Leon's Oyster Shop
Charleston, SC
Oysters were the food of poor people. New York was filled with oyster saloons in the 1800s.
Ruth Reichel
Downtown Charleston’s King Street is one of America’s great shopping streets - a classy lineup of wonderful awning-draped stucco and brick buildings packed along a bustling, palmetto-lined sidewalk.
Head a mile north, past the interstate, though, and things get a little funky. Or at least they did until Brooks Reitz and his partner Tony Mink showed up and changed the trajectory of the neighborhood.
They began the transformation with a steady delivery of oysters and Old Bay-glazed lard-fried chicken at Leon’s Oyster House and then accelerated with what Bon Appetit named the best burger in America at Little Jack’s Tavern. Melfi’s, with its Osso Buccos and Aperol Spritzs, completes the trifecta.
Real estate developers have a lot to learn from Mr. Reitz and Mr. Mink - the duo knows more about adding value to property than most of us. They’ve done it not just with surgical design interventions to an old auto body shop, but also with the added hook of frozen gin & tonics and grilled oysters.
Their playbook is a work of art, framed in Duke’s Mayonnaise.
The eponymous oyster.
A fried shrimp roll that requires a handful of moist towelettes
Out back there’s a brick terrace, biergarten tables, exposed bulbs, accordion doors, and bare wood siding with a Lowcountry red tin roof.
Pitchers of beer and ponies.
A world class patio - heaters, strung lights, a covering overhead, indoor access, and a jungle perimeter of plants.
Well-worn high-top communal tables, colored Christmas lights, and roll-up garage doors set the tone.
Three’s company with their other two concepts.
This formerly unremarkable section of King Street now has personality, without losing all the grit.
Leon’s, with its hand-painted signs, roll-up doors, and cheapish beers feels like a place for the everyman - the New York oyster saloon folk - but it’s that lack of pretense that makes the point. It’s a gathering place for table-slapping and beer drinking, accompanied by food that doesn’t require utensils - something that would make every neighborhood more valuable.
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Love Leon’s!