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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶
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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶

Oral Histories

The SFA oral history program documents life stories from the American South. Collecting these stories, we honor the people whose labor defines the region. If you would like to contribute to SFA’s oral history collections, please send your ideas for oral history along with your CV or Resume and a portfolio of prior oral history work to info@southernfoodways.org.

< Back to Oral History project: Bowens Island Restaurant

ORAL HISTORY

Duke Eversmeyer, longtime customer

Bowens Island Restaurant

A native of New Orleans, Duke Eversmeyer has been a customer of Bowens Island Restaurant since the 1970s. He relocated to Charleston in 1971, when he was stationed at a submarine base there, during the Vietnam War. Charleston immediately felt like home. Not only did Duke find similarities to New Orleans, he also had family in Charleston. The first time his family took him to Bowens Island Restaurant, he was suspicious. But after interacting with Jimmy Bowen and tasting those roasted marsh oysters, he was hooked. Today, Duke calls Metairie, Louisiana, home, but he still makes a point of heading to Bowen’s Island every time he visits his family in Charleston.

Date of interview:
2007-03-23 00:00

Interviewer:
Amy Evans

Photographer:

Download Transcript

“

"Charleston has this image—and it’s a well earned image—of being an elegant Southern city, and that it’s survived the war and Holocaust and Yellow Fever epidemics and so forth, and so it does have this image of elegance. And so a lot of people go there to take in that image of elegance. But if they’re going to eat, I think they want to take in Bowens Island." - Duke Eversmeyer

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