Charleston Bars

It's on James Island in a roadside shopping center on Folly Road, and it is not trying to be anything other than what it is: a sports bar with a kitchen, an arcade, and a family policy that's stated out loud on their own website. "A clean, relaxing atmosphere where friends and family of all ages can come together" is the pitch, and it's accurate. The game room is genuinely large - billiards, skeeball, Golden Tee, mini bowling, Mario Kart, the works - and the late-night menu is the part people come back for.

We went for a late dinner with kids and the whole thing ran without friction, which …

It's a '70s-themed country dive with a disco ball, and it commits to the bit harder than most bars dare to. Live bands and DJs run the sound system, the beer is cold, and the food includes ramen, which should not be on a country-themed bar menu and yet somehow is. The room is retro in a way that photographs well - there are actual photo opportunities in there - and it's cheap enough that you don't feel bad about a second round.

The music gets loud when a band's on, loud enough that you can't hear the person next to you, which is part of the deal. The crowd is young locals, mostly, with a fe…

It's a Parisian cocktail bar in the middle of King Street, and it leans into that identity without being a costume of it. The owner is the son of French parents, the menu reads French, the room is chic and cozy, and the drinks run on a French-liquor base - absinthe, Chartreuse, a cognac-and-local-tonic house drink called the Felix & Tonic - with rum on draft to keep a foot on Charleston soil. It's one of the more serious cocktail rooms in the city, and the espresso martini has a standing recommendation. The food is proper French too: gnocchi à la grand-mère, a raclette burger, fromage fort to …

It's the oldest gay bar in Charleston, opened in 1984, and it has a story that the place tells you about without being asked: named for the owner's grandmother who sold her house to help fund it, run for years by a bartender named Kenny Grizzard who remembered every regular's name and cocktail. Kenny died in 2008 and the bar kept going, moved to Ann Street in 2001, and rebranded itself in 2012 as "Charleston's Everybody Bar," which is not a marketing line, it's a description of the actual room on a Friday night. Lawyers, doctors, college kids, tourists, drag queens, grandmothers. Everyone, gen…

You won't find it the way you find other bars. There's no sign to speak of - a small sticker on a brick wall across from D'Al's pizza - and that's the whole personality of the place. It's a tiny, dimly lit dive in Elliottborough that has been running on pure local goodwill since 2012, and the people who go there treat it like a family they chose, which the reviews make weirdly clear. The bar is small enough that everyone eventually knows everyone, the bartenders are generous, the prices are the cheapest in the neighborhood, and the pool table and pinball see actual traffic. They do bingo on We…

It's on the Mount Pleasant side of the bridge, which immediately tells you the vibe: less "night out on King Street" and more "family dinner that ends at the bar with a flight." The room is clean, bright, and deliberately unpretentious - an award-winning pub and beer bar with 16 rotating taps, a decent cocktail list, and a kitchen that shows up on the food side more than you'd expect. The hand-cut fries are the standard order, the burgers and fried shrimp platters are solid, and the mac and cheese has a cult following. It's upscale-casual in the way that means nice plates without the white tab…

It's a 105-year-old former church, and you can tell the whole time you're in there - stained glass, a hand-painted vaulted ceiling, the kind of room that makes you lower your voice on instinct. It's first and foremost a restaurant (a modern-American concept with a Bravo alumnus on the kitchen side), but the bar is real and it's worth sitting at: a short list of cocktails that actually reads like a bartender made them, with the CU Old Fashioned on barrel-proof bourbon at $27 being the obvious flex, and a dollar from every cocktail going to a local workforce program, which I don't think I've see…

The name is accurate, which is the whole gimmick and also the whole point. There are four barstools inside. FOUR. Everything else is out on Hutson Alley, squeezed between two other restaurants, and if you want to eat you're ordering small bites from the Coast Bar & Grill next door - fried shrimp, crab dip, oysters on the half shell. The drink list is short on purpose and surprisingly specific: canned cocktails, beer, wine, and two frozen drinks, one of which is a Bourbon Cheerwine slushie and the other is the Hutson Alley Hooch, which I think is exactly the right amount of stupid to make it co…

It's a nightclub, not a bar, and it's one of the core rooms of the Charleston party scene - multi-level, with a lounge, a dance floor, and a patio, all wired with what people call the best sound system in the city. The whole place is built for electronic music: DJs spinning nightly, strobes, a proper bass setup, and a crowd that's come specifically to dance. There's a self-service bar, which is the kind of thing a serious club does, and the VIP and bottle service is the move if you want to be above the floor rather than on it. The food story here is basically nil - this is a drinks-and-dance d…

It's been an Irish pub on Church Street since 1984, and the room is full of the kind of detail that tells you the owner actually went and got the stuff: after Hurricane Hugo, Tommy Condon himself made multiple trips to Ireland and came back with antique mirrors and Irish memorabilia that cover the walls. The mirrors do what the place wants them to do - the whole room feels like it's been there for a hundred years and is a little warmer for it. It's one of the best-executed of the handful of Irish pubs in the greater Charleston area, and it's casual: no dress code, families welcome, dogs actual…

It's been a beach bar on the Isle of Palms since 1972, founded by two brothers, and in the fifty-plus years since it has become the default answer to "where do you go on the island for live music?" The room is set right at Front Beach, so the whole experience is half bar and half ocean: you're a few steps from the sand, the light does something to the room in the late afternoon, and the crowd is exactly as casual as the weather. Beach attire is the dress code. The menu is straightforward beach eats - buffalo wings, cheeseburgers, fish and chips - and it's not where you go to be surprised by th…

It's a beach bar on Folly's Center Street, a short walk from the sand, and it does exactly what a beach bar should do: fresh local seafood, burgers, fried stuff, TVs for the game, and a patio that makes sense on a warm afternoon. The menu is affordable and the whole thing runs on the Folly frame of mind - casual, easy, and a little more island than the city side of the bridge. The food is the point here: crab sandwich, shrimp and grits, a flounder sandwich, she crab soup, and a lobster grilled cheese that people keep coming back for.

The schedule is the other half of the draw: cornhole on T…

It sits in a building that used to be a forge on the Upper Peninsula, and it's been doing three things at once since 2011: neighborhood bar, restaurant, and intimate live music venue, in that order. The room is a dive bar - stained glass, string lights, a "No PBR, don't even ask" sign on the bar - but the food is clearly a step up from normal dive fare, and the kitchen runs until 1 a.m. every night, which is the kind of policy a restaurant without a real kitchen would never attempt. The punch buckets are thirty-two ounces, the baked potatoes are colossal, and the menu rotates with "Red Plate S…

It's a dive bar of "epic proportions" sitting right in the middle of the tourist district, and the single most important fact about it is the walls: for close to twenty years, people have been tacking dollar bills up them, and the same goes for the ceiling, the rafters, the back bar, the doorframe. The rest of the room is bumper stickers, exposed wood, and a wide beer list that runs from PBR to a Coast Brewing kolsch from a few blocks away. Bon Appétit made the case that this is one of the few American bars that actually pulls off the English pub vibe instead of just gesturing at it, and I thi…

It bills itself as "an upscale lounge dedicated to the art of the craft cocktail," and for a long time it was the one people pointed to when they wanted to know where Charleston's serious cocktail scene started. The list is still strong - the house classic, the Double Standard, runs on a house-infused serrano gin with cilantro and lime, and the Old Fashioned is the one reviewers keep coming back to. There's a rooftop terrace up top and the occasional live show, which is the part most people don't know about until a friend tells them.

The crowd skews older and more established than the colle…

They describe themselves as "heavy metal maniacs!!! Rock n roller dive + hellforged tiki lounge," which is exactly what it is: a tiny room, about thirty people at capacity, that's built entirely for a crowd that's comfortable in its own skin. You walk past the bouncer - they're not kidding about that - and you're in a space lit neon red under a disco ball, with an Iron Maiden pinball machine, classic horror films looping on the TV, and concert posters from a specific era of UK punk and underground metal covering the walls. It's one of the more genuinely weird bars on King Street, and it's not …

It's been voted Best Rooftop Bar by the City Paper since 2007, which is a long time to hold a title, and the room explains why: two levels, a mix of covered and uncovered space, playful pop-art installations scattered around, and the kind of view over the downtown skyline that justifies the whole trip up. It's run out of The Vendue Hotel, so there's a steady flow of guests who never get a chance to sit down, but the bartenders keep up and the happy hour is one of the better deals in the city - $12 signature cocktails and $6 local craft beers Sunday through Thursday.

The food is light bites …

It's a wooden shack on Shem Creek that's been doing one thing well for a long time: cold beer and fresh lowcountry seafood in the most casual way possible. You can show up in shorts and a t-shirt, which Condé Nast pointed out is the whole point in a city with this many white tablecloths, and the food is standard fried-seafood fare done without trying to be anything else. The name comes from a guy who ran an ice-and-fish-packing business on the creek for decades before retiring, which is the kind of local history you only get on a place this old.

The part people remember is the rooftop: a li…

They describe it as "an intimate craft cocktail bar with an extensive wines by the glass list and a real good beer list," which undersells the room. This is one of the more respected cocktail bars on King Street, and the bartenders are the whole point - the reviews keep using words like "picture-perfect" and "mixologist," and there's a real sense that the person behind the stick is doing something rather than just pouring. The style is spirit-forward, so the drinks are strong and meant to be sipped, and the small plates (boiled peanuts, pimento cheese, the occasional ramen or taco pop-up) are …

It's a beach bar on Sullivan's Island that built its whole identity around Edgar Allan Poe, and it's one of those themed spots where the theme is actually earned: the island has a real historical tie to the writer, and the bar opened in 2003 in a circa-1920 cottage that's now covered floor to ceiling with his quotes, portraits, and gothic trim. It's "America's grub" on the menu - burgers, fries, nachos, mahi-mahi tacos - but the dishes have Poe names on them, which makes the whole thing feel like a little inside joke you're allowed in on. It's casual, it's cheap, it's the kind of place you com…