This string of comments is beginning ti sound like the partisan sniping of the recent election campaign! Geez, people.....there are serious "foodies" everywhere. And there are culinary philistines everywhere as well. I mostly gave up "Southern" food decades ago in favor of food I thought was more interesting, such as North Italian, Szechuan Chinese, Greek, etc. All these things and more can be found and enjoyed in the
Charleston area, and opinions will abound as to which ones are the best, and the "best" is always a moving target, so I think it's great that we can share these opinions in such a convenient forum as this.

The Georgetown scene is much smaller, of course. We enjoyed the River Room on the wharf for dinner. There are several places along the waterfront for a good lunch and a brew, such as Buzz's Roost....the food is so-so, but the view is awesome. A good breakfast place is Thomas's Cafe on Front Street. The Humble Crumb gets high marks for Italian, pizza & organic stuff. If you are interested in staying a night there in Georgetown on the way to Charleston, I can highly recommend Mansfield Plantation....a real and very well preserved rice plantation about 5 miles out of town. A unique experience and not too pricey. It's operated now as a B & B....incredible breakfast! Google it.

My wife and I just returned from a trip to Georgetown & Charleston for a few days. We had the usual foodie suspects in our sights, such as Fig, McCrady's, Husk, and Peninsula Grill etc. We found Peninsula Grill rather pretentious and expensive and decided to forego their vaunted coconut cake dessert. We've found that the best way to nor break the bank is to go to those more pricey places for lunch rather than dinner....you reap some delightful surprises that way. We had a terrific lunch at Husk, for instance....perfectly sauteed NC catfish over a bed of corn, peppers etc. and a nice white wine and the bill was quite reasonable, even with a quirky dessert of sweet potato pie and bacon ( yes, bacon ) ice cream, which we split. If you do this, then you can go to some of these places at night and have a couple of appetizers in the bar and some good wine. Peninsula Grill is not open for lunch. Magnolia's is always good. One of our best finds was Monza's Pizza. They use imported Italian flour and make their own sausage etc. and cook in a 1000 deg. wood oven. Sit at the bar, if possible. If you like Italian food, Il Cortile del Re is good....they have hard to find pastas such as wild boar sauce over pappardelle. Another interesting lunch spot is Jestine's Kitchen......Southern Soul Food. Lines can be famously long there at lunchtime, so you might want to go a bit late. Pearlz looked like great fun to us and was right around the corner from our inn, but the night we tried to get in with a young friend, it was full with a half-hour wait, so we hit McCrady's instead for drinks and appetizers.