At the second annual Charleston Food & Wine Festival, on March 1–4, in Charleston, S.C., a tented village was erected in Marion Square. The tent housed cooking demonstrations, a gospel brunch, cooking contests, and a barbecue and blues fest. In spite of drastic changes in the weather — from bright and sunny to a raging storm and a subsequent tornado watch — the party carried on. As rain showers turned the floor into muddy marsh, out-of-town visitors got a taste of the temperamental coastal Lowcountry climate.

If the well-established Aspen Food & Wine Festival is reminiscent of a long weekend at a university, the fledging Charleston event is like a high school fair, with a comfortable intimacy and a manageable selection of seminars. Festival participants could sit in on a seminar about the New York dining scene, or attend another that asked, “Is There Really a Southern Cuisine?”

For Northerners who have tasted pimento cheese (a yellow-orange spread of shredded cheese and the red peppers from which the spread gets its name), shrimp paste (ground shrimp and mayonnaise), or red rice, fried okra, and boiled peanuts, it’s obvious there’s something different going on down South.

Moderator Nathalie Dupree, a cookbook author and chairwoman of the festival, tried to enliven the debate on whether there is in fact a Southern cuisine. But panelists Matt and Ted Lee, authors of “The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook”; John Edge, a food writer and director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and Baltimore-born chef John Shields were in general agreement about the origins of Southern cooking: The cuisine is the result of a mingling of black and white cultures — in dishes frequently prepared by black servants for wealthy, white families, as well as meals derived from African traditions passed down among slaves that stretched limited resources over long periods of time (grits or rice, for instance, with small quantities of inexpensive cuts of meat). A lack of refrigeration in the hot climate also required that foods be either very fresh or cured.

The panelists also agreed that Southern cuisine is not monolithic. It is regional, and the characteristic dishes vary from place to place. “Lowcountry” is a reference to the coastline region that extends from Savannah, Ga., to just north of Charleston. It is influenced by the Gullah people, descendants of various African ethnic groups, from the coastal islands of Georgia and South Carolina, whose language and cooking derives from a creolized mix of Spanish, French, Native American, and African cultures.

It was the marshy, rice-growing plantations that first marked South Carolina’s place in the culinary history of the world.

“It was traditionally a rice culture with sandy soil, long growing seasons with strong influences from the coastal waters, crab, and other seafood from the estuaries,” explained the chef of Charleston’s Hominy Grill, Robert Stehling. “Okra and eggplant came from slave influences, brought in originally with the slave trade from rice growing areas of Africa.” The Lowcountry rice casserole dish, purloo, made with chicken, sausage, and shrimp, is “similar to jambalaya and paella,” Mr. Stehling said.

“There’s always something you can catch in the ocean or on the creeks,” a Charleston native and lawyer turned restaurateur, Richard Stoney, said. Mr. Stoney, an avid sailor, is the owner of the Boathouse Restaurants, three eateries that specialize in local seafood, including remarkably fresh briny oysters, tender clams, local flounder, and grouper. He’s also recently started a garden on his family’s plantation, Kensington, to provide fresh vegetables to his restaurants, including the historic Carolina’s on Exchange Street.

Mr. Stoney has teamed up with the owner of Boone Hall Plantation for a joint venture that includes the renovation of Serena’s Kitchen, which will reopen this fall, serving classic Southern lunches, plantation-style (dishes from Gullah Gumbo to peach pie are passed around to be shared at tables for 12). Strategic planners will find restaurants in the city that are open for lunch, too.

In the meantime, Boone Hall Plantation, a working plantation, is worth the 20-minute trip from downtown to Mt. Pleasant. Visitors are led on a tour of the stately mansion conducted by a guide costumed in 18th-Century Southern dress. Preserved slave cabins have been converted into a museum, and guests can walk the grounds or on the boulevard of Live Oaks, under a canopy of branches, they can attend a daily talk on the interpretation of Gullah culture at Gullah Theater. In the summer, visitors can pick fruit, including peaches and strawberries. Down the road at Boone Hall Farms, locally grown fruits and vegetables are for sale.

Back at the festival, as part of the “dine-around” portion of the program, the chef at the Oak Steakhouse, Brett McKee, co-hosted a dinner with guest chef Dickie Brennan the of New Orleans restaurants Palace Café, Bourbon House, and Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse. Guests enjoyed a gutbusting feast that included beef carpaccio, barbecue shrimp, mint pesto-encrusted lamb, and beef filet served with creamed spinach and fried Louisiana oysters.

A Flurry of Festivals

Charleston is an ideal location for festivals because the small city is easy to navigate and full of places of cultural and historic interest.

Upcoming events include the 60th annual Festival of House and Gardens, through April 14 (historiccharleston.org), and Spoleto USA, an international performing arts festival featuring groundbreaking theater, music, and dance, May 25 through June 10 (spoletousa.org).