to walk in and want to be here. It’s a destination.”
Betros sees The Lick less as a restaurant and more as a full sensory experience.
“I want you to be delighted by what you see, what you smell, what you taste, and what you feel when you walk through the door.”
The Lick, which officially opened last month in the space that previously housed YoBo Cantina, has also been completely revamped, from the ceiling to the floor. It’s unrecognizable from its predecessor. Every detail, from the barstools to the wall mirrors, feels deliberately curated.
Like the space itself, The Lick’s menu is small but mighty, with everything from a swanky burger or French dip and fries to a $140 Wagyu ribeye.
“We have a menu where you can come in after work, sit at the bar, and have a glass of wine and a beautiful bowl of bolognese, a very soul-warming selection after a hard day’s work,” says Betros. “Or if you want to come celebrate and have some wine and cocktails, live it up, and split a tomahawk with your buddies, you can do that, too.”
Johnston says that when they began forming the menu, they simply asked one question over and over: Why not?
“We basically just asked, ‘Why not?’,” he recalls. “Can we have the best steak in Charleston? Why not? How about the best bolognese in Charleston? Why not? Can we offer the best-looking bowl of oysters in Charleston? Why not?”
Betros often talks about dining at The Lick as an “experience” more than a meal. But, of course, the food is central to the success of any restaurant. That’s why he went out and hired Johnston, a classically-trained chef, who has run nine other restaurants from Chicago to Baltimore before landing in the Lowcountry. For the last several years, he has been working locally in the catering industry. The two met and found that they shared a similar work ethic and vision for what a restaurant should be.
“The most appealing thing and hardest thing to find in this industry is freedom in your own space and the chance to work with like-minded people,” says Johnston.
“If it wasn’t for Chris (Johnston), we wouldn’t be as successful as we are so far,” says Betros, who learned from his time in corporate America that hiring good people and letting them do their job is a recipe for success. Betros gives a lot of credit to managing partner Chad Frierson, who has been in the business for a quarter of a century.
“He manages the daily grind that it takes to create and execute these amazing experiences. And I’m very lucky to have him,” says Betros. “You have to have symmetry between the bar, the front of the house, and the kitchen. We’ve nailed that. They complement each other well. We have a good bar program. The wine list is solid, and the cocktails are out of this world.”
Experienced beverage professional Beth Bishop, who recently worked at Paddock & Whiskey before joining The Lick team, handles the bar and front of the house.
“We hired people who are professionals in their field. Everybody is excited to be here. Our senior staff has decades of experience,” says Betros. “We all bought into the concept. We bought into the culture. We’re building something special here.”
The keyword in that last sentence seems to be “building” because it’s an active verb, suggesting The Lick is still evolving.
A couple of weeks after opening—amidst the Valentine’s Day weekend crunch and the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition being in town—The Lick began serving Sunday brunch. It also recently started offering weekly dinner specials.
“We have some more tricks up our sleeves that I can’t talk about yet,” promises Betros.
Johnston likens the roll-out to cooking.
“When you build a sauce, you season along the way. Every step matters,” he says. “It’s about process.”
The Lick seems to be paying attention to every step in the process.
The Lick is located at 10 Windermere Blvd. To make reservations, visit www.resy.com. For more information on The Lick, visit www.lickwind.com, follow them on Instagram at @lick_wind, or call (843) 974-3462.
