Do you want to party? To raise toasts in a happy place, listen to live music, maybe even burst into song on open-mic Monday night? If that sounds like a good time, head for New Ellenton's Atomic City Eatery and Billiards.

Highway 421 (Augusta Road) through Warrenville is the Midland Valley Area's Restaurant Row, a treasure-trove of colorful eateries. I have already reviewed Bruce's Bar and Jamrock Caribana, each a gem in its own way. Midway Grill, Lovo's Mexican, Ming-Ming Chinese and Southern Gal in the Vall…

Unlike a fast-food franchise, Chick-N-Snack has its own personality. Quirky décor includes chicken-themed wallpaper and a dusty taxidermied rooster standing on top of an old freezer in the corner of the dining area. Incongruously frilly green gingham valances shade windows that look out into the parking lot and Ascauga Lake Road beyond. The restaurant is at 208 Ascauga Lake Road, Graniteville, S.C.

At Southbound Smokehouse, slow smoke-cooking yields supple meat.

One immense frosting-laden slice of cake from Boll Weevil Café & Sweetery will challenge the most rapacious sweet tooth.

Roma's is the neighborhood Italian restaurant at Woodside Plantation. Many of its customers live right here. They sit together as groups of friends and neighbors, nonchalant enough that they don't bother to dress up for dinner.

Papa's Kitchen is cheerful. It's important to say so because the building that houses it is not. It resembles a utility barn where heavy farm equipment is stored for the winter. But step inside this modest café off Atomic Road in Jackson and you find a warm, friendly place. 

A new eatery deserves time to iron out any kinks before it gets reviewed. Bistro 55, which opened just a few weeks ago, is so impressive that I want to waive that rule and tell you about it right away.

Birria is comfort food … comfort food with clout. It's a specialty at Victoria Mexican Restaurant.

The Pot Smoker BBQ restaurant cooks meat with smoldering hickory coals, a process that perfumes everything in sniffing distance. When I come home after a meal here, my dog cannot get enough of me. I smell so good.

When Aiken food oracle Robert Heilig, Jr. learned I went to The Monkey Store, he asked if I had come up with a word to describe the curiously named enterprise on Columbia Highway this side of Ridge Spring. Being a consummate wordsmith, he lamented, "'Unique' just doesn't have enough firepower."

Stone Roastery is a mecca for pilgrims who seek outstanding coffee.

What began in 1852 as a general store at the corner of Edgefield's Courthouse Square is now a quaint lunchroom favored by locals and CSRA road trippers.

Do you like to drink in bars? Do you enjoy billiards, darts and karaoke? Do you have a Harley on which to join the bikers who come to Whiskey Bent Bar & Grill for Bike Night?

Opened by Bobby Griffin Sr. in 1985, now run by his son, Bobby Jr., Bobby's Bar-B-Q is a restaurant unique to the South and to the CSRA in particular.

In 2018, Sheila Martin began selling doughnuts from a food truck that traveled around the CSRA. Two years later she opened a brick-and-mortar location in North Augusta. Pandemic panic was peaking at the time, so starting a retail business was especially risky. But fear did not daunt her or t…

Palmira Tienda Y Taqueria's tacos are excellent, as are its tortas, burritos, huevos rancheros and chilaquiles. Beyond such familiar Mexican restaurant fare, this unique eatery offers eye-opening dishes that reflect underappreciated aspects of the cuisine of the Estados Unidos Mexicanos.

Like barbecue, fried chicken inspires debates about who makes the best.

Nobody comes to Frog & The Hen for a bowl of corn flakes. Although it opens at 8 a.m. (10 on Sunday), it does not serve breakfast. It serves brunch. Any resemblance to a hash house or proletarian diner is unintentional.

El Charrito Taqueria sure looks different, its walls covered with big, happy cartoon images of Mexican food.

Charlie's Fish Market is older than all of us. Opened in 1909 in The Alley and moved to Richland Avenue in 1985, it remains in the hands of the family who started it. They sell raw fish for home cooking.

It is a challenge to review a restaurant where the menu frequently changes. Does it make sense in August to recommend The Pub at Cedar Creek's exuberant Summer Salad with its ginger strawberry vinaigrette if that salad will be off the Pub's menu come September?

At Iron Horse Grill, surreal gaiety has been replaced by the comfortable calm of a roadside tavern. Seats on the front patio offer a get-away-from-it-all Beech Island vibe. The Iron Horse's fabled biker-bar swagger is history.

Rhinehart's Oyster Bar in Augusta, Georgia, has cultivated intense informality since it opened 40 years ago. It has trademarked the motto "Beyond Casual."

Sharing a building with the Aiken Golf Club, The Legends Grille goes beyond cold beer and quick eats.

It is a unique pleasure to visit Lexington's 7 Mares on a Sunday afternoon, when it overflows with families and groups of friends. The spacious Mexican restaurant rings with the sounds of a mariachi band who stroll around serenading diners with their jubilant music.

As a fan of both pizza and cheeseburgers, I couldn't say no a while ago when The Pizza Joint offered a cheeseburger pizza. A bulge-crusted circumference of baked dough encircled heaps of meat, cheese and all the condiments and garnishes native to a burger joint but not to a pizza joint.

Soul and Seafood is a restaurant you might expect to find in Myrtle Beach, Orlando or Branson, Missouri. But here it is, across from the Walmart Supercenter on Richland Avenue.

The Root Cellar B-L is what you might call a crossover town cafe.

Nutritionists say breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

"Part German. Part South. All Welcome," says a big white sign on a brick wall at the corner of 6th and Ellis in Augusta. This is Hildebrandt's, a grocery store run by five generations of the same family since 1879.

In 2018, Southern Living magazine declared Aiken the South's Best Small Town. Park Avenue Oyster Bar & Grill puts that accolade to the test. It is anything but a small town café.

If you were lucky enough to grow up in a home where the food was as good as that of Pinckney's Home Cooking, I toast you (and your mother).

Uh-oh. The man behind the counter at SOB (Straight Outta Brooklyn) asks if I want my bagel toasted.

Every town should have an eatery that reflects its character. In the North Augusta hamlet called Hammond's Ferry, the Larder is that place. It fits a neighborhood that has been carefully planned to be a "new urbanist community."

With dedicated new owners and an eager staff, Carolina Bar-B-Que is once again at the top of its game.

If you plan to come to Café 209, allow some time for the experience. You will wait while the food is cooked. This kitchen does not take short cuts.

New Moon Café is reminiscent of the counter-culture. Walls display reasonably priced paintings by local artists. A corridor by the kitchen is plastered with bumper stickers, many expressing opinions that used to be considered anti-establishment, and now to a large degree have become the esta…

I am not attending the Masters this year, but I am savoring it. Literally. Arriving at my front door Wednesday via UPS expedited cold-pack shipping, a "Taste of the Masters" kit promised to supply well-known foods and flavors of the tournament.

Nestled deep in Augusta's Forest Hills neighborhood, Rae's Coastal Cafe is deliberately casual, designed to look like a tin-roof beach shack.

On Ridge Spring's Main Street, inside a stately edifice that used to be the First Citizens Bank, the Blue Canoe Café belies its venue.

Dos Potrillos Mexican Food truck serves up authentic Mexican food to residents in Aiken. 

When enthusiastic eaters come across a good restaurant that doesn't look like one, it earns the title "hidden gem."

The sign above this pint-sized café in Mitchell Shopping Center appears to follow the name "Veg Out" with an exclamation point. Actually, it is a carrot masquerading as an exclamation point.

For a robust diner breakfast, a handsome hamburger or a fork-tender country-fried steak with white pepper gravy, head out Bettis Academy Road beyond I-20 and find Airport Grill.

Last summer, the old stables of the Rose Hill Winter Colony estate became a colorful new restaurant. Tiffany's at the Stables also is a beer garden, live music venue and happy-hour gathering place.

Established over 30 years ago in the back of a dress shop, Malia's now reigns as downtown Aiken's unfailing source of stylish meals that are expertly prepared from quality ingredients.

The Chef's House looks like it really could be the chef's house. In fact, Chef George Darko and his wife and hostess, Tammie, do not live in this darling little pink cottage that is incongruously surrounded by the commerce of Augusta's Walton Way and the bureaucracy of the Medical Center. Bu…

The Edgefield Pool Room is not exactly what it used to be. Ownership has changed. The pinball machine was removed a few years ago and only a single pool table remains. All of that is inconsequential compared to the fact that Pool Room hamburgers – on the menu since opening day in 1961 – stil…

Wildemount is the name of a continent in Dungeons & Dragons, but there is nothing dark and fantastical about The Wildemount restaurant. It is a cultured place with a friendly blue-jeaned staff and sociable room tone.