Restaurants in Charleston

Although few would think to pile peanut butter and bacon onto a burger, the PB3—which has both—is a favorite of Luke 'n Ollie's Pizzeria owner Jonathan Swartz and a legion of loyal customers. According to The Island Eye News, after tasting a similar creation in New Orleans, Swartz worked on his own to add to the Luke ‘n Ollie’s menu. Swartz is an expert at adding creative twists to entrees: his BLT delights tongues with fried green tomatoes, and a chicken sandwich brightens with teriyaki sauce and pineapple. But his pizzeria doesn’t shy away from sticking to the classics. Its pizza crusts—made New York-style by a local baker who follows Swartz’s own secret recipe—pile with mozzarella, gorgonzola, and pecorino, and diners can bite into traditional meatball or eggplant-parmesan subs while lounging amid the dining room’s exposed brick and black-and-white tiled floor.

Guests can also dine alfresco near palm trees on the patio, where the breeze mercifully dries foreheads as their owners take on the Steak Bomb Challenge. A fan of the Food Network and its creative competitions, Swartz decided to create his own challenge: 10 ounces of philly cheesesteak, 8 ounces of hamburger, 4 ounces of italian sausage, and a quarter pound of melted mozzarella sandwiched onto an 18-inch italian sub bun, all flanked by mountains of french fries. If diners can chow it all down in under an hour, they get it for free. Although many have tried, few brave American heroes have gotten their photos tacked up on the Wall of Winners.

Before leaving, diners should remember to get their photo taken or their portrait painted with Ollie, the 5-foot dog statue on the front patio who dons anything from bathing suits to Hazmat suits to Santa hats according to the seasons.

At Back Home Bar & Grill, chefs toil in the kitchen until 2 a.m. every morning, churning out their entire menu of hearty eats inspired by down-home, regional recipes from around the country. They load up housemade hoagie rolls with gooey philly cheesesteak, boil fresh crustaceans for Maine lobster rolls, and top Chicago-style hot dogs with traditional accoutrements of celery salt, pickle spears, and Cubs fans' tears. Their fryers sizzle throughout the day, ready at any moment to crisp up lightly breaded Wisconsin cheese curds or Louisiana-style catfish to a perfect golden brown. Neon lights and rows of televisions broadcasting sports work in tandem to illuminate the full bar, where crowds dig into buckets of domestic drafts or tap their feet to live music.

Andolini’s Pizza has earned continuing popular acclaim from readers of the Charleston City Paper, who rank it the best New York Style Pizza in the city year after year. The Andolini’s team bakes dough, grates cheese, and makes sauces in-house. They sell hand-tossed pizzas by the slice alongside whole pies festooned with traditional toppings such as Italian sausage, anchovies, and mushrooms. Avid patrons can also purchase an Andolini’s t-shirt to proclaim their allegiance to the restaurant, or simply smear a slice of cheese and pepperoni directly onto their own shirt.

Next to the day's special dishes, the chalkboard at Alluette's Café proudly proclaims a few phrases that may shock loyalists to the fried-chicken school of soul food: "Vegans Welcome," "This is a no Pork Cafe," "Organic & Natural Products," and "Fresh Local Seafood." Alluette Jones-Smalls has been cooking up what she calls "holistic soul food" in various ventures since 1993, but after she overcame the cancer that nearly claimed her life, she embraced the concept of fresh ingredients, free of toxic chemicals, with more vigor than ever.

Now, she's come back to her Charleston roots at Aluette's Café. She cooks everything up to order, which takes a little longer—but Travel + Leisure magazine makes it clear that it's worth the wait, calling the food "vegetable-centric, truly luscious, Southern food." O, The Oprah Magazine's Celia Barbour praised the shrimp as "quite possibly the tastiest … I've ever eaten, dusted with spicy flour and fried so lightly that each sweet crustacean bore a crisp, fragile shell." Alluette doesn't add sugar to any of her dishes or drinks—including her signature Aunt Mary's iced tea, which is sweetened with fruit juice.

Guests can admire the local artwork on Alluette's brightly painted walls as they wait for local shrimp over organic, seasonal greens or hormone-free grilled chicken with brown rice and lima beans. Alluette frequently invites live musicians, poets, and other artists to perform in the shop, and out on the patio, herbs and flowers uproot themselves to waltz for diners.

Inside the kitchen at Bistro 536, head chef Alastair Nairn and sous chef Michael Rogers craft updated versions of American cuisine that change with the seasons. In a feature on ABC 4's Lowcountry Live!, Nairn explained that his Scottish roots surface in his cooking, whether it's in a blue crab pot pie or classic plates of fish and chips. Low lights and dark woods in the dining room wrap diners in a cozy embrace, inviting soft conversation amid the flickering table candles and wall sconces as radiant as a 5-year old that correctly spelled "sconces". While the menu changes regularly throughout the year, past specialties have included beef medallions with truffled red potatoes, bacon-wrapped scallops, and prosciutto-wrapped salmon with sundried tomato-pesto cream.

North Charleston runs in the blood of Cork Neighborhood Bistro’s proprietor, Tradd Ashley Gibbs, whose South Carolina roots stretch back for generations. As the seasons change, so do the dishes and the ingredients that go into his menu of southern-style comfort fare and seafood. Sauces smother wild-caught North Atlantic salmon. Executive chef, Jimmy Owens, mixes up hearty pots of shrimp and grits with sausage and ham gravy, and use seasonal veggies to adorn dishes with all the flair of a peacock wearing a tropical fruit hat.