The Best Italian Food in Charleston SC

High ceilings, glowing brass, leather banquettes, and enough wood detailing to make you feel like you're boarding the Orient Express: Costa is a coastal Italian restaurant inside The Jasper that reads as genuinely grand without trying too hard. The kitchen leans into housemade pasta and raw preparations, pairing classic Italian technique with unexpected flavor combinations that shouldn't work on paper but land cleanly on the plate.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Eater Best New South Carolina Restaurant
3. The Infatuation The Best Restaurants In Charleston

Three renovated townhouses in historic downtown Charleston have been stitched together into an all-day Southern Italian cafe where the bones of an old bank still show through in the brass and marble. The room dresses up well, and so should you. Wood-fired pizzas and pastries carry the daytime crowd, but the house-made pastas are the reason to linger into evening. It holds a Michelin Guide selection and four AAA Diamonds.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Condé Nast Traveler 40 Best Restaurants in Charleston

A wood-fired pizza and pasta spot a couple of blocks from the Sullivan's Island beach, up on a second floor where the pale blue seating and bleached wood manage to feel coastal without a single pelican painting in sight. The kitchen pulls from Italian, French, and Spanish influences alongside Lowcountry ones, and the vegetables from local farms make the salads genuinely competitive with the pizza. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2024.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. The Infatuation The Best Restaurants In Charleston

A wood-fired oven dominates the room of this Italian neighborhood bistro, tucked into a Hanahan strip mall between a Latin bakery and a grocery store. The chef's first solo venture draws a steady local pilgrimage from across greater Charleston for housemade pasta, focaccia, and wood-fired oysters on walnut tables. The meatballs have developed a following serious enough that regulars treat them as a standing order.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Condé Nast Traveler 40 Best Restaurants in Charleston

A roadside Italian restaurant on the drive out to Johns Island that rewards slowing down. The menu turns with the seasons, so regulars come back often enough that the staff tends to recognize them. Pasta, charred octopus, and vegetables sourced from local farmers the chef has worked with across a long Charleston career all show up regularly. The room handles birthdays, date nights, and mothers with equal composure.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Condé Nast Traveler 40 Best Restaurants in Charleston

1. AAA Three Diamonds

The pizza dough ferments for 48 hours before it ever sees a oven, which tells you where this Italian restaurant's priorities lie. Tucked into a shopping center in Mount Pleasant, Savi runs lunch casual, sandwiches and salads and those pizzas, then shifts gears at dinner into pastas, steaks, and seafood. The wine list is the other serious thing here, and happy hour gives you a reasonable excuse to find out.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Chickens turning on a spit behind glass, focaccia stacked high, and a counter so narrow that most people take their order to the curb: this is a counter service porchetta shop with Italian instincts and Charleston pork. Everything lands on housemade focaccia, from spiced salmon with whipped ricotta at breakfast to the classic porchetta with crackling, salsa verde, and provolone. A standing bar exists, technically, but the line moves and so do you.

1. Condé Nast Traveler 40 Best Restaurants in Charleston

The wooden door on King Street opens into a narrow, warm room that's been packed most nights for as long as anyone can remember. Indaco is a wood-fired pizza and pasta spot where the wine list leans affordable Italian and people tend to order a second bottle before they've finished the first. The leopard-spotted crust on the nduja pizza is the obvious draw, but the seasonal pasta earns its place on the table too.

1. Condé Nast Traveler 40 Best Restaurants in Charleston