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Cuisine

Stono Market and Tomato Shed Cafe on Johns Island is the Ambrose family’s farm market

Stono Market and Tomato Shed Cafe has sold the Ambrose family’s Wadmalaw Island produce on Main Road since 1989, and its crab cake has been the order for at least twenty years.

A shopper reaches for broccoli from a refrigerated produce case stocked with greens, celery and red and green peppers, with chalkboard price signs.

Photo: Stono Market and Tomato Shed Cafe

Stono Market & Tomato Shed Cafe at 842 Main Road on Johns Island is a farm market with a lunch counter, a gift shop and a supper service, under live oaks on the road from U.S. 17 to Kiawah and Seabrook Islands. It is the market of the Ambrose Family Farm on Wadmalaw Island, and it has served the community since 1989. Barbara Ambrose is the owner-operator. Lunch is served Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., supper Thursday through Saturday from 4 to 9 p.m., and the market's site is stonofarmmarket.com.

Ripe tomatoes and an onion in a wooden bowl beside a baked casserole dish on a table outdoors.
Tomatoes and a baked dish on the patio table.Photo: Stono Market and Tomato Shed Cafe

Pete Ambrose ran a shrimp boat before he farmed

Pete Ambrose grew up in rural Charleston, when James Island was still the farming area. In 1966 he was running a shrimp boat out of Rockville. As his family grew he wanted to stop spending long stretches at sea, and in 1976 he started farming. The farm is now more than 135 acres on Selkirk Plantation, Wadmalaw Island, and Pete runs it with his youngest son, Sam, and a crew of three. The farm's own site says he still shrimps "in his dreams at night" but "farms from his heart during the day."

The shrimping never quite left the business. In 2006 the market's website said, "We are shrimpers too!", with the family's own trawler docked at home and shrimp sold fresh at the market.

The market began as Stono Farm Market

Twenty years ago the place went by Stono Farm Market and called itself "a real farmer's market." The family grew strawberries, butter beans, okra, sweet corn and collards among much else, packed the produce in the field and delivered it to the market every day. The Tomato Shed Cafe was "our little 'Inside the Market Cafe,'" cooking daily lunch, meals to go and take-and-bake dishes. The farm opened its strawberry fields to pickers every April, and visiting groups could order bag lunches from the market on the way.

All of that is still there in some form. The farm stand on Wadmalaw runs pick-your-own in spring and summer, and the market still sells take-and-bake dishes and bag lunches.

The crab cake is the order

In 2006 the market's site called them "our famous crab cakes." Today the lunch menu describes an award-winning crab cake "full of crab meat and little filler," with peppers, onion and cracker crumbs, served as a plate with two sides or on a bun. At supper it comes as a platter of two, made with lump and claw meat.