Yesterday we learned that Zagat, once a trustworthy go-to guide for great restaurants and travel destinations, chose Louisville one of “7 Up-and-Coming Food Cities Around the U.S.” 

I couldn’t agree more. Our terrific restaurant scene has garnered a fair amount of adulation over the past few years—most of it deserved, some of it overblown, such as when Zagat called Louisville one of “8 Awesome Foodie Destinations Around the World.”

The list largely makes sense given the other cities in the round up, places like Boulder, Colo., Salt Lake City and Athens, Ga., cities getting sizable shares of positive press from reliable writers.

That Charleston, S.C., is on the list as an up and comer seems disrespectful, however, to a restaurant community that’s long since arrived. I’d regard it as the South’s hottest, if not the best.

But as is typically the case with Zagat blogs of late, if you take the 41 seconds required to read their three paragraph investigations, you quickly realize how little thought and effort was invested into their claims, especially the most recent ones penned by writers Kelly Dobkin and James Mulcahy. For example:

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