Special coverage
Charleston has long been known for its history and culture. It has also solidified itself as one of the top food-centric travel destinations in the country
Since the coronavirus pandemic began, the state's biggest craft brewing organization has repeatedly asked state officials to allow brewers to deliver their products to drinkers' doors. Those entreaties have been rebuffed at every level.
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I can’t shake the critic’s instinct that it’s silly to endorse a dish which might not be available tomorrow. I kind of miss taking chances, though. In other words: No promises. But here are my greatest hits from the first week of the dining ban.
Euro Foods is new to Old Towne Road, but not to West Ashley. It previously had a 13-year run on Ashley River Road, where it operated exclusively as a grocery store. Now the space bearing the Euro Foods name is split almost exactly in half, with a brightly lit retail section to the right and a counter-service café to the left.
Since launching the South Carolina Chef Ambassador program, the state has put approximately $360,000 into the culinary initiative. Less clear, at least according to data provided by sponsors S.C. Department of Agriculture and S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism, is what eaters here and elsewhere have gotten out of it.
Community Table is decidedly not fine dining: The servers are dressed in blue jeans, and James Taylor keeps cropping up on the background music mix.
Prior to 2020, each restaurant was theoretically eligible for 15 stars, since it was graded in three separate categories: Food, service and atmosphere. But no longer.
What really characterizes the food in this alluringly gold-walled lounge is not the ingredients which the Wangs puts into it, but the feeling you get out of it.
Malagon is making exceptional food, but its owners don’t want you or me to know it.
For the most part, the food at Tradd's in downtown Charleston is just mildly bad.
It’s a critic’s job to accurately describe a restaurant so potential patrons can knowledgeably decide if they want to go there. Readers can do as they choose with the accompanying opinions.
The massive Folly Beach restaurant, which measures three dining rooms and 6,500 square feet in all, has good intentions that spawn nothing but disappointment.
Melfi’s is the third restaurant that Brooks Reitz and Tim Mink have opened on the short strand of Upper King Street bounded by Congress and Sumter streets
I can’t shake the critic’s instinct that it’s silly to endorse a dish which might not be available tomorrow. I kind of miss taking chances, though. In other words: No promises. But here are my greatest hits from the first week of the dining ban.
Answering readers' food questions
Q: It is my understanding that in calculating the tip, the amount to be used is based on the pre-tax total. Staff does not need to be tipped for taxes collected, especially in high tax areas (New York, Charleston, San Francisco). What, in your opinion, is correct?
Q: Where can I find authentic Peking duck in Charleston area? I asked Red Orchid if they could do special order and was told, “No, too time consuming to be profitable.”
Not so very many years ago, shad roe was one of the great harbingers of spring that downtown Charleston restaurants raced to trumpet. But it’s lately been quiet on the shad roe front, in part, because chefs who appreciate the value of sustainable seafood aren’t entirely sure how to classify the egg sac of an anadromous herring.
Charleston's newest restaurants
Chizinski, who previously cooked at Sorghum & Salt, has promised “pizza, pasta (and) Italian-family style” dishes, featuring “ingredients from all over and everything weird in between.”
But there was always one question to which nobody really had a satisfactory answer: Why is the Charleston Wine + Food festival’s opening ceremony scheduled for two days after Opening Night?
Miss Ha is already a familiar name in the Charleston area. Janice Nguyen Hudgins’ mother, who with her husband emigrated from Vietna…
A downtown Charleston seafood restaurant which has grown from a seven-seat raw bar to a national sensation has moved into a space sized to match its reputation.
Bussin’ School
A monthly reader recipe contest
When these beans were served in Linda Page’s childhood home, it meant her parents were trying to save money. Now the dish signals one kind of special occasion: Page says she always makes it when she finds hambones on sale at The Honeybaked Ham Company store.
Frederick Goulding’s crab cake recipe is one of four competing in The Post and Courier Food section’s contest for a category crown. Over the course of a year, the newspaper will publish four reader-supplied recipes for each of 12 iconic Lowcountry dishes.
Bob Payne’s crab cake recipe is one of four competing in The Post and Courier Food section’s contest for a category crown. Over the course of a year, the newspaper will publish four reader-supplied recipes for each of 12 iconic Lowcountry dishes.
R. Alex Hild’s crab cake recipe is one of four competing in The Post and Courier Food section’s contest for a category crown. Over the course of a year, the newspaper will publish four reader-supplied recipes for each of 12 iconic Lowcountry dishes.
Bobbye C. Wilson’s crab cake recipe is one of four competing in The Post and Courier Food section’s contest for a category crown. Over the course of a year, the newspaper will publish four reader-supplied recipes for each of 12 iconic Lowcountry dishes.
You’ve been served
Who’s right in this situation? Should restaurant owners be held responsible for mitigating natural phenomena beyond their control? Or should restaurant patrons accept that sunlight, heat and insects sometimes figure into dining out in South Carolina?
Should restaurants restrict kids' menus to elementary-school aged children? Or does any minor dining with his or her mother have the right to order the chicken nuggets?
The Post and Courier Food section weekly features a complaint that first surfaced online, along with testimonies from the patron and restaurateur. You, the readers, are the jury. Join us in our Facebook group to weigh in on whether the customer is indeed right, or if the case should be resolved in the restaurant’s favor.
The Post and Courier Food section weekly features a complaint that first surfaced online, along with testimonies from the patron and restaurateur. You, the readers, are the jury. Join us in our Facebook group to weigh in on whether the customer is indeed right, or if the case should be resolved in the restaurant’s favor. Let’s enter the courtroom.
Exploring what locals eat throughout a day
This is part of The Post and Courier’s Daily Digest series, in which one of our food reporters asks a local to describe their day of eating in detail.
Behold: Daily Digest, self-quarantine style.
Behold: Daily Digest, self-quarantine style.
More Food
As if restaurant owners didn’t have enough challenges to surmount right now, steakhouses, burger joints and brisket specialists such as Lewis now have to figure out how to compensate for revenue lost to dining room closures while paying twice as much for their main ingredient and seating half as many customers.
Of the 31 states which have reissued reopening plans for restaurants, South Carolina is one of just 11 which hasn’t mandated masks for food-and-beverage employees. In four of those states, restaurant workers are officially encouraged to wear them.
Few if any Charleston area restaurants which at the start of the year were promoting their imminent openings have publicly backed away from their stated intentions. Here’s the latest update on other high-profile restaurants which were scheduled to open in the spring.