Food-focused travelers could easily spend a month in Charleston, South Carolina, and leave enough dishes untasted to warrant a return trip. On this jasmine-perfumed peninsula you’ll find fine-dining stalwarts, Lowcountry classics, and lately, a growing number of small, independent neighborhood eateries—a category that reflects diners’ appetite for community, chefs’ desire for creative control, and restaurateurs’ demand for flexible business models. “Having limited space forces you to be super efficient and thoughtful with everything from the layout to the design to the menu,” says Marie Stitt, who co-owns Babas on Cannon with her husband, Edward Crouse. “The smaller footprint also allows the space to always feel bustling and fun, and Charlestonians dig that convivial community feeling.”
Along with Babas, here are six other petite bistros and cozy Charleston restaurants guaranteed to turn you into a regular.
While this Cannonborough-Elliotborough favorite, which opened in 2018 and serves breakfast and lunch as well as evening aperitivos and cocktails, is inspired by neighborhood cafes and bars in Europe, where co-owners Marie Stitt and Edward Crouse met, it’s undeniably influenced by the food traditions of the American South. The toasted banana bread, Austin-style breakfast tacos, biscuit towers, and Stitt’s mother’s recipe for pickled shrimp (a South Carolina staple), for example, are all go-tos for Baba’s regulars. The restaurant’s elevated yet playful approach extends from the food to the coffee program to the well-edited wine and cocktail lists to the house-made snacks. Stitt and Crouse delight in the details, making even a Wednesday morning breakfast run feel special. If the 750-square-foot Cannon Street location is slammed, try the sunny patio at their outpost on Meeting Street.
The name of this atmospheric space tucked inside an 850-square-foot Charleston single-style home literally means “at our house,” and that’s exactly what dining at Fanny and Patrick Panella’s Mediterranean-influenced restaurant feels like. The tiny menu, which features just two appetizers, two entrees, and two desserts, changes daily, with executive chef Jill Mathias serving up simple, elegant dishes like her popular fish with vanilla sauce, crispy chicken thighs with confit potatoes, and French classics like crème brûlée and profiteroles for dessert. Follow @cheznouscharleston on Instagram for images of the day’s offerings.
“Another chef once told me to put a tool in my toolbelt from every restaurant I worked at,” says Jason London, the journeyman executive chef and owner of this small-but-mighty Coming Street restaurant. “The idea stuck with me but never really made sense until Chubby Fish, where I experienced true unbridled creativity for the first time.” London changes up the eclectic menu nightly based on what his farmers and fishermen are bringing in the back door—although diners can usually expect some version of London’s chili garlic shrimp, caviar sandwich, and smoked fish curry. Chubby Fish has a strict no reservations policy, which means the queue for tables begins as early as 4:00 p.m., so go early and put your name down before heading next door to London’s new bar, Seahorse, which slings world-class cocktails and a daily selection of small plates.
“I wanted Filipino food and I couldn’t get it in Charleston, so opening Kultura was a selfish act, really,” says Nikko Cagalanan. The Food Network Chopped champion worked at McCrady’s and Zero George before opening his first pop-up concept, Mansueta’s Filipino Food in 2019, and when his wife’s lease was up on a small but charming Spring Street space in 2023, he pivoted to put down permanent roots. At Kultura, the self-taught chef serves a bright, well-edited menu of sophisticated takes on classic Filipino dishes to a perennially packed dining room, and even diners experiencing the Southeast Asian cuisine for the first time will recognize the comforting flavors behind staples such as arroz caldo, an aromatic rice porridge Cagalanan’s grandmother made on sick days, and the house fish curry, which is anchored by Lowcountry produce and seasonal fish.
After Covid temporarily deferred Michael and Courtney Zentner’s restaurant dream, they turned lemons into sparkling lemonade by launching the Drifter, a buzzy event planning and culinary design firm known for conjuring at-home dinner party magic. But when the historic Federal-style building at 28 Pitt Street came up for rent, they knew it was time to give the party a permanent address. “The Drifter gave us this beautiful opportunity to get to know the community in an intimate setting,” Courtney says, “and the dining room at Merci is a lovely extension of that relationship.” The snug, convivial space in Harleston Village is inspired by European cafes and bistros, but the menu, which celebrates the classical techniques of French and Italian cuisine, is deeply rooted in the bounty of local purveyors. “In Charleston there are local vegetables available most of the year,” Michael says, “so vegetables are really the undertone of everything at Merci.”…