167 Raw moved from a tiny room at 289 East Bay Street, now 167 Sushi Bar, to a long narrow 19th century building on King Street with original brick walls and a walnut bar. It takes no reservations. City Paper readers voted it Best Oysters and Best Raw Bar in 2026, and on r/Charleston the tuna burger is the dish people name.
167 Sushi Bar is the sushi and yakitori room from the 167 Raw group, in the East Bay Street storefront where 167 Raw itself began before moving to King Street.
39 Rue de Jean is a French cafe, brasserie and bar on John Street just off Upper King, with exposed brick, a patio and a private room upstairs. Explore Charleston reported in spring 2026 that it was marking its 25th anniversary with themed wine dinners and expanded lunch. It belongs to Holy City Hospitality, a Charleston group, and City Paper readers voted it Best French in 2026.
82 Queen is the Lowcountry restaurant on Queen Street that City Paper readers voted Best She-Crab Soup in 2026. The top answer in a r/Charleston she-crab soup thread agrees. Opinion on the rest is split: it is offered as the most Charleston restaurant in one thread, and in the same thread a commenter says it is not as good as its reputation.
BellyUp! Charleston / Over 50
Good places to eat and drink in Charleston, minus the nightclubs. When a spot gets loud later or draws a lot of kids, the card tells you.
40 spots
Annie and Jason Vieira spent more than two years baking breads and desserts for Charleston restaurants before opening their own shop at St. Philip and Cannon in 2026. The Post and Courier lists buttermilk pie, carrot caramel cake, key lime pie on a pecan cookie crust and biscuits made with butter and creme fraiche, with lattes flavored with pistachio butter or banana toffee. Seating is at stools inside.
A vegan, gluten-free and sugar-free bakery and cafe. The venue says it is best known for cookies, cake jars and other desserts, and also serves savory food: vegan chik'n, sandwiches and nachos. It calls the idea 'sweet abundance'.
Babas takes its cue from the neighborhood cafes and bars of Italy, France and Spain, running from morning coffee and pastries into sandwiches, wine and cocktails at night. Cannon Street is the first of its rooms. A third opened on Wentworth Street in January 2026, and the Post and Courier reported in August 2026 that the Meeting Street cafe would move into the former Rodney Scott's BBQ building at 1011 King Street.
Babas on Wentworth is the newest room from the Charleston cafe that started on Cannon Street. Explore Charleston says it opened in January 2026 as a European-inspired cafe in a 1931 building with an outdoor patio. It runs from morning coffee into evening drinks. The group's Meeting Street cafe was reported closing at the end of September 2026, with a move to 1011 King Street.
The Post and Courier describes Baguette Magic as a French bakery and cafe with almond croissants, house-made Pop-Tarts, avocado toast and an Italian sub. City Paper readers made it runner-up for Best Bakery and for Best James Island Brunch in 2026.
Explore Charleston describes the aim as seasonal, local produce cooked to be nourishing, with a wide range of vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free dishes and a staff trained to guide guests through allergens. There is a dedicated kids menu ... almond butter and jelly, veggie sticks, fruit bowls.
Carmella's is a dessert bar on East Bay Street serving cakes, gelato, sorbet and locally roasted coffee, plus sandwiches, pizza, wine and cocktails. The site's history section names Carmella Solari. It is open from 8am to midnight every day and has a second shop in Greenville. Charleston City Paper readers voted it Best Dessert in 2026.
Daps opened in 2018 on Ashley Avenue and calls itself a beloved neighborhood spot for breakfast, brunch and lunch. It also caters.
The bakery arm of EVO Pizzeria, selling cookies, danishes, croissants and muffins, with cinnamon rolls on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It pours coffee from King Bean and Foresight Coffee Roasters and sells Brandon's Bread on Fridays. The city's tourism office points people to its patio for a latte.
Estuary roasts and sells its own coffee and pours beer under the same roof, open from 7am until 10 or 11 at night. It also runs workshops.
Five Loaves says it goes to great lengths to run a healthy, sustainable and more responsible menu. City Paper readers voted it Best Lunch Spot in 2026 and runner-up for Best Restaurant for Vegetarians. A r/Charleston commenter calls the Mount Pleasant room affordable and delicious; another misses the old downtown one on Coming Street.
A locals' counter in the middle of the lawyers' end of Broad Street, open since 1984. City Paper's Charleston Classics list says the cafe 'doesn't get half of the praise it deserves' after more than four decades downtown, and in June 2026 the paper called the lunch menu a steal for the historic district ... a vegetarian pizza croissant at $13.50, and soup with baguette and French cheese at $12. Most people know it only as Fast and French.
Harken is a cafe and bakery on Queen Street run by owners the site names as Greer and Cameron. The bakery case is built around a biscuit collection, including a ricotta biscuit, plus cookies and bars.
A coffee bar and vintage clothing shop in the back of Reynolds Laundry, opened in June 2025 by Tyler and Kennedy Troyer, who moved from Boone, North Carolina to join their friends Erin and Jon Carpenter, the laundromat's owners. The laundromat was on The Kelly Clarkson Show in April 2025. Drinks include a strawberry shortcake latte and a pistachio matcha, some poured into cowboy boot glasses, with Counter Culture beans.
Fresh food, smoothies and coffee. The venue says founders Ruchi and Tom started at six farmers markets a week in the Lowcountry in 2013; Ruchi grew up vegetarian, and the menu is built on whole foods with little processing. A second room, Huriyali Riverland, is at 2016 Wappoo Dr on James Island.
Huriyali serves what it calls 'fresh foods, smoothies & coffee ... made to make you feel good'. The Riverland Terrace cafe is the second, after Huger Street downtown. City Paper readers voted it Best Acai Bowls in 2026, in a tie.
Owner Heather Greene opened Lillian's in the corner building that used to be Harold's Cabin, and City Paper calls it a comfortable follower for that much-loved room. It runs all day ... a coffee bar from 7:30am, weekday breakfast, a market selling flowers, prepared foods, wine and goods from local makers, then happy hour and dinner. Executive Chef Todd Garrigan works with local growers, fishermen and ranchers. Private parties use the Jackalope Dining Room, the Jackalope Bar or the upstairs terrace.
Lost Dog is a breakfast and lunch cafe a block off Center Street that calls itself 'a long time Folly Favorite'. It opens at 6:30 in the morning and closes mid afternoon. City Paper readers voted it Best Folly Beach Brunch in 2026.
Millers All Day serves breakfast, lunch and brunch on Lower King Street, with a second room on James Island. Charleston City Paper readers named it Best Breakfast and Best Weekend Brunch in Best of Charleston 2026.
Chef Andy Clay's breakfast, brunch and lunch restaurant on Daniel Island. The site says Clay 'brings more than 25 years of global cooking back to Daniel Island'. It opens for Friday happy hour and for what it calls pre-concert dinner and drinks.
Muddy Waters has been 'serving James Island since 2005' and calls itself one of the island's original local coffee shops. It pours Counter Culture Coffee, sells locally baked goods and hangs rotating local artwork.
Odd Duck's third shop opened in July 2026 in a former bank branch near Hampton Park, where the old drive-thru is now a walk-up ordering window. Owners Jared Hellman and Andrew Hare started in Park Circle; the venue says the pair ran Bubba Slye's deli in the early 2000s. It sells craft lattes, breakfast and lunch sandwiches, take-and-bake meals, ice cream and house-baked pastries, with a mural by Cara Fischer inside.
A cafe and small grocery that stocks local meat, produce and dairy next to goods from small makers around the country, with coffee, breakfast, lunch, beer and wine. Co-founders Andrew Hare and Jared Hellman are old friends who built and sold a deli called Bubba Slye's in the early 2000s before coming back to food with this. Park Circle is the original ... there is a second market in Summerville and a third opened at 637 Rutledge Avenue by Hampton Park in July 2026.
A scratch ice cream shop just off King Street that makes both traditional and vegan ice cream. The venue says the dairy base is milk, cream, egg yolks and cane sugar, and the vegan base is raw cashews, organic coconut cream, organic avocado oil and cane sugar.
A Park Circle coffeehouse at the foot of the East Montague strip. The tourism office notes it pours cha yen, Thai iced tea, alongside coffee roasted by Springbok Coffee and seasonal house-made drinks. Its name comes from the idea that a happy experience is your orange spot.
A neighborhood coffee shop with a whole wall of board and card games. The Post and Courier says owners Sarah Reuter and Marshall Tyers collect the games from thrift stores, yard sales and auctions, and suggests a latte for the adult and a hot chocolate for the child over Guess Who? or Trouble.
A homemade ice cream and waffle cone shop on East Montague. A second shop is in Summerville.
A lunch counter inside a working pharmacy. Pitt Street Pharmacy says it has been open since 1937 and still runs an old-fashioned soda fountain where 'generations have grown up' ... grilled cheese, burgers, a club sandwich called Linda's Club, milkshakes, and a beef frank topped with locally made Miss Sassard's Jerusalem artichoke relish, eaten on soda fountain stools. The shop says its grilled cheese has been voted Mount Pleasant's best several years running.
Bryson and Savanna Purcell started Prophet serving coffee out of a converted 1996 Subaru Sambar. Bryson, from Anderson, had spent seven years leading worship at a local church. They opened a tiny commuter cafe at 4411 Spruill Avenue in late 2023 and expanded in June 2025 into the former Wind and Waves Brewing space a few doors up. The Post and Courier's July 2026 guide lists it for coffee and baked goods.
A corner store with a griddle, on a residential corner away from the restaurant streets. The shop says it opened in 1922 and has been an apothecary, a full grocery and now a corner store making crepes, hot-pressed sandwiches and all-day breakfast with craft beer and wine. The Post and Courier's alphabet guide says children once walked to the corner of Queen and Logan streets for candy after school and neighbors came by in the evening to watch the news over a cold beer. The paper says it is owned by local actor Rob Bouton and that Bill Murray comes in for his namesake crepe.
Sorelle opened in February 2023 in a renovated stuccoed brick building on Broad Street, backed by Ben Navarro's hospitality company, per The Post and Courier. Chef Nick Dugan cooks Southern Italian food with Lowcountry ingredients; Charleston City Paper also credits Adam Sobel. The building holds a mercato, a central bar, a wine room and a main dining room, with a third-floor private room designed by Meyer Davis Studios. The Post and Courier names the tajarin al ragù and the swordfish piccata. It is Recommended in the inaugural MICHELIN Guide American South.
A cafe inside a farm market on Johns Island's Main Road. The owners describe Stono Market & Tomato Shed Cafe as locally owned and run, under a canopy of live oaks, with lunch at the Tomato Shed and supper three nights a week. The market side sells sauces, stone-ground grits, local honey, jams and crafts, many from local makers.
Jonathan Roth, a Culinary Institute of America graduate who cooked in Switzerland, opened Sweet Palm with his wife Aylin in October 2025. It is a quick-serve cafe that makes its food in house, from breakfast sandwiches and burritos to cinnamon rolls and topped croissants. The beans come from Foresight Coffee Roasters in Mount Pleasant.
The original Sullivan's Island shop of The Co-Op, an island cafe known for gourmet sandwiches, one-dollar coffee and frose. The brand has since grown to other locations in South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.
The Daniel Island Market & Eatery ... DIME for short ... opened in 2021 at the Daniel Island Waterfront. It runs from morning espresso and house pastries through sandwiches and wood-fired pizza, in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows and a patio.
The Harbinger opened in 2017 on upper King Street and says it was named for 'something good to come'. It is a daytime cafe and bakery, a few doors from OK Donna, and the team has published a cookbook that also carries the name of its sister cafe Harken.
Kimana Littleflower, a longtime Charleston food and beverage professional, opened The Junction in 2015 because she saw a need for something different in the Park Circle community she calls home. The plan was breakfast all day, sandwiches, an eclectic brunch menu and cocktails. Charleston City Paper readers voted it Best North Charleston Brunch in Best of Charleston 2026.
A plant-based Italian delicatessen. The Post and Courier reports it is run by Tracey Alexander and her adult daughters Brittany Guerra and Taylor Pitts, who came from Guilford, Connecticut, where the family runs Three Girls Vegan Creamery. Alexander and her mother went vegan after her mother's Stage 4 cancer diagnosis in 2011, and the family developed some 800 recipes; lasagna and meatballs are among them. Charleston City Paper reported the opening in February 2024.
Three Little Birds Cafe opened in August 2007 in the Windermere shopping strip in West Ashley, with indoor and outside seating and carry out. City Paper readers voted it runner-up for Best West Ashley Brunch in 2026. Locals name it for breakfast, with one saying the prices keep it from being a regular stop.
A coffee house and breakfast-and-lunch cafe on Simmons Street with house-made pastries. Owner Brian Piesner also runs Coastal Crust, which bakes pizza out of restored antique trucks, and a second Vintage Coffee Cafe in Greenville.
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