Charleston Lunch: Six Casual Stops and Bites

A bowl of soup at Gaulart & Maliclet, a savoury crêpe at Queen Street Grocery or a biscuit on Upper King Street can make lunch a manageable break between Charleston sights. Choose by the food you want and the area you are already visiting, rather than crossing town for every recommendation. These six stops range from a small savoury bite to a fuller barbecue lunch. Lewis Barbecue is the choice for smoked brisket, but its ordering line needs more room in your day than a sandwich pickup.

Choose a lunch stop

Stop	Area	Order	Typical spend per person
Gaulart & Maliclet	Broad Street	Soup Du Jour	$15–20
Queen Street Grocery	Queen Street	Brittany crêpe	$15–20
Carmella’s	East Bay Street	Italian sandwich	$15–20
Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit	Upper King Street	Pimento cheese biscuit (small bite)	$5–10
Da Toscano Porchetta Shop	President Street, medical district	Porchetta sandwich	$15–25
Lewis Barbecue	North Nassau Street	Sliced brisket and a modest side	$20–30

Extra food, dessert and paid drinks increase the bill, and sales tax and any tip come on top. All six venues open daily, so location and appetite matter more than differing weekly closing days.

Favour a stop near your day’s activities and allow time both to order and to eat. Takeaway suits a break without a table, while Lewis needs a more flexible lunch window. Arrive before the main lunch rush where possible, and avoid placing a casual counter stop immediately before a timed visit.

For a fixed-time seated meal, choose somewhere that accepts reservations rather than relying on a walk-in table. Charleston neighbourhood meals offers a broader food-first selection when you want a longer sit-down occasion.

Gaulart & Maliclet (Fast and French)

Gaulart & Maliclet, also known as Fast and French, suits a modest lunch built around soup rather than a large sandwich. Order Soup Du Jour, meaning soup of the day, with its accompanying baguette and French cheese. You choose the soup, and the bread and cheese make it more substantial than a bowl alone.

Lunch starts at 11am, making this an option after a morning among the historic centre’s sights. The compact soup-and-bread order works when you want to sit down for something savoury without making a large meal the centre of the afternoon. Broad Street also keeps the stop close to sightseeing south of the City Market.

Queen Street Grocery

Queen Street Grocery offers savoury crêpes and hot pressed sandwiches for a casual lunch. The Brittany crêpe combines ham, cheddar and egg. Choose it when you want a savoury filling wrapped in a thin pancake, or opt for a hot pressed sandwich if you would rather have bread.

Order in person, then choose between takeaway and the pavement dining area. Eating outside keeps the break at the shop, while taking lunch away lets you make a picnic part of the afternoon at Colonial Lake. Decide which setting you want before collecting your food, particularly if you are carrying other bags.

For a weekend visit, make lunch part of the earlier stretch of your day because the opening hours are shorter than on weekdays. The grocery-and-cafe format suits choosing food on arrival rather than planning a formal seated meal.

Carmella’s Cafe & Dessert Bar

Carmella’s Cafe & Dessert Bar gives you a savoury reason to stop even if dessert is not the aim. Choose the Italian sandwich on house-made ciabatta, filled with Genoa salami, capicola and soppressata, three Italian cured meats. Provolone cheese, lettuce and tomato complete the filling, with oil and vinegar rather than a heavy sauce.

The bread is part of the appeal here, not just a wrapper for the meat and cheese. This is a sandwich-led lunch on East Bay Street with the option to turn it into a sweeter break afterwards. Keep dessert as a separate addition to your spending rather than treating it as part of the lunch order.

You can order in person or use online ordering through Toast for pickup. Pickup is useful when you want to collect a sandwich and continue your afternoon, while ordering on arrival leaves the dessert decision until you are there.

Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit

Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit is a stop for a smaller savoury bite on Upper King Street. An American biscuit is a soft savoury quick bread, not a sweet biscuit. Choose a pimento cheese biscuit for a snack-sized break rather than a full lunch. Pimento cheese is a cheese spread with sweet red peppers, giving the biscuit a savoury filling.

Online ordering supports pickup with a staff handover: pull up and staff bring your order out. That makes it an option when collecting food is the purpose of the stop, rather than settling in for a seated meal.

Da Toscano Porchetta Shop

Da Toscano Porchetta Shop specialises in porchetta, seasoned roast pork, on President Street near Charleston’s medical district. The signature porchetta sandwich pairs the pork with warm Le Farfalle focaccia, aged provolone and extra-virgin olive oil. Salsa verde, a green herb sauce, adds a contrasting herbal element to the meat and cheese.

This is a fuller sandwich lunch, with focaccia as much a part of the order as the filling. Choose it when you want roast pork rather than a small snack. The green herb sauce gives the sandwich a different emphasis from a plain meat-and-cheese filling.

Lunch runs from 10:30am to 6pm, so you can make it an early meal or a later afternoon stop. Use the online Order Pickup option when you want to collect your sandwich. For an individual lunch, choose that ordering option rather than the separate catering enquiry form.

Lewis Barbecue

Lewis Barbecue is the North Nassau Street choice for Central Texas-style smoked meat. Founder and pitmaster John Lewis is behind the barbecue, and sliced beef brisket with a modest side makes the meat the focus of lunch. Brisket is a cut from the breast of the cow, and slow smoking makes it tender enough to serve in slices.

At the counter, the barbecue is cut to order. Think about how much meat you want before ordering, because the brisket is sold by weight and a larger portion raises the bill. The backyard patio gives you an outdoor place to sit and eat, making the stop more than a food collection.

Arriving before the main lunch rush gives you a better chance of a manageable counter visit. Alternatively, order takeaway online for pickup if collecting food fits your day better than joining the ordering line. Leave room afterwards to enjoy the brisket rather than treating collection as the end of the break.

Sources & fact-checking

Checks against the sources below cover: closures, key figures, and opening hours.

• Carmella’s Dessert Bar — closures
• Carmella’s Cafe & Dessert Bar | Toast
• Order Online — Carmella’s Cafe & Dessert Bar Charleston
• Lewis Barbecue — opening hours
• Gaulart & Maliclet Fast and French Inc. — opening hours
• Da Toscano Porchetta Shop — opening hours
• Da Toscano Porchetta Shop — closures