Area by area
One stop downtown, then out across the bridges. Every kitchen below keeps eggs, biscuits or pancakes on the menu for as long as the doors are open.
Sweet Palm Coffee & Food sits at 471 King Street, in the stretch of Upper King between the College of Charleston and the hotels around Marion Square. It runs as a quick-serve cafe: order at the counter, and the food is made in house while the espresso machine works on your drink.
The morning menu doesn't switch off. Breakfast sandwiches, egg and cheese, breakfast burritos, egg bites and hash browns are available from 8:30am until closing, which makes it the easy answer for anyone who slept through the usual cutoff or wants eggs at three. Coffee is the other half of the business, with lattes, iced coffee, matcha, tea, energy drinks and dirty sodas.
For groups that split between meals, the lunch side covers chicken wraps, bowls and turkey and swiss melts, and the sweet end of the menu has cinnamon rolls, blueberry muffins and ice cream sundaes. Takeout and delivery are available for anyone staying nearby.
471 King Street · Open daily from 8:30am
Visit sweetpalmcoffee.comWest Ashley is the strongest part of town for this. Early Bird Diner at 1644 Savannah Highway is the local standard: a locally owned diner, featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, that serves its whole morning menu every hour it is open. The chicken and waffles are the dish people drive across the Ashley for, and Sunday adds a separate specials menu.
A few minutes north, Metro Diner on Sam Rittenberg Boulevard runs a long comfort-food menu where waffles and biscuits with sausage gravy sit next to meatloaf and fish and chips at any time of day. Flying Biscuit Café on Ashley Crossing Drive has served breakfast and lunch side by side since 1993, with its grits and oversized biscuits as the draw; it closes mid-afternoon. Eggs Up Grill on West Ashley Circle keeps a similar daytime schedule, with omelets and pancakes from open to close.
Coleman Boulevard carries most of the load east of the Cooper. Vicious Biscuit at 409 West Coleman is a fast-casual shop built around over-the-top biscuits, and that is the menu from the first order to the last. The namesake is a cheddar and jalapeño biscuit with fried chicken and maple sausage gravy. Further down at 794 Coleman, the Mount Pleasant Flying Biscuit Café serves the same breakfast-and-lunch-together menu as its West Ashley sibling.
In the Old Village, Vintage Coffee Cafe at 219 Simmons Street runs breakfast and brunch plates all day from a 1930s cottage with a shaded courtyard, a good fit for families and anyone who wants avocado toast at one in the afternoon.
The road to Folly has two reliable stops. Millers All Day at 1956 Maybank Highway is the James Island outpost of the grits-and-biscuits restaurant, and the name is the policy: brunch plates and bakery items whenever the doors are open. Look for bowls built on scrambled eggs, grits, pimento cheese and sausage gravy.
On the island itself, Lost Dog Cafe at 106 West Huron Avenue is the Folly Beach institution, dog friendly, with mason jar mimosas, a big cinnamon roll and savory and sweet breakfast plates that run through the lunch rush. It works equally well before the beach or after it.
The Junction Kitchen & Provisions at 4438 Spruill Avenue has been Park Circle's breakfast room since 2015, and it has never put a clock on the menu. It is a neighborhood kitchen with a bloody mary list to match the food. In Summerville, the second Vicious Biscuit location on Front Street brings the same biscuit menu to the Nexton side of town.
Open LateWhen the craving shows up at midnight, the national names fill the gap. Waffle House has locations on nearly every major road in the county and never closes. IHOP on Savannah Highway, Huddle House on Folly Road and Denny's on International Boulevard near the airport all serve their full morning menus around the clock or close to it.