Fleet Landing sits right at the foot of the City Market on the edge of Charleston Harbor, and the view does a lot of the work before you've even ordered. It's been doing this for two decades, and the room - maritime-industrial with a romantic turn, wrap-around deck, chic dining room - is exactly the kind of place you go when the harbor looks good, which in Charleston is most of the year. The menu is lowcountry seafood done properly: shrimp and grits, Carolina lump crab cakes, a whole crispy southern flounder, a raw bar with oyster specials, and stone crab claws when the season hits. It's a Certified SC Grown participant, so the local sourcing is real, not just on the menu.
The food is the reason it's still here twenty years later, and it's priced at a level that matches the view - you're paying for the harbor as much as the flounder, and most people figure that out quickly. Reservations are strongly recommended for nights and weekends, and both the main and raw bars are open during the lunch-to-dinner transition if you want to start with drinks and a couple of oysters before you commit. The crowd is a mix of locals and tourists who found a concierge's recommendation and were right to follow it - "some of the best food I have had in Charleston" is a line that shows up more than once in the reviews.