Roof top bars with live jazz at sunset, romantic restaurants, elegant inns and a pervading ambiance of old glamour entice those with romance on their minds to visit charming, historic Charleston. Cobblestone streets and stately squares make for enchanting ambles and carriage tours can carry the you through the city’s atmospheric alleys. The food scene offers more than the Southern specialty of shrimp and grits. The more creative and very popular places, like Fig, Husk, 167 Raw or High Cotton or require reservations days and often weeks in advance. Don’t rely on readers reviews online. The reviewer may not have the same culinary sophistication as you, or may be a meat and potato dinner. My advice is to look at the menus of the restaurants before you book.
Romantic Restaurant:We dined at High Cotton, which offers an impressive dining room, Southern charm, friendliness, and superb cuisine.
Most creative food: Fig, where we walked in, found two seats at the communal table and tasted everyone’s plates. Our fellow diners were from Mexico and Australia. Try the Crudo of Beeliner Snapper with popped sorghum (reminded me of popcorn), aji dulce and padron pepper powder. The mustard crusted swordfish melted in my mouth.
Slow down and cuddle up in a horse-drawn carriage and clippity-clop your way back to Colonial times as you pass antebellum mansions, churches, and gardens. A licensed guide will inform and entertain you with historical facts, lore, and humor. The one-hour narrated carriage tour covers more than 2.5 miles and 30 blocks of historic Charleston.
With a view of the Charleston Harbor, the Pavilion is rooftop bar at Grill 225, with a cascading pool, at was one of our favorites.
The live jazz in the cozy bar before and after dinner at High Cotton Restaurant was an added attraction. The main star, however, was my huge crab cake made with very little stuffing, just lots of fingernail size chunks of fresh Maryland crab.
Bon Appetit.
The culinary scene in Charleston won’t disappoint you.
Try the Southern Specialties like fried pickles or fresh peal and eat shrimp at inexpensive Happy Hour at Hymans Seafood.
Fresh seafood, especially oysters are a Charleston specialty. Half a dozen for $6.50 at Happy Hour with a $3.00 California Chardonnay was a steal.