The Grocery is a sprawling new restaurant on the ground floor of The Altman Building, along Charleston’s still-evolving Upper King Street, and features chef Kevin Johnson presiding over the open kitchen. No, not the Sacramento mayor and former NBA point guard. This Johnson was sous chef of Virginia’s famed Inn at Little Washington, and produced heaps of crispy flounder as executive chef of Charleston’s Anson Restaurant, to name his two most notable posts. Here, he’s constructed a farm to table concept with diverse global influences and a focus on Southern ingredients.

It’s unlikely Francophiles would mistake Johnson’s “Cassoulet” ($37) for a version in, say, Toulouse, but he sure packed a lot of flavor into a bowl, and he was savvy enough to list the dish on the menu in quotes. He also incorporated three cuts of premium grass fed pork from Walterboro’s Keegan-Filion Farm: bone-in shank, a square of slow roasted shoulder and a plump link of garlic pork sausage, plus white beans and crisp greens that bathed in pork jus, fine breadcrumbs and more. We ate at The Grocery on Night #1, and of course some dishes were uneven at the promising restaurant – they were bound to be – but not the “Cassoulet.”

Dose of Vitamin P spotlights my favorite pork dish from the previous week.