My November dispatch of Charleston-area restaurants to try right now brings steak, seafood, biscuits, quail and eggplant to the dinner table — or raw bar. One was the subject of a recent review , and another is helmed by a Michelin Guide-recognized chef . As a whole, these five restaurants represent the range of cuisines currently dominating the Lowcountry’s restaurant scene, from downtown to Summerville .
Ambiance is difficult to establish. Some restaurants have it; many more do not. Bexley Fish & Raw Bar in Summerville does, and the action is centered around the restaurant’s open kitchen/raw bar.
About a dozen high-top chairs line the tight enclave, where chefs shuck oysters and place them on ice next to tinctures filled with various sauces and mignonettes. Another chef extracts a thin slab of tuna, choosing from a kaleidoscope of colored squirt bottles and generously dressing the fish. Behind them, a tall, thin man in a backward hat — that’s owner Jeremy Holst — pours mussels from a cast iron pan into a smaller skillet, one of several scattered across the pass.
Jeremy Holst, the owner and chef of Bexley Fish & Raw Bar, prepares a dish in the kitchen of Bexley in Summerville on Wednesday, June 8, 2022. Bexley opened at 100 W. Richardson Ave.
in 2022 with a frequently changing menu driven by “simple ingredients thoughtfully cooked and thoughtfully presented,” Holst told me at the time. Nearly three years later, it’s become one of the very best restaurants i.