Malagon is making exceptional food, but its owners don’t want you or me to know it.

Charleston and New Orleans aren’t exactly the same, but when visitors who’ve been to The Big Easy first come to The Holy City, they’re apt to feel like they’ve found their friend’s straight-laced cousin who doesn’t cuss or fling his beer bottles on the sidewalk. The two places are united by …

Our food critic visited three Charleston restaurants when they first opened in the past year. After giving them all two stars in the first round, she revisits them to see what's improved and what stays the same.

Royal terns may fly, but Charleston area diners tend to drive, so when John and Ben Williams opened a restaurant named for the seabird, they wanted potential customers to know their cars wouldn’t be a problem.

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.

There are some places where it doesn’t take a compass to know which way the culture goes. People in Miami have to go north to reach the South, and people in Seattle have to go east to find the Wild West.

Shrimp-and-grits hasn’t been a Lowcountry signature for very long, but the dish has more than made up for lost time with ubiquity.

Over the course of a year of restaurant reviewing, which translates to approximately 120 meals eaten for professional purposes, there are bound to be a few duds. Sometimes my mind will involuntarily flash back to cold and droopy squash blossoms or a mound of grated and burnt potatoes.

 For the most part, the food at Tradd's in downtown Charleston is just mildly bad.

Cast your mind back, if you can, to that moment roughly a week ago, when you were meditating on the collision of worlds Old and New, and the culinary consequences it wrought.

It’s silly to fret over people not understanding precisely what a food critic’s work entails, since it’s hardly a job that most folks hold down for a summer in college or learn about from an uncle who’s spent a lifetime in the biz. But if a genie gave me chance to correct just three fallacie…

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

So an entrepreneur, a sommelier and a chef walk into a bar.

Folly Beach's Lowlife Bar is as spacious as a standard restaurant, but so long as it’s serving, walls only surround a portion of the concrete-floored room, making the ocean feel nearer than five blocks away.

SCENE: A real estate office in a West Ashley duplex. The firm’s top and only agent is sucking on a vape pen and rifling through paperwork.

With football season underway and Election Day looming, here’s something upon which everyone can agree: Charleston has so much pizza.

Chubby Fish is already one of the area’s great neighborhood oyster bars, and it’s located in a neighborhood that’s delighted to claim it.

Diners who can’t fully enjoy their roast chicken if a fellow in the next booth over is wearing a ballcap, who reflexively flinch when a hostess greets them with a hearty “hey, guys!” will be tickled to know that every table at Revival, the restaurant that recently replaced Drawing Room at Th…

Parcel 32 is one of the few downtown restaurants at which you’ll want to consider carving out cocktail time in advance of your reservation, Food Editor and Chief Food Critic Hanna Raskin writes.

The Establishment has put together a very professional front-of-house cast, but when it comes down to correctly cooking a fish, things have a tendency to go awry.

At least eight out of every 10 local eaters who profess deep affection for Far Eastern flavors have yet to discover some of the Charleston area’s most satisfying Southeast Asian snacks.

Promises of changes to come aren't enough to make up for the costly dishes and flawed service at this starcrossed space that's long put events ahead of its restaurant customers.

Both places are the products of seasoned thinking about breakfast. But does wide-ranging industry expertise make for a better flapjack?

It’s typically not a good sign when your mind wanders outside of a restaurant during a meal.

Saltwater Cowboys is indeed Shem Creek’s best restaurant, Food Editor and Chief Critic Hanna Raskin writes.

When Neighborhood Dining Group chose the name Husk for its then-new restaurant on Queen Street, team members couldn’t have guessed how prescient it would prove to be.

★★★★☆ The great Chinese restaurant that Charleston has long awaited (so long as a Sichuanese pop-up counts.) Sichuan | Cannonborough-Elliotborough

★★☆☆☆ A restaurant/sports bar/brewery/live music venue goes big for Daniel Islanders who don't want to go far from home. American | Daniel Island

★★★☆☆ The eminently Instagrammable Basic Kitchen aces the simple ingredient game. Wholesome | Harleston Village

★★★★☆ Purlieu's recitation of the classics is a delicious blast from the past. French | Westside

★★★½☆ Tu's artsy approach to flavors gives guests plenty to chew on. Contemporary continental | Eastside

★★★☆☆ With smart cocktails and French classics, Felix is already feeling like an old favorite.

French | Cannonborough

This review is unstarred because it's based on single visits.

It was a delicious year.

★★½☆☆ Pizza crust is the crowning glory at Ember Wood Fired Kitchen. 

Contemporary American | Mt. Pleasant