Linnette's

Fire first, then the Sea Islands

Wood fire takes the oysters before the plate is composed; Michael DeCicco, Executive Chef at Linnette's in Johns Island, builds from smoke, shellfish, rice, and the produce of the Lowcountry. His station here sits inside the larger kitchen life of The Dunlin, where he has served as Executive Chef since 2024, and where the landscape is not treated as scenery. It is the brief.

Michael DeCicco came to this work with a formal base from the Culinary Institute of America, then time at The Surf Club Restaurant by Thomas Keller in Surfside, Florida, where he served as Head Chef. That path matters at Linnette's because the cooking asks for restraint as much as heat. Bone marrow butter, pickled peppers, Carolina Gold rice middlins, sweet corn, and dilly bean vierge all need room to register. DeCicco's menus keep the hand visible without crowding the ingredient.

His own description of the work begins with Southern heritage and the local ingredients of the Sea Islands and Charleston. At Linnette's, that becomes a restaurant language rather than a regional caption: oysters moved through wood fire, a Storey Farms poached egg set with rice middlins, local shrimp taken to the ember and held against corn and pickled bean acidity.

Rice, ember, butter, pickle

The method at Linnette's is modern Lowcountry cooking with an open kitchen and a wood-fired center of gravity. The named dishes carry the program clearly. Wood fire roasted oysters with bone marrow butter and pickled peppers bring smoke, fat, and sharpness into a single bite. Storey Farms poached egg with Carolina Gold rice middlins keeps the grain in the foreground, a quiet decision in a room where seafood could easily take every line. Ember grilled local shrimp works closer to the edge of the marsh and field, where sweetness and vinegar do the seasoning work.

There is also a broader table here: brown butter crab rice, buttermilk fried whole chicken, and the front porch burger. Those signatures place the restaurant between a la carte ease and a disciplined pass. The wine program is curated rather than theatrical, built to sit beside shellfish, smoke, butter, and the clean lift of pickled heat. The cooking does not need a long explanation. It needs timing, flame, and a cook willing to stop before the plate becomes crowded.

The room looks toward Kiawah River

Natural light carries across the room, and the Kiawah River views do real work before a plate arrives. Linnette's is cozy without feeling small, polished without stiffening the table. The counter and the pass keep the kitchen in view, so the room has a bench-side quality: fire in motion, plates leaving, the small corrections that happen before service reaches the table.

The hospitality is Southern in the plain sense, warm enough to soften the room and measured enough to let dinner stay adult. Conversation sits at a comfortable level. The setting gives DeCicco's cooking its pressure: local sourcing would be a thin phrase if the river, the light, the oysters, the rice, and the shrimp did not keep answering from the plate. At Linnette's, ember grilled local shrimp closes the argument.