Basic Kitchen ‘Deftly Sidesteps Twee Traps’

“Even if you don’t normally eat the kind of food served at Basic Kitchen, you’re almost certainly familiar with it,” critic Hanna Raskin writes to begin her review on the downtown clean eats restaurant. She goes on to describe the world of Instagram-worthy grain bowls coveted by yogis and influencers alike. She does this to set up that Basic Kitchen lives up to that world, but without going overboard.

Basic Kitchen is easy to mock for its millennial wholesomeness ... But the downtown restaurant deftly sidesteps twee traps, showing more spine than an Instagram post can capture.

Raskin recommends stopping in for breakfast, brunch, or lunch, and going for the signature Basic bowl: “Part of the fun of the setup is figuring out which vegetables perk up with a touch of carroty ginger, and which call for the more dogged zing of garlicky cilantro.” There’s a few missteps with too much coconut oil on a turkey burger: “... it tasted as though it had just finished a lifeguard shift,” but Basic Kitchen ultimately lands three stars.

Charleston City Paper critic Vanessa Wolf is the land opposite of clean eating at French restaurant Felix. She indulges in a “smooth and rich” chicken liver mousse, a “straightforward and satisfying” fromage fort, a raclette burger “oozing with cheese and caramelized onions,” and the gnocchi a la grand-mere, which is “... like a gussied up pot pie with strong vegetal elements.” Wolf calls Felix a “welcome addition” to Upper King.

• Basic Kitchen Is Where Color and Clean Come Together In Sensory Deliciousness [P&C]
• Félix Chef Elizabeth Schultenover Nails Parisian Small Plates [CP]