Soby's is the restaurant most responsible for turning South Main into a dining destination, open since 1997 and still one of the first names locals hand a visitor asking where to eat downtown. The headline sits behind glass downstairs: an underground cellar of around 4,000 selections and some 17,000 bottles, the largest restaurant wine list in South Carolina, with a dozen seats set among the bottles for a private dinner.
The kitchen cooks New South, Southern standards rebuilt around local and seasonal ingredients rather than served straight from memory. Fried green tomatoes, shrimp and grits, and braised beef short rib over truffled grits are the plates people order without opening the menu, and the room stays casually elegant without tipping into fussy, with a bar that keeps its own crowd.
The wine program is what drew the national attention. In 2025 Soby's became the first restaurant in South Carolina to win Wine Spectator's Grand Award, a distinction fewer than a hundred restaurants worldwide hold, and it carries a recommendation in the MICHELIN Guide's American South edition. Nearly three decades on, it still fills the dining room on an ordinary weeknight.