What to order
Some morning plates are better late. These are the ones the Lowcountry does well, and where to find each of them once the lunch crowd has moved in.
The handheld order is the one that travels, which matters downtown where most people are on foot. Sweet Palm Coffee & Food wraps its breakfast burritos and builds its egg and cheese sandwiches to order all day at 471 King Street, with egg bites and hash browns as the add-ons and an iced latte or dirty soda to go with them. It is the fastest way to eat a real breakfast in the middle of a shopping afternoon.
Away from the peninsula, Lost Dog Cafe on Folly Beach is known for burritos sized for a day in the surf, and Vintage Coffee Cafe in Mount Pleasant does the biscuit-sandwich version in its courtyard.
Shrimp and grits started as a fisherman's breakfast and never stopped being one here. Page's Okra Grill in Mount Pleasant serves the most talked-about plate, with a fried cheddar grit cake and andouille cream sauce, and it stays on the menu from morning through dinner. Lost Dog Cafe tops its version with bacon, cheese and onions, and Millers All Day on James Island treats grits as the main event, milled in house style and offered in bowls.
For plain, well-made grits as a side, the diners win: Early Bird Diner and Flying Biscuit Café in West Ashley both have regulars who order them with everything.
A Charleston biscuit is big, and the shops that specialize in them serve them until closing. Vicious Biscuit in Mount Pleasant and Summerville stacks its cheddar-jalapeño biscuit with fried chicken and maple sausage gravy. Flying Biscuit Café has been turning out its tall, fluffy version since 1993, and The Junction Kitchen & Provisions in Park Circle keeps biscuits and gravy on from open to close.
Chicken and waffles belongs to Early Bird Diner. The plate put the West Ashley diner on national television and it is available at lunch and dinner as readily as at eight in the morning. Metro Diner nearby does a towering fried chicken and waffle plate of its own.
Late breakfast often turns into dessert. Sweet Palm Coffee & Food covers that end with cinnamon rolls, blueberry muffins and ice cream sundaes next to the coffee menu, an easy stop for a group where one person wants eggs and another wants something sweet. Lost Dog Cafe is famous for its cinnamon roll, and Millers All Day sends out banana bread and cinnamon rolls as starters for the table.
Pancake people should head for the 24-hour griddles: IHOP on Savannah Highway and any Waffle House in the county will make a stack or a pecan waffle at an hour when everything else in town is dark.
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