Restaurants in Easley

For the past decade, Blue Sky Café owners Julianna and Mark Pletcher have continually added to a menu nearly as big and cheery as the restaurant’s namesake. Cooks are proud of their hefty, hand-formed burgers and their chicken—each served in a dazzling array of preparations—but there are just as many health-conscious wraps and salads and vegetarian and vegan dishes. A recent development is a creative, sweet-and savory brunch service, where cheese and garlic turn grits into a bowlful of decadence, prosciutto and parmesan put the Sicilian in a Sicilian frittata, and the kitchen’s all-day love of sandwiches is transposed into the Figgy-Honey: two slices of raisin-cinnamon toast clasping cinnamon goat cheese, honey, and fig preserves.

Kids get their own, more-flexible-than-usual menu, though they’ll have to weigh whether to dig in or finish what they’ve been drawing with provided crayons on the paper placemats. A further draw for tots is the playhouse that stands on an oasis of a patio, whose tall wooden fence encloses hanging lanterns, huge umbrellas, and plants trailing from every wall as they toward their goal of trying the sweet-potato fries everybody keeps talking about.

With more than 30 years of dough-kneading experience, the chefs at Iannucci's Pizzeria & Italian Restaurant have crafted a menu of time-tested, authentic Italian food and pizzas. Choices such as eggplant and hamburger top Iannucci's housemade dough and sauce, allowing pie lovers to build a large 16 inch or Sicilian style to their liking or to look like them. For dinner, pasta fans can quell hunger tides with the baked ziti a la joi or satiate carnivorous cravings with the veal parmigiana, each chaperoned by the pizzeria's signature breadsticks. When the time comes to celebrate a birthday, reunion, or AVP: Alien vs. Predator anniversary, patrons can ogle the catering menu to spice up the shindig with a tray of meatballs or italian sausages, meat or spinach lasagna, or a large greek, italian, or house salad.

Hannah Flanagan’s captures the welcoming the welcoming camaraderie of the Emerald Isle in its menu of hearty pub staples and more than 100 bottled and draft brews. While glasses clink to the sound of rousing cheers, fresh, local ingredients transform into Irish favorites including bangers and mash, Reubens piled high with corned beef, and mushroom-laced pot roast. Flanagan's also puts forth a seasonal menu of weather-matching fare, gracing tables with country-fried steak in the winter and sautéed kites in the spring.

More than 6,000 blocks of yellow pine compose The Square Root's floor, sprawling beneath a 1930s art-deco bar back salvaged from a Kentucky dispensary and a bar top made from repurposed ambrosia maple. Brunches of eggs florentine and beignets give way to lunches of dagwood sandwiches and roasted-beet salad and dinners of sea scallops and slow-roasted thyme pork belly. Each dish is meticulously presented—sprigs of herbs or julienne vegetables are placed just so, and sauce is artfully swirled into curlicues or used to write the initials of all your childhood crushes. The Square Root's newest outpost in Hendersonville emulates its original location with exposed-brick walls, rustic wooden tabletops, and a nearly identical menu of favorite The Square Root recipes.

The chefs at Harbor Inn Seafood cast a wide net across America’s vast waters, hauling up recipes for seafood standbys ranging from river-dwelling catfish to Atlantic denizens such as scallops and crab. Undersea eats arrive fried and boiled, taking their place at the table with terrestrial delicacies including juicy cuts of prime rib and filet mignon.

Athens native Emily Ullrich began cultivating a fervor for food at an early age, spending her youth cooking southern-style dishes under the guidance of her grandmother. At age 16, Emily took a job at the local Hawthorne Drugs’s soda fountain, working there intermittently before taking charge and transforming it into a full-service restaurant 12 years later. Visitors to the drugstore can meander into the restaurant’s intimate dining room, where apple-green and azure walls and antiques create a welcoming household kitchen atmosphere. The eatery’s menu of classic and specialty sandwiches placed it among the top local restaurants at Taste of Athens 2012, and its signature Brunswick stew landed it in the list of finalists for the Flavor of Georgia 2012. If the scent of baking cheesy biscuits and roasting authentic Cuban sandwiches don’t inspire nostrils to belt out the chorus of Yankee Doodle, the dexterous chef welcomes guests to suggest their own creations from kitchen ingredients.