The 40 Best Places to Drink and Stay in Charleston SC

The salmon-pink Champagne lounge and the sky-blue rooftop bar tell you everything about this hotel's register before you even check in. Sitting right on Marion Square in the heart of Charleston, Hotel Bennett is a new build that wears its Southern elegance without apology, from the mural-lined rotunda to rooms so soft they feel like sleeping inside a cloud. A Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key round out the credentials.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key

The sweeping double staircase in the lobby sets the tone: this is an old-school grande dame hotel, the kind Charleston practically wrote the manual on. Rooms have been refreshed without losing their ornate classical details, and a pool with a retractable roof sits alongside a fitness center and designer shops. Forbes Four Star. It sits squarely in the historic district, within an easy walk of gardens and antebellum mansions.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The Veranda Lounge's botanical cocktails and small plates give you an excuse to linger, but the rooms are reason enough to stay at this 50-room boutique hotel in Charleston's French Quarter. It's a new build that doesn't embarrass the historic streetscape around it, and the interiors split the difference between antique good looks and quietly high-tech comfort. The Michelin Guide awarded it two Keys.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Keys

Wide-plank walnut floors, hand-painted wildlife murals on the staircases, and limestone fireplaces big enough to stand in announce that this is a different order of Lowcountry resort. The Sanctuary sits on a barrier island inside a private gated community, with ocean-view rooms done in coastal colonial style and a Grand Lawn that rolls straight to the beach. It holds a Forbes Five Star, and the staff make the hospitality feel less like a script and more like a favor.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar
2. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service · Femi Oyediran and Miles White

1. Esquire House Dirty Vodka Martini · The Best Martinis in America

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Mahogany beds, armoires, toile wallpaper, and a George Washington portrait in the lobby bar: Market Pavilion Hotel was built in 2002 and willed to look like it wasn't. The boutique hotel sits in downtown Charleston with more than 300 pieces of original art chosen by the family that owns it. Upstairs, a rooftop bar cuts against all the colonial gravity. Grill 225 handles steaks on the ground floor for anyone who needs grounding.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America

A gray limewash exterior sets this boutique hotel apart from the red-brick streetscape around it, and the care inside matches the gesture outside. A walled garden channels old Charleston without the kitsch, marble and brass bathrooms feel like a decorator's pet project, and the spa was modeled on the developer's own carriage house. A Michelin Key hotel in the heart of downtown, it's the kind of place that was clearly someone's obsession before it was anyone's reservation.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Three buildings, two Victorian and one new, were stitched together on George Street to make this 25-room luxury boutique hotel a Michelin Key holder in the heart of Charleston. The interiors lean into the bones of the older structures, bold wallpapers and period ornament, then pull it all forward with a sharp modern palette and furniture that clearly someone had strong opinions about choosing.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Period lanterns, glossy windows, and varicolored brickwork set the tone before you even walk in. The Spectator is a boutique hotel where the French Quarter and Market Street meet, wearing its Roaring Twenties bones lightly, with Modernist awnings keeping things from tipping into full costume drama. Four floors, a debonair bearing, and a Michelin Key make it a natural base for Charleston at its most photogenic.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar
3. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine

A boutique hotel planted in the middle of Charleston's historic district, steps from Waterfront Park and a short walk from the South of Broad townhouses that look like they were painted for a calendar. Rooms, the atrium, and the roof terrace all catch harbor views, though the Michelin Key it holds suggests the location is doing the real heavy lifting. The galleries, antique shops, and Southern restaurants nearby are the actual argument for staying here.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Charleston's Lowcountry pantry filtered through a Mediterranean lens, The Grocery is a neighborhood restaurant where seasonal produce and local seafood share the menu in ways that feel natural rather than calculated. Fried oysters with deviled egg sauce have been here since day one, which tells you something about the kitchen's instincts. The room runs warm and unhurried, the kind of place locals treat like a standing reservation they never made.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Esquire The Dirty Green Tomato · The Best Martinis in America
3. Condé Nast Traveler 40 Best Restaurants in Charleston

A preserved 19th-century house in Mount Pleasant, just across the bridge from Charleston, that was quietly converted into a boutique inn with a restaurant at its core. The room count stays small, the rooms themselves are beautifully put together, and the whole thing leans into Lowcountry charm without drowning in it, which is harder than it sounds. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A quiet courtyard with fountains and palm trees sits at the center of this boutique hotel, which makes the corner of Meeting and Market streets feel like a country house someone forgot to move to the country. The rooms wrap around that courtyard rather than face the street, so the noise of downtown Charleston mostly stays outside. Old-school Southern hospitality, a handsome historic building, and a location that puts you in the middle of everything without the feeling that you're in the middle of everything.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A wrought-iron-balconied courtyard that stops you mid-step is the heart of this boutique hotel on Upper King Street. Morris Adjmi Architects designed the façade to nod at Charleston's architectural jumble without copying any of it, but step inside and the Victorian atmosphere takes over completely. Fifty rooms keep it from feeling like a scene. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A boutique hotel in Charleston's French Quarter, steps from the waterfront, that manages to feel like a stylish country house despite sitting squarely in the city's busiest stretch of East Bay Street. The mansion-style rooms and unhurried atmosphere are a deliberate counterpoint to everything humming just outside the door. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected Charleston hotels, which in this neighborhood is saying something.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Breakfast comes in a picnic basket each morning, which sets the tone nicely for a fifteen-suite hotel that behaves more like a borrowed apartment than a place to stay. Exposed brick, original hardwood floors, and full kitchens make up the bones, with well-chosen antiques keeping things from feeling like a loft conversion. It sits in the old downtown district, right in the middle of Charleston's restaurant scene, and the Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Five restored buildings, three rowhouses and two carriage houses, connected by a palmetto-shaded courtyard in the Ansonborough district. Zero George is an eighteen-room boutique hotel whose address, technically zero, sounds like a clerical error until you're standing in it. The oak trees on the block are as old and composed as the architecture, which gives the whole place a quietly theatrical sense of having arrived somewhere specific.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Screened porches overlooking the marsh, gabled roofs, and 2,000 acres of Lowcountry terrain set the tone at this Auberge resort on the Kiawah River. The 72 rooms and suites, plus 19 villas, lean into classic Sea Island design without overcooking it. Days run at the river's pace: oyster-laced shorelines, the occasional dolphin, slow hikes through the wetlands. Charleston is forty minutes away, which turns out to be the right distance. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

A row of 18th-century warehouse buildings stitched together into a hotel, The Vendue calls itself Charleston's art hotel and means it, with serious contemporary work hung throughout rather than the usual decorative shrugs. Every room is different, the rooftop bar has been a neighborhood fixture forever, and the restaurant, Revival, runs on seasonal and heirloom ingredients. The kind of boutique hotel that gives the concept a good name.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

1. Eater Where to Drink in Charleston Right Now
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. East

Menu painted on the front windows, high tables, espresso foaming in the morning and a cocktail shaker going by afternoon: Babas is a small all-day European-style cafe and bar that operates on a pleasantly loose schedule. The kitchen moves from overnight oats and baked goods at breakfast through deviled eggs and a caviar sandwich later on, which is a pretty wide range for a room you could cross in six steps.

1. The Infatuation The Best Restaurants In Charleston
2. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine
3. Condé Nast Traveler 40 Best Restaurants in Charleston

1. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine

1. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

Everything cooks over open white-oak fires behind a tattered ranch house on Johns Island, sailcloth and outdoor chandeliers overhead, the smoke visible from the road. The chef grew up in North Georgia and knows his Lowcountry, so collards and roasted clams show up alongside chimichurri and tamarind. The New York Times put it on their 2024 Restaurant List. Arrive hungry enough for the charred semolina sourdough that lands first, and don't skip the carrots.

1. The New York Times 2024 · The Restaurant List
2. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine

1. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine

1. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine

1. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program

1. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine

1. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine

1. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine

1. Eater 13 Essential Charleston Bars for Cocktails, Beer, Wine

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide