Since the day Gov. Henry McMaster closed restaurant dining rooms statewide, I’ve written approximately 200 stories about the coronavirus pandemic and all it’s wrought. If everything goes according to plan, over the next two weeks I won’t write any.
The popular crab provisioner is closing after 19 years in North Charleston. At 61, owner Kelli Parker is weary of working 60-hour weeks while her grandchildren grow up without her around.
Charleston-area restaurant owners and tax analysts alike say easing tax burdens on the expense-account set won’t make up for the devastating toll that COVID-19 has exacted on the hospitality industry.
While COVID-19 surcharges haven’t been universally popular, diners should expect to see more of them as restaurant owners struggle to climb out of the sales canyon carved by the coronavirus pandemic.
Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Mike Pence, toured Grey Ghost Bakery in Charleston on Tuesday.
The RiverDogs typically offer youth baseball camps, but once the minor league season was canceled, the City of Charleston pressed the team to create more recreational opportunities for residents. Since Riley Park is home to a newish and ample kitchen, as well as a reputation for imaginative concessions, Shea developed four week-long sessions of Culinary Camp.
The sale itself is modest compared to last year’s edition, with people fetching boxes of pre-ordered pastries from designated locations instead of mingling in a party-like atmosphere and buying treats directly from the professional bakers responsible for them. Still, it represents a small step toward normalcy for the restaurant community, which has long emphasized charitable giving.
In the Charleston area, where there’s a surfeit of trained chefs and practiced home cooks, it’s not necessary to take restaurant risks for a memorable meal. Here are some of the finest personal chefs in the Lowcountry.
Hugh O’Neill, a longtime member of the Charleston area hospitality community, on Sunday morning died after being infected with the coronavirus. He was 53.
Two weeks after testing positive, Hugh O’Neill, 53-year-old general manager of Cantina 76’s Mount Pleasant location, is on a ventilator at Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital, coping with two types of pneumonia and an infection of undetermined origin. His liver is inflamed, his heart is arrhythmic, and his kidneys are too weak to flush out paralytic drugs that doctors administered in what they describe as a chess game of controlling symptoms.
The number of temporary Charleston restaurant closures has dwindled in recent weeks. While 64 local restaurants closed briefly in June because of reasons related to COVID-19, such as an employee’s possible exposure to the virus or general apprehension about its spread, only nine restaurants did the same in the first half of July.
Any public relations professional three years prior to the pandemic would certainly have put the kibosh on a client covering half of his face for a press pic. These days, though, it's nonnegotiable.
For scholars of odor, the scenario is fascinating: Nobody yet knows how customers will react to the fundamental shift in sensory cues from steak to sanitizer.
For some downtown Charleston restaurant owners, leaving indoor dining rooms half open and half closed was painfully emblematic of what they see as a lack of decisive action by elected officials throughout the pandemic.
With temperatures rising across the Lowcountry, restaurant owners are outfitting their decks and commandeered parking lots with devices to keep customers cool. Yet the same familiar fan that promotes sweat evaporation, which is the mechanism for refreshing those in its wake, is also a champ at delivering dangerous droplets.
The three restaurateurs chosen as the inaugural beneficiaries of a credit card company’s new $5 million initiative to support Black-owned restaurants amid the coronavirus pandemic have several attributes in common: All three of them have Southern roots, intensely loyal fans and a business partner who’s a white man.
Guests of Wild Dunes Resort typically have their pick of half a dozen food-and-beverage outlets when they get hungry. But now their only choice on the 1,600-acre property is a food truck.
While the suit does not put a dollar amount on the damages Mackie is seeking, Mullaney is asking for a jury trial.
South Carolina restaurants and bars will have to cut off alcohol sales at 11 p.m., beginning Saturday night, under an order issued Friday by Gov. Henry McMaster.
The Palmetto Priority program requires seal holders to adopt basic protective measures like disinfecting tables between seatings, posting signs urging safe behavior and providing employee masks.
According to a statement signed by the group’s 13 board members, the festival in the coming year will focus on diversifying its board and staff, paying closer attention to the event venues it chooses and facilitating the participation of a wider group of food-and-beverage experts.
Sizing up the federal dollars Charleston-area food and beverage businesses sought through the Paycheck Protection Program.
Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, scientific researchers and cultural commentators have talked about its parallels with the early days of AIDS, zeroing in on similarities in uncertainties, outlook and preventive strategies. But one of the main ways in which AIDS and coronavirus are alike is that collective grappling with the lethal disease has largely played out in restaurants.
The relatively small number of restaurants which have announced temporary closures since June 26 (specifically, seven) is also a function of how many restaurants have already gone through the routine.
With positive tests for the coronavirus progressively thinning out local restaurant staffs, workers say they have less time to keep up with new sanitation protocols and more reason to worry about contracting the potentially deadly virus.
Starting Wednesday, most people are required by the city of Charleston to wear face coverings when entering restaurants, although they’re allowed to remove them when “actively eating, drinking or smoking.”
After years of being accused of cultural appropriation by Gullah Geechee residents of the Lowcountry, a white-owned milling company in Edisto is changing its name in response to increased national pressure.
Restaurants are the very first type of environment specified for mandatory masking-up in the emergency ordinance passed last week by Charleston City Council.
With COVID-19 surging in the Charleston area, an increasing number of restaurant workers have been among those testing positive for the potentially lethal disease.
Scholars and attorneys on both sides of the lawsuits filed in federal court generally agree that the confluence of a hobbled economy and increased awareness of anti-Black racism is likely to lead to an uptick in racial discrimination litigation.
"Pants are more uncomfortable than masks, and you don't throw a fit when we ask you to wear those," said one bartender.
Negative results from COVID-19 tests, which many Charleston area restaurant owners have made a linchpin of their strategies for reopening after a confirmed employee case, are not reliable indicators of whether a person is capable of spreading the deadly disease, scientists say.
In the wake of Whole Foods Market’s West Ashley location reporting employee cases of COVID-19, some local grocery workers are calling upon the City of Charleston to mandate masks in supermarkets.
Organizers of a Folly Beach restaurant owners’ meeting to formulate a unified response to the local COVID-19 surge are hoping half of the city’s restaurateurs will join their effort.
It’s prudent for local eaters to assume there is at least one coronavirus case at every restaurant, and to plot their dining choices accordingly.
Jestine’s Kitchen may be remembered as the last Charleston restaurant to openly capitalize on a narrative of black servitude.
With Charleston-area restaurants increasingly dependent on outdoor dining, owners are keeping a close eye on local weather forecasts.
The cascade of restaurant closures stemming from employees testing positive for the coronavirus appears likely to slow to a trickle as the state health department prepares to advise owners that they don’t necessarily have to shut down because a worker is infected.
While the festival’s Tuesday afternoon declaration garnered some social media support, activists immediately took issue with the festival focusing on a pre-Civil War racist instead of addressing contemporary allegations that the organization slights the contributions of black chefs and overlooks black consumers.
Farmers markets will return to Marion Square and Ackerman Park before the end of the month, city officials say. But familiar aspects of the market experience, possibly including opening hours, are in line for change.
Just one week after vowing not to adjust business hours in the wake of an employee testing positive for the coronavirus, SNOB on Sunday morning announced it’s shutting its doors indefinitely following a third employee's positive results.
Although it wasn’t previously fine by the city, city spokesman Jack O’Toole confirmed that Charleston will scale back enforcement of its sidewalk sign restrictions as downtown businesses strive to recover from the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Charleston area restaurants this week continued to close as employees test positive for the coronavirus, confirming for owners that workplace precautions don’t confer immunity upon their staff.
After a day of peaceful protests against police brutality following George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, riots erupted in downtown Charleston. Newly-released 911 calls show employees at several restaurants couldn't flee before looters stormed the premises.
It’s highly unlikely that white gloves, which in the years before the Civil War were associated exclusively with the elite, formed part of a laborer’s uniform, a Harvard University fashion historian said, confirming white gloves are tied up with the memory of slavery.
Commonhouse Aleworks in Park Circle joins a growing list of breweries that will make the "open-source" beer.
"There's going to be a glut," said one local restaurant liquidator.
Cru Café, Purlieu and Cru Catering will be closed for one week following an employee’s positive test for the novel coronavirus, owner John Zucker announced Sunday.
SNOB employees are concerned that the iconic downtown Charleston restaurant hasn’t arranged for them to be tested for the coronavirus after a coworker tested positive for the potentially deadly disease.
Reflecting the food-and-beverage industry’s dominance of downtown Charleston, restaurants and bars accounted for almost half of the commercial properties vandalized in last Saturday’s looting,…