Conch

Conch is the Lowcountry seafood that residents keep under their hats. Every Gullah seafood cook knows a source, has a fritter recipe, a stew recipe, even a salad recipe. The old families South of Broad have an ancestral chowder recipe handed down for at least half a century. But nobody talks up conch. They know what happens when an ingredient gets fashionable. The waters of South Carolina could be picked clean of conch just as Florida waters were in the early 1980s.