are you awkward?
welcome to our world.
Always Awkward Advisory Board
The recent opening of Beautiful South had David and I thinking about who we are, and how we want to evolve and grow our business in the years to come. We know we will continue to create spaces that are progressive and inclusive, using innovation and collaboration in our approaches to business. Our feeling is that our restaurants are organisms where no one person is greater than another. That extends from the front to the back door. We reject the idea that power, creativity, influence should be concentrated in one person’s hands. The most important questions we ask ourselves are, Are we being good employers? Can we build something that will be a benefit to our Charleston community? Are we creating and sharing Chinese food with respect and recognition of its heritage?
We are committed to continuing our education on Chinese cuisine and culture. Gaining an understanding of the context and nuance of dishes, offering history, and origins. Food isn’t just sustenance or entertainment, it plays an important part in shaping the structure of communities. Respectfully sharing historical context and information about the foods of China is an important part of our responsibility to give back to the AAPI community. David and I recognize that we cannot know how much we do not know, which is why we also recognize the need to have additional voices to help guide us into important conversations.
Being in the rapidly changing East Side it's important that we ask how can we thoughtfully integrate into the community while being conscious of the privileges and power dynamic that we will inherently bring. What are the ways we can continue to build reciprocal and genuine relationships and uplift with our work? How can we use our time, energy, and resources to share knowledge?
These questions brought us to the creation of an advisory board. The board was created to join a group local, community minded voices that will help define how we can expand into our community, creating regenerative and circular benefits, as well as educating and holding us accountable for our actions. Hopefully keeping things a little less awkward.
Tina & David
Ma Wei She/Her
David White He/Him
Miguel Buencamino He/Him
Chase & Colleen Glen He/Him & She/Her
Sarah Williams-Scalise She/Her
Elijah Siegler He/Him
Jai Jones He/Him
David and Tina Schuttenberg are the operating partners and creative force behind Charleston, SC based Always Awkward Hospitality, known for bringing the fiery flavors of Sichuan to the Lowcountry via Kwei Fei on James Island. David oversees all things culinary, while Tina handles the business side, and Marketing/Social Media.
Tina’s early career focus in retail and fashion transposed easily to hospitality, and helped propel her to the creative director role at Dean and Deluca before moving to Charleston in 2015. Her skillset has allowed a seamless transition into restaurants, though she never worked in one before starting Kwei Fei with David.
David has been a kitchen rat for the past 19 years, preferring to keep his knife skills sharp and his cooking acumen well honed, over a passive culinary role within his kitchens. After a career change in 2003, he worked in some of New York’s finest kitchens including Tom Colicchio’s Craft, Zak Pelaccio’s venerable Fatty Crab, and was Culinary Director at arguably the country’s best butcher shop, Dickson’s Farmstand Meats.
Ironically, it was professional failures early in their Charleston lives that led the couple to open the cultish Kwei Fei, and they just opened their second concept, Beautiful South in Charleston featuring the foods of the Pearl River Delta region of Southeastern China.