The Post and Courier Food section is checking in weekly with four downtown Charleston restaurants coping with the coronavirus pandemic and recovering from restrictions designed to contain it.

Wait, what’s a voter’s guide doing in the Food section?

Alice Warren, the Charleston restaurateur whose fried chicken, red rice and collard greens constituted Exhibit A for the case that food brings people together, died on Saturday. Friends and family members believe she was in her early 70s.

Almost a decade ago, a Harvard Business School professor published a study showing a one-star increase in a restaurant’s Yelp rating translated to a 5 percent to 9 percent increase in revenue.

While DHEC hasn’t ruled out sending an inspector to a restaurant “when conditions warrant” it, nearly all inspections are now performed via video call. 

As a growing number of Charleston-area restaurants revert to on-premise seating, Gillie’s Seafood remains among the holdouts sticking with a to-go model.

The Post and Courier Food section is checking in weekly with four downtown Charleston restaurants coping with the coronavirus pandemic and recovering from restrictions designed to contain it.

Hobcaw Brewing Co. is opening with three kinds of IPA lager and Charleston Coffee Roasters coffee stout on tap. It’s hosting food trucks on a regular basis.

Here’s the latest on which local restaurants are plotting a return and which have decided to close down forever.

The Post and Courier Food section is checking in weekly with four downtown Charleston restaurants coping with the coronavirus pandemic and recovering from restrictions designed to contain it.

Five Loaves Café, which over two decades grew from a two-man operation to a network of restaurants beloved by families from Mount Pleasant to Summerville, is closing its original location in downtown Charleston.

An ode to Scott Fales: “It was comfortable,” brother Jim Fales said of the much-loved Pinckney Cafe and Espresso, which from 1986 to 2000 occupied the French Quarter building which now belongs to Cru Cafe.

Aligning with the fight against anti-Blackness is not the default position for White-owned Charleston restaurants, which typically strive to stay out of any discussion with political overtones.

Throughout the month of October, the immersive LED light installation “Autumn Nights in the Field of Light” at Brookgreen Gardens is open from 7-9:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

The Post and Courier Food section is checking in weekly with four downtown Charleston restaurants coping with the coronavirus pandemic and recovering from restrictions designed to contain it. Here's another installment. 

Shrimp and Grits Café recently opened in the Citadel Mall’s food court.

Ben's Friends is helping food-and-beverage workers get sober, and in-person meetings are starting back up.

South Carolina restaurants will no longer be legally obliged to conform to social distancing restrictions designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster on Thursday announced.

Many beer and liquor makers along Legare Farms' route felt compelled to reevaluate their business relationship with the farm after a controversial Facebook post. 

After Snyder Events this summer installed a tent at Halls Chophouse, allowing the downtown Charleston restaurant to seat 16 guests outside, Snyder’s Greg Casciato says other restaurants "reached out like crazy.”

It takes more than good intentions to get a problematic business name changed, as the owners of Geechie Boy Mill have lately discovered.

The Post and Courier Food section is checking in weekly with four downtown Charleston restaurants coping with the coronavirus pandemic and recovering from restrictions designed to contain it. Here's the latest update.

Tobin’s Market bills itself as a live music venue, as well as a modest restaurant.

Faced with signing a five-year lease, the owner of a popular James Island café has decided to close his restaurant. And another area lunch destination also took to Instagram on Wednesday to announce its run had ended.

Former executive chef Michel Sichel, who in 2018 was recruited from fine dining institution Galatoire’s to open Gabrielle at the Hotel Bennett, describes the end of his tenure at the high-end property as “an abrupt, unanticipated departure.”

From the time she started renting the former service station on Morrison Drive, owner Martha Lou Gadsden relied on friend Charles Desaussure to paint it inside and out. If the little pink building is demolished, the legendary South Carolina artist’s renderings of Gadsden and Mosquito Beach will go down with it.

When Dr. Leon Banov in 1918 started inspecting Charleston’s soda fountains, much of the filth he uncovered was beyond public view.

What occurs in dining rooms while patrons aren’t there is an important part of the hospitality industry’s effort to stave off infection.

The Post and Courier has set out to salute restaurants that have made efforts to accommodate customers demanding safety from the coronavirus. Here's a look at some of them.

Over the course of their many research-and-development trips to Hatch, N.M., and El Paso, Texas, chefs John Lewis and Philip Powers repeatedly found inspiration in Harvey Morrow’s pinto beans and how local cooks prepared them.

The Post and Courier Food section is checking in weekly with four downtown Charleston restaurants coping with the coronavirus pandemic and recovering from restrictions designed to contain it. Here's the latest update.

The Morrison Drive institution closed Sept. 1 following the sale of the iconic pink building that housed Martha Lou Gadsden’s celebrated cooking for 37 years.

Charleston Grill next month will reopen without general manager Mickey Bakst, downtown Charleston hospitality’s greatest champion and most familiar face.

The Post and Courier Food section is checking in weekly with four downtown Charleston restaurants coping with the coronavirus pandemic and recovering from restrictions designed to contain it. Here's another installment.

Rodney Scott has been profiled in The New York Times, The Washington Post and in popular magazines. But it turns out that words don’t exert nearly as much influence as a Netflix special.

State Rep. Lin Bennett, R-Charleston, faced widespread criticism from the Charleston area food-and-beverage community on Tuesday for statements made about restaurant workers in a 2013 radio segment posted to social media by her opponent.

The Post and Courier Food section is checking in weekly with four downtown Charleston restaurants coping with the coronavirus pandemic and recovering from restrictions designed to contain it. Here's the latest.

Plenty of people are desperate to eat inside restaurants: The mayor of Philadelphia last month incited a minor online melee after he crossed state lines to dine at his friend’s restaurant in Maryland where it’s legal to seat customers indoors. His frustrated constituents didn’t take kindly to him skirting a municipal rule that’s literally put them out on the street.

Here's how to use up those extra tubs of pimento cheese you may have on hand.

Kwei Fei’s monthlong stint as a Cantonese joint ends on Saturday, but owners of the James Island restaurant say patrons haven’t seen the last of General Tso’s chicken and Kung Pao shrimp.

Kingsford Charcoal has launched a promotion to prop up “smaller, family-owned local operations experiencing significant financial strain.”

This survey was restricted to mass-produced pimento cheeses regularly sold in Charleston area supermarkets in order to best approximate the price point and accessibility of Palmetto Cheese. 

Now Butcher & Bee is striving to get back to normal, meaning it hopes to recapture the sense of fun, safety and optimism that prevailed at the festival afterparty. But in order to do so, it’s making significant changes to its operation, starting with what it serves and how.

This story is part of a weekly series chronicling downtown Charleston restaurants coping with the coronavirus pandemic and recovering from restrictions designed to contain it.