You Are Here

Each month, we’ll throw a dart at a map and write about where it lands.

LOCATION: 3321 Freedom Dr.

3321 Freedom Dr.

With Love, For Mama

Willie Walters’ food truck serves the low country fare he grew up on

CHEF WILLIE WALTERS cooked his rst meal at the tender age of 8, standing on a lard bucket to reach the stove. The oldest of three kids (11, eventually), he began cooking out of necessity in his native Loris, S.C., a low country town about 30 miles inland from Myrtle Beach.

“Mom started training me because she had to go to work in the elds,” Walters says. “I wanted to please her and let her know I could do it, so one day she came home for 12 o’clock lunch, and I had rice, sweet peas, and fried chicken ready for her. The one thing I did wrong was, I cooked the chicken too fast. It was real pretty, but when you bit on the inside, she wasn’t quite ready.”

His mom, Sandra Lee Walters, wasn’t bothered one bit. “She was so in awe. Very proud that I wanted to help her like that. That’s what inspired me to be a chef.”

Today, Walters, 48, serves customers at his food truck, Sandra Lee’s Country Kitchen, in the parking lot of a Boost Mobile store on Freedom Drive, where he sets up every Tuesday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. On this lunch hour, a steady stream of customers orders wings, shrimp, and chicken bog, a distinctly low country dish of slow-cooked smoked chicken and beef sausage blended with yellow rice.

Sandra Lee Walters died in 2018 at 63, and when Walters moved from his catering business into the food truck last fall, it just seemed right to name it a er his mom. He had her photo painted on the truck, with a slogan that honors her memory: “Love in every bite.” —Cristina Bolling