Restaurants in North Charleston

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.

Dragon Palace Chinese Bistro’s Chef Cheng Sin Yung is completely dedicated to authenticity. He commissioned the construction of his bistro in Taiwan and then shipped the eatery to the states piece by piece, instead of taking the easy way out and floating it across the waters via iceberg. To craft meals that live up to his high standards of authenticity, he spent time in Hong Kong, meticulously honing time-honored Chinese recipes and techniques.

Throughout the lavish dining room, decked in rich maroons and golds, artwork from contemporary Chinese visionaries whispers of the ancient culture, and so does the food. Instead of bombarding patrons with a buffet of Chinese food, he painstakingly curates a menu of dishes including five-spice duck and royal steak kew. The menu forays into the unusual with dishes such as seafood bird nest and minced pork with chinese eggplant, but also includes some familiar dishes, such as lo mein and general tso’s chicken.

Red umbrellas and baskets of flowers dot The Red Pepper’s outdoor patio, drawing diners into the fresh air for alfresco meals composed of classic Italian cuisine. In the kitchen, chefs craft sweets and savories from fresh ingredients such as tomatoes, basil, and ricotta cheese. During the evening, the head chef showcases his expertise with specialties such as canguro e speck saltimbocca, a kangaroo tenderloin scaloppini layered with sage, prosciutto, and a splash of cherry marsala sauce. The dinner menu also abounds with seafood and pasta dishes, which come with focaccia bread ideal for soaking up sauce or rolling into a straw for a cool soft drink. For dessert, the owner’s wife handcrafts chocolate-hazelnut tortes from an Old-World recipe her family has cherished for generations. Instead of grilling burgers atop their cars’ radiators, on-the-go diners can retrieve take-and-bake pizzas at the restaurant’s reception desk.

For chefs at Calder's Buffalo Pub, the tender meat of a hot wing serves as a blank canvas for zesty, diverse flavors. Their menu boasts 20 wing sauces including hot honey, lemon pepper, and jamaican jerk. Pools of ranch or blue cheese temper the spicy flavors, and heaps of napkins stand at the ready for messy fingers and toes. Classic pub fare, such as sandwiches, hand-cut chips, and juicy burgers, sate larger appetites.

Though the fare alone draws crowds to the pub’s four locations, folks also gather for the convivial sports-bar atmosphere. Barkeeps pour draught beers and swizzle well drinks. Wall-mounted TVs, vibrant neon signs, and sports pennants decorate the walls, making it an ideal spot for amassing to watch the big game or amassing materials to bribe a team mascot.