The PopCulteer
January 16, 2026

Charleston’s Restaurant Week is coming up from January 26 to 31, and it’s time for my annual reminder that, if you’re in the area, this is a great way to sample some of the Charleston area’s newest or trendiest restaurants at a discounted price.

We’re talking about “fine dining” here, so those discounted prices range from twenty-five to forty-nine bucks for a three-course meal for one person. This is not fast food, and you’ll want to be sure to scope out the menus ahead of time to make sure that the set selections at that price are to your liking.

Each restuarant offers an appetizer, entree and dessert, for one. Drinks are extra. And most of the restaurants give you a choice between two offerings for each course. This makes it more efficient for them, so don’t expect much in the way of substitutions.

You can find graphics with the Restaurant Week menus for each participating restaurant at the Facebook Page for Restaurant Week.

You can also find Steven J. Keith’s  detailed analysis of those menus at his blog.

Steven offers an enthusiastic rundown of the complete menus, and he’s more qualified to write about this event than yours truly because…I have no plans to try any of these special menus.

I think it’s a great idea, and it’s wonderful for the area. Foodies should definitely partake and sample as many of these great restaurants as they can.

But…as I have written about in PopCult many times, I have far too many dietary restrictions and my own sets of tastes and quirks that make attempting to try any of these meals downright dangerous, if not off-putting for me, personally.

Before I go any further, let me explain that I am not complaining about nor am I condemning any of these restaurants. Any restaurant that tried to exclusively cater to my food quirks would probably go out of business in a week. There’s just too much stuff I can’t eat, and an even longer list of stuff I won’t eat.

I posted a silly note about this on Facebook earlier in the week, and my comedic skills must have been diminished because most people reacted as though it were a sad lament. It was not. I was poking fun at myself. This is not a “poor me” column. It’s a “go ahead and laugh at me” column.

It could also be an “easy ways to kill Rudy” column, but hopefully that angry guy from KV Live won’t be reading this.

THINGS I CAN’T EAT

I have a lot of unusual dietary restrictions. I can’t eat mushrooms (or truffles or stuff like that). It’s not exactly an allergy. It’s an extreme toxic reaction. I do not pass anaphylaxis, I go straight to organ failure. I have to avoid mushrooms. It is a matter of life and death for me. Anybody who thinks this is something to joke about is just being an asshole.

I have a standard food allergy to strawberries, as well as many other berries that are supposed to be good for you. With these it’s itching, rashes, general misery, but nothing fatal.

I am allergic to rubbing alcohol, and alcoholic drinks burn enough that I consider myself allergic to them, too. This is no great loss since I could never stand the taste of any alcoholic beverages anyway. This includes beer. I have tasted beer before, just out of curiosity. I have never tasted urine, but I would imagine it tastes about like the beer I tried, so I’ll gladly pass on that.

It’s just as well, since I don’t show the usual signs of inebriation. A doctor once told me that I could drink until I died from alcohol poisoning without ever getting drunk. I’ve never had any desire to test that theory.

A few years ago I learned that avocado somehow counteracts the meds I take to control Myasthenia Gravis. This is apparently a rare reaction, but I managed to learn about it the hard way. It’s part of the joy of being a medical anomoly.

With mushrooms, alcohol, strawberries and avocado out of the question for me, that’s more than half of the restaurant week menus ruled out, and that’s not even taking my personal tastes into account.

THINGS I WON’T EAT

Personal tastes are where I draw a whole new set of boundaries. Some food I just don’t like. Nobody has any right to tell me I’m wrong for having my own tastes, and I don’t judge anybody who loves food that I find repulsive. I see way too much of people demonizing other people on social media because of what they eat or how they eat it. The food bullying is pretty pathetic, and says a lot about the person doing the bullying.

If somebody wants their steak well done, then let them have it well done. Get your head out of your ass and mind your own damn business instead of calling them “evil” on social media because they don’t like their meat cooked the same way as you.

For the record…I don’t even eat red meat anymore. About seven months ago I just lost any desire for it. It doesn’t even look like food to me anymore. Of all the evil things in the world today that you can call people out on, what they eat (unless it’s babies) is not in the top million.

I do have strongly-held opinions about what I will or won’t eat. I do not expect anyone else to conform to my tastes, and to be fair, I will refrain from posting some of my reasons for hating certain foods because I don’t want to do anything to lessen the enjoyment of those foods by other people.

Just accept that I like different things than you, and move on. In fact, you can have my share.

There are foods I find repulsive to the point that they nauseate me. These include mayonnaise, cole slaw, ham, bacon, deviled eggs, oysters, sour cream, candy corn, cucumbers (oddly enough, I like pickles), most jams and jellies and preserves and spaghetti-like pasta (it’s the shape, not the pasta itself). Again, I could write very funny reasons for each of those, but I see no need to possibly ruin them for folks who like to eat that stuff.

I also can’t stand the smell of smoked meat. It smells like a tire fire to me. I have been known to avoid streets where I know one of those BBQ trailers is parked because the smell is so offensive to me. I’ve been like this for years, and maybe that had something to do with me finally losing any desire to even eat a hamburger. I don’t miss it at all. I’m fine with chicken and fish as my main source of meatish proteins.

Of late I’m even feeling a bit tofu-curious.

When it comes to spicy food, I prefer flavor over heat. I just don’t like the taste of Jalapeno or Chipoltle. I’m fine with milder chiles.  And while I love chicken, I hate wings.  Too many of them are like licking battery acid off of a bone.  Anything “Buffalo,” again…you can have my share.

There are also foods of which I am simply not a fan. I wouldn’t starve myself, they were the only thing around, but if I ever eat pancakes or waffles, I skip the syrup. The combination sorta grosses me out. I find it hard to get excited about iceberg lettuce. If I can build a salad on any other green leafy thing, I will.  I find baked potatoes to be boring. It is the C-Span of side dishes.

There’s plenty of foods I love, but again, I don’t care if you like or hate them. You do you.

PICKING YOUR FOOD FIGHTS

My late friend, Lee Harrah, had a deep, unabiding, intense hatred of vegetable soup. I could never understand it, but I never tried to get him to change his mind. I love a good bowl of vegetable soup, but it was one of the things he hated most in the world, and it could Hulk trigger him into a rage.

He felt the same way about mermaids and Diane Keaton, so I just sort of changed the subject and tried not to bring those things up again.

My point there being, respect other people’s tastes. They may love something you hate, and hate something you love, and that’s okay. And if Restaurant Week sounds like fun to you, by all means go to it. It could be a lot of fun.

A last note: I do patronize many locally-owned restaurants, and most of my favorites are not taking part in Restaurant Week. And that’s okay, because most of my favorite places are inexpensive enough that you can feed two people, leave a nice tip and bring home leftovers for less the price of the average Restaurant Week menu for one.

And I never get any grief for asking them to leave out something that might kill me. It has been my experience that the more expensive a restaurant is, the less flexible they are about adjusting their menu to accomodate your food allergies.

If you find the Restaurant Week offerings a little too expensive, or outside your tastes, let me recommend Dwight’s, Shuckers, Mediterranean Breeze or The Red Line Diner in Saint Albans; Shima’s in Nitro; Roma’s in Cross Lanes/Nitro; Graziano’s in South Charleston; Plaza Mayo in Kanawha City and Leonoro’s in Charleston.

And if you have other recomendations, feel free to leave them in the comments.  Mel and I are always up to try a new place. I just need to see the menu first to see if it’s safe.

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content and all our regular features.