Adventures: Eating in Charleston

Charleston has so many amazing restaurants and we tried to hit as many as possible. I will say – book your reservations early! I booked ours a few weeks (3ish) in advance, but still didn’t get in everywhere we wanted. So consider this a list you can reference if you can’t get reservations at FIG or Husk (though we did end up eating at Husk). We happened to walk by FIG right as it was opening so we popped in to see if we could eat at the bar. Eight minutes after opening at 5 p.m., the bar was already full.

The vast majority of restaurants we ate at were in the Upper King District, since that was  a quick walk from our condo. A few were in the Historic District or in another part of town. Full disclosure: most of the pics below are from my iPhone – while I can snap a quick phone pic, it just felt too weird to get out the big camera while eating my food. So instead I peppered in a few more pretty pics I took around the city. Check out my first post on our Charleston trip, which covers the tours we took.

Hominy Grill

We ate breakfast at Hominy Grill twice (it was across the street from where we stayed) and it was phenomenal. The first time, I ordered an omelet with crab. The second time, I ate blueberry pancakes (and a Bloody Mary!). This place gets really crowded, but both times we went, it wasn’t too bad. The first time, which was a Tuesday, there was no wait. The second time, on Friday, we waited about five minutes. Seriously some of the best breakfast.

Husk

As mentioned above, I wasn’t able to book reservations in advance at Husk. But, when we got to Charleston, I checked one last time on Open Table and they had an 11:30 a.m. reservation open for lunch. It actually worked perfectly for our day as we were headed out to Fort Sumter that afternoon. Hubby had the shrimp and grits and I ate a sausage sandwich. The cornbread was yummy too! Oh, we each had a Bloody Mary … are you sensing a theme?

The Grocery

The Grocery was only a few blocks from our hotel. An industrial farmhouse setting, it was pretty packed on a Tuesday night. The food is farm-to-table and very approachable. We split a charcuterie plate to start, and then I ate some fried oysters.

167 Raw

167 Raw is  tiny little seafood joint. Go early if you want to sit inside and not wait too long. I think we got there about 6 p.m. and got the last two seats at the bar, and by the time we left, there was a line out the door. The menu is pretty limited (if you don’t like seafood, I don’t recommend it), but the food comes fast. My shrimp cocktail was one of my favorite things I ate on the trip.

Indaco

This Italian Indaco restaurant is on King Street and is owned by the same group that owns The Macintosh. It was amazing! We split a salad, pizza and pasta and everything was pitch perfect. So much in fact that we went to their sister restaurant, Colletta in Alpharetta,GA for my birthday.

The other two places I’ll mention are Fuel and the Belmont. Fuel was also really close to where we stayed, and we had a happy hour drink here one day, and then came back for a lateish lunch. Great tacos and a fun open-air bar. The Belmont is a really cool cocktail bar that we visited twice. The first time, I smelled these amazing homemade pop-tarts, but was so full from Indaco, I couldn’t eat one. A few nights later, I had a much lighter dinner and we stopped by for an after-dinner drink and a pop-tart!

So yea, we toured and ate our way through Charleston and loved every minute of it!

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