1Kept Is the ‘Backstreet Boys of Restaurants’

The first review for Southern eatery and bar 1Kept is out, and it’s pretty tepid. Charleston City Paper writer Vanessa Wolf samples kale salad and steak sandwiches from the menu and deems the offerings a best-of list of the 2010s.

The menu is safe and trend-focused, although for a hotel restaurant that is probably a smart move. Still, all your future twenty-teen clichés are here, including black truffle oil, quinoa and kale, not to mention pork belly and Brussels sprouts ...

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Wolf may call 1Kept the “Backstreet Boys of restaurants” because the menu highlights the hits of the early aughts, but she does have some nice things to says about those items. “I would happily eat this again,” she says of the pork belly. The shrimp and grits is the best thing she tried. The pimento cheese board “provides a good showcase of creativity.” And the chicken schnitzel is “comforting and authentic.”

Just avoid the “soft and mushy” kale salad, the “incredibly hard to eat” steak sandwich, and the salty truffle popcorn.

• 1Kept's Menu Is Like a Top 40 List of Twenty-Teen Hits [CP]
• 1Kept Opens With Eggs Benedict [ECHS]