Restaurants in Savannah

Famulari's Pizzeria doesn’t play favorites when it comes to tossing dough and slathering on sauce. The eatery instead lets diners choose between New York–style and Chicago-style crusts, both of which are made by hand and can be topped with the same gourmet ingredients. Crowned one of Charleston City Paper's staff picks, Famulari's deep-dish measures about three inches high and “ooz[es] with meat and cheese.” To enhance pizzas, diners can choose from a library of meats and veggies, eight different cheeses, and eleven sauces, including Thai peanut, hot sauce, and secret-recipe red. Guests can also nosh on pasta and sandwiches.

In 1999, the two brothers-in-law who founded Main Street Cafe & Pub aimed to create a down-to-earth neighborhood restaurant that evoked a sense of luxury with its menu of seafood and upscale pub food. Today, their restaurant hosts throngs of devoted locals, as well as shrewd tourists who can smell the all-you-can-eat crab legs.

The dining room's tall bay windows shine light onto a black-and-white checkerboard floor and tables groaning under a mix of casual pub eats and homestyle entrees. Distinctive dishes such as parmesan-encrusted grouper and a fried tilapia melt—complete with housemade jalapeño tartar sauce—balance out familiar blackened-chicken wraps and fish ’n’ chips. The seafood chowder and other housemade soups are prepared fresh daily.

Raised in South India and trained in kitchens across Europe, chef Anish Gopinath embraces local flavors at Fusion. Low Country favorites such as she-crab soup can be paired with southern standards of oysters rockefeller or grits jazzed up with shrimp. Chef Anish also puts his own spin on American steak-house fare, with dates and saffron complementing lamb and guava and jalapeño glazes adding new tastes to cuts of beef. Perhaps it's these new medleys of flavors, along with a commitment to serve local and sustainable cuisine, that won him the Hilton Head Island Iron Chef Challenge in 2013.

Tangerine's menu collects dishes from all across Asia with an emphasis on Thai recipes and fresh sushi and sashimi. Large prawns are stir-fried in garlic sauce and tender raviolis are stuffed with lobster and dungeness crab meat then covered with a rich shitake-mushroom sauce. The sushi chefs make classic salmon and rainbow rolls in addition to specialty maki, such as the Tangerine roll filled with crab and five types of fish or the Millipede roll topped with avocado and cut into 1,000 pieces.

Fresh flowers and elegant linens help create a calming, upscale atmosphere in the saffron-hued dining room. An aquarium glows behind the sushi chefs as guests sit around the marble-topped bar, and parties slide into booths tucked in private alcoves lined with white drapery.

Nestled in among the trees, sunshine, and ferns of Hilton Head, Nick's Steak and Seafood looks like a friendly local joint from the outside. A simple step through the door, however, teleports diners from the Lowcountry to pure Pittsburgh sports mania. Owner Josh and his wife, Katie, both love the Steel City teams, and they celebrate that love with apparel and memorabilia from the Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates all over the walls. To fuel the fanaticism, their chefs dish up a menu of classic surf 'n' turf, which includes filet mignon, lobster tail, and ready-to-peel shrimp.

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.