High Cotton is one of the Hall family's restaurants - the same people who run Halls Chophouse - and it sits at 199 East Bay Street in a room of heart pine floors, antique brick, and mahogany that feels more Charleston parlor than dining room. It's American with a Southern slant, done farm-to-table and with the kind of portions and local sourcing that show up in the reviews before the plating does. The food is the point: the filet mignon, the steak and lobster tail, and a mixed berry hand pie that shows up more than once as the dish people order last. It's not cheap - Gayot called it "not for the faint of wallet" - but the value has improved over the years and the service is the kind that makes an anniversary or a honeymoon land.
The room is casually elegant and purely Charleston, and the crowd skews local and celebratory rather than tourist-chasing. The Sunday brunch is the one thing that sets it apart from the other fine-dining rooms downtown: there's live music, the kind that has people tapping their feet, and the whole place turns into a kind of Charleston tradition for the people who have been coming in for years. It's the spot you pick when you want to dress up a little and not have to think about it.