Hannah Wade

Hannah Wade

As a college student, Hannah Wade found her dining tastes rapidly expanding after growing up in Chester.

She wasn't a picky eater — aside from spinach — but had relatively sparse variety, compared to the capital city.

In Columbia, she found herself leaning on $2.50 margaritas from Tio's Mexican Cafe and Cantina and 929 Kitchen and Bar's Korean cuisine and the barbecue buffet at Little Pigs. 

Free Times has hired Wade as its new food writer. She will handle the paper’s coverage of Columbia’s food, drink and dining scene and issues that intersect with those topics.

Wade will work in close collaboration with the staff of Post and Courier Columbia and Free Times' staff of freelance writers and photographers. Wade started in the first week of January and is off to a quick start, with several bylines in this paper.

A recent graduate of the University of South Carolina with a degree in journalism and a minor in Spanish where in that time, she worked in student media as a photographer and reporter, including being the first to report a story on the chair of Allen University’s math department being arrested for sexual misconduct with a minor.

Wade said that the opportunity to stay in Columbia — while telling stories in a new topic and way — was a key draw for her.

“I wanted to put roots down here and join those people in pouring into this community that I care about,” she said.

She hopes to make her reporting accessible and easy to understand for readers. She noted that food writing can sometimes have a barrier to entry for readers who may now know what certain foods are.

As she’s further explored the local dining scene, Wade has found it to be a versatile one. She noted that it is encapsulated well in Five Points. One can go for a fine dining meal at Saluda’s, pizza and a beer at Village Idiot Pizza or Ethiopian food at Harambe Ethiopian Restaurant — all within walking distance of one another.

She also lauded the affordability of the city’s dining scene, as a “broke college kid” she was able to try a variety of foods without spending heavily.

“People look to Charleston for fine dining and Asheville or Greenville for hipster-y breweries, but I think Columbia has so much soul and character,” Wade said.

Wade grew up in Chester, just north of Columbia, where she dined on food like her mother’s stromboli, mac and cheese or her mawmaw’s coconut cake, among a family of seven.

Through college, she’s developed a passion for cooking as well and adopted a cat named Bagel — affectionately named after “one of the simplest yet most versatile (breads) known to man.”

“I loved trying new foods from a really young age. Growing up in a small, Southern area though, I didn’t get much exposure to different types of food. ... I quickly found places that I loved trying that put me outside of my comfort zone,” Wade said.

In this issue, one can read Wade’s stories on COVID-19’s re-emergence in the local restaurant scene; a new West African restaurant in Northeast Columbia and a revered Lexington County gas station chef being named a S.C. Chef Ambassador.

Wade can be reached at hannahw@free-times.com.

David Clarey joined Free Times in November 2019 as a food and news writer. He's constantly fighting competing desires to try cooking food at home and spending his entire paycheck on Columbia restaurants.

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