Diners fill the tables at one of Charleston’s oldest waterfront restaurants on a recent Saturday. Chatter echoes off the concrete walls in the 80-plus-year-old building, where a half-dozen chefs, hosts and servers have worked for nearly two decades . Guests soak up the sunset on the patio as the wind forms small waves in the water a few yards below their feet.
Fleet Landing Restaurant & Bar , housed in a 1940s-era naval debarkation building along Charleston Harbor, added an oyster bar in 2023. Oysters from British Columbia, Prince Edward Island and South Carolina rest on ice at a raw bar, lined with backless blue stools. Pleasant scents of gumbo, fried flounder, red rice and crab cakes fill the oyster bar, the newest addition to Fleet Landing , a staple Charleston restaurant that opened 20 years ago this November.
Fleet Landing’s menu has hardly changed since opening day. Patrons who come for the harbor views, straightforward seafood fare and friendly service like it that way. As the prime waterfront real estate surrounding the restaurant transforms with a new hotel and future development at Union Pier , the squatty former naval building on Concord Street endures as a Lowcountry classic frequented by tourists and locals alike.
Here’s how the restaurant got to where it is today. 82-year-old 'mother of the kitchen' at Charleston's Fleet Landing retires after 2 decades Fleet Landing has had the same owners since it opened in November 2004. The year before, Weesie and Tradd.