Rare international award given to an SC restaurant for the first time ever. Here’s why

Wine Spectator’s highest award has been given to fewer than 100 restaurants around the world since it began in 1981, and now a South Carolina restaurant is among them.

Soby’s New South Cuisine in Greenville recently received the Wine Spectator Grand Award, the first South Carolina restaurant to receive the honor.

Soby’s has received five Wine Spectator Awards of Excellence and 22 Best of Awards.

Carl Sobocinski opened Soby’s in 1997 in a downtown with little resemblance to what it is today. Department stores had fled to malls, restaurants largely catered to daytime office workers. Streets emptied as dark fell.

Soby’s is widely credited with inspiring confidence in doing business in downtown Greenville. He took the former Cancellation Shoe store and turned it into a brick-lined two-floor restaurant with an outdoor patio.

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Now, there are more than 200 restaurants and Greenville was recently named the 6th best small city in the United States for food and drink by Food & Wine.

Wine Spectator’s Grand Award winners typically feature 1,000 or more wine selections, its website says.

Soby’s has the largest selection of wine in a restaurant in South Carolina with 4,000 selections (17,000+ bottles), Soby’s said in a news release.

The news release said Sobocinski has wanted to win the grand award since he opened the restaurant 28 years ago.

“Wine distributors saved their best selections for larger markets in the state,” the release said. “Carl recognized the lack of wine options would be detrimental to the growth of Greenville’s overall culinary scene so he went directly to the wineries to get the cult offerings his clientele craved.”

The Wine Cellar underneath the restaurant features seating for 12 guests for a special dinner party or tasting event.

“There’s an undeniable neighborhood charm to Soby’s restaurant. It’s the kind of place you go to as readily on a weeknight when you don’t feel like cooking as you do to celebrate your anniversary,” Alison Napjus, wrote for Wine Spectator.

She quoted chef Kyle Swarzendruber as saying, “With the level of wine and wine service we’re offering, we know the food [has to be at] the same level.”

Two sommeliers are on duty each night to talk about the wines — or not — depending on the interest of the customer.

“For [entry-level consumers] who are passionate and excited about wine, even if it’s a less expensive wine, we can create talking points and experiential moments,” said John Mitchell, Soby’s wine director. “And then for the experienced guests ordering an incredible bottle, who know what they want and ask for it, we try to never say no.”

The other Grand Award winners were Le Bon Georges, a Paris bistro; and Selby’s in Atherton, California in the Silicon Valley.