"James Wozniuk fell in love with hawker fare—rice dishes, noodles, red-hot sambal—on a layover in Kuala Lumpur, following a trip to Cambodia. “Everyone knows Thai food, but Malaysian cuisine is wildly underrepresented in the U.S.,” he says. The Dallas-born, South Carolina–raised chef, who worked at the acclaimed Washington, D.C. restaurants Maketto and Spoken English, would go on to study cookbooks and return for research trips, and he opened the first Makan in the nation’s capital in 2020. Seeking to be closer to his family, Wozniuk expanded to Charleston, opening a second Makan on Rutledge Avenue this past spring. He adheres tightly to traditional flavors, taking pains to source authentic ingredients—such as Malaysian anchovies from “a guy” in New York—and locals have responded by flocking to Makan for dishes like spicy hakka noodles, a savory blend of pork, wood ear mushrooms, and soft-cooked egg over wheat noodles mixed with chili crumble."
