May 19, 2006
Fine dining will get finer at High Cotton
Upscale restaurant opens in October
By Rudolph Bell
Elliott
People who like fine dining in downtown Greenville will be getting another option this fall.
High Cotton, an upscale restaurant from Charleston, will open a location in Greenville at the RiverPlace development, the restaurant’s owner said Thursday.
Richard D. Elliott, who opened the first High Cotton on Bay Street in Charleston seven years ago, said he was happy to bring a second location to Greenville’s “dynamic, beautiful, vibrant downtown.”
High Cotton is scheduled to open in October in a 10,000-square-foot space at RiverPlace with 38-foot ceilings and glass walls overlooking the Reedy River. Outdoor dining is planned on the sidewalk between the river and RiverPlace.
The Grape restaurant and wine bar and a Starbucks Corp. coffee shop are planned on the street level of the same building at the corner of Main Street and Camperdown Way.
Lawyers with the Womble, Carlyle firm, whose Greenville office is also in the building, said the new restaurant will be helpful in entertaining prospective clients and lawyers from the firm’s offices in other states.
“It’s wonderful to be able to have them dine with us in our building and go right up to our office,” said Larry Estridge, managing member of the firm’s local office.
Estridge said he’s known Elliott, a client, since the early 1970s and introduced him to RiverPlace developer Bob Hughes. Elliott said after a news conference at RiverPlace to announce the new restaurant that its menu, wine list and service will be the same as they are in Charleston.
“Then what we’ll do over time is make adjustments to that as we understand more about the tastes and preference of our guests here in Greenville,” said Elliott, a former journalist, lawyer and president of the commercial carpet division of textiles giant Burlington Industries.
Elliott said Greenville’s High Cotton will have a maximum seating capacity
of 220 – including areas designated for private dining – and employed
about 65 people earning an average salary of more than $30,000 a year.
Entrees will include Lowcountry spiced Carolina trout ($22), skillet-seared
herb-glazed tuna ($25) and grilled jumbo scallops ($26), according to a
menu from the Charleston restaurant posted on the Internet.
Greenville Mayor Knox White called High Cotton “a restaurant of great distinction” with
an international reputation.
Local businessman Joe Erwin said he’s glad to see it come to town.
“I think it’s one of the really excellent restaurants in South Carolina, and it should be very popular in Greenville,” said Erwin, president of Erwin-Penland Advertising.
River view: High Cotton at RiverPlace also plans service on the sidewalk outside the restaurant’s dining room.
Vic Austin, an owner of the Port City Java coffee shops on Main Street
and Mills Avenue, said he’s never eaten at High Cotton, but welcomes the latest addition
to Greenville’s growing list of fine-dining establishments.
“If it’s adding to the ambience and taking downtown to another level,
I’m all for it,” Austin said.
He and partners are planning another Port City Java at the Field House
development at West End Field.
John Wilkerson, managing partner in the Charleston office of the Turner,
Padget law firm, said he enjoys dining at the existing High Cotton.
“Charleston is blessed with many high-end, fine-dining restaurants, and High Cotton is on everyone’s short list,” Wilkerson said.
Elliott, a Charleston native whose mother was from Anderson County, owns
two other restaurants in the North of Broad and the Old Village Post House.
He also owns a cooking store and cooking school called Charleston Cooks.
Asked about the lack of tourist traffic in Greenville, compared to Charleston,
Elliott said tourists account for most of the business in high-end restaurants
in downtown Charleston, and he acknowledged that Greenville doesn’t have
as much tourist traffic.
“What Greenville has, though, in far greater abundance than Charleston has, is business travelers,” Elliott said.
“You have a much
stronger base of business here, particularly international business.”