Lost Isle
Lost Isle Turned a Backyard Cookout Into One of Charleston's Best Restaurants
A 35-minute drive out to the rustic edges of Johns Island, down a gravel driveway at 3338 Maybank Highway, sits a tiny white house nearly swallowed by lush Lowcountry vegetation. That's Lost Isle: a fully outdoor, live-fire restaurant that trades reservations and roofs for a carefree, sensory-driven dining adventure that feels like a backyard party.
The concept is a partnership between chef Josh Taylor, his wife Maggie MacMillan, Thomas Wilson, and T.J. Lynch, owner of Folly Beach's Lowlife Bar, grown out of the Taylors' food truck, Root Note. It landed on The New York Times' list of the 50 Best Restaurants in America and was crowned Southern Living's 2025 Restaurant of the Year. Having been several times myself, I get it. Walking under a vine-tangled floral trellis into the gravel courtyard feels less like arriving at a restaurant and more like crashing a party where your closest friends happen to be world-class chefs and bartenders.
A Steamy, Star-Lit Paradise
A host seats guests at custom tables hand-built by Taylor and Lynch. Drinks are ordered at the bar, food at a counter, and servers handle the rest — bringing dishes to the table and passing out blankets on cooler nights, while the chefs keep the fire pits going between courses. Ordering drinks and food is left to the guest, but the hospitality more than makes up for it. The team is constantly moving through the space, checking in, anticipating what a table needs before anyone has to ask.
Hand-fashioned chandeliers hang from towering pecan trees over a courtyard filled with a stylish, multi-generational crowd, clinking glasses, and the occasional dog underfoot. The centerpiece is the 23-foot open kitchen, where cooks work through rain, wind, and Lowcountry humidity, tongs in hand over a massive oak-wood grill throwing flames skyward.
Draft Cocktails Built for the Charleston Heat
The bar matches the kitchen's ambition: colorful, high-concept, and engineered to survive a South Carolina summer.
Down the Wabbit Hole looks like fresh, cold-pressed juice with a wild side — tequila, Campari, carrot juice, and ginger, served in a glass rimmed with smoky pepita and Tajín. Miso Juicy takes a savory left turn, infusing fermented miso paste with blood orange, tequila, and smoky mezcal into a dusky pink highball. The Sheeny Neeney and Gintonica make a natural pair to split: one tart and pineapple-sweet, the other a marigold-hued pour of lime-leaf gin with a sprig of rosemary bobbing in a tall balloon glass.
Southern Comfort, Reworked Over Open Flame
Chef Taylor uses the live oak fire to re-engineer familiar Southern and steakhouse staples, threading in flavors pulled from his travels through Southeast Asia. That's the through-line of the entire menu.
The curry braised collards come closest to a signature dish. Taylor swaps the classic vinegary Southern pot liquor for a rich, aromatic cream sauce built on Northern Thai khao soi noodle soup, finished with toasted breadcrumbs for crunch — familiar enough to recognize, strange enough to remember. The charcoal roasted carrots go sweet-and-smoky over a brown butter hazelnut sauce, sharpened with roasted chili and a tangy goat cheese finish. The charred eggplant dip — smooth, bitter-edged, rounded out with basil, yogurt, toasted benne seeds, and charred lemon — is built to be eaten alongside the wood-fired clams, which arrive swimming in a chili-chorizo butter sauce worth spooning up with bread. The plancha smashed potatoes go ultra-creamy inside with a crisp plancha crust, loaded with spicy harissa crème fraîche and chorizo chili oil, while the crispy polenta takes on a deep char over romesco and goat cheese.
The entrees are where the fire does its real work. The grilled ribeye arrives glistening under a warm guajillo pepper sauce with confit garlic and coarse salt — a squeeze of charred lime cuts straight through the richness. The tomahawk pork chop is enormous, glazed sweet-and-savory with ancho and cherry, finished with charred lemon, built for eating with your hands. The tamarind grilled chicken, a riff on Northern Thai gai yang, is brined, smoked, and finished over open flame, basted in a sour-sweet tamarind chili glaze and served with a bright lemongrass salsa verde. Of the three, it's the one worth ordering first.
The Fine Print on Paradise
There's no air conditioning and no roof, which means guests are at the mercy of Lowcountry humidity, mosquitoes, and the occasional summer downpour, along with a real chance of a wait since reservations aren't part of the model. Anyone wanting a quiet, climate-controlled evening should look elsewhere.
The Verdict
Lost Isle earns its spot on every "best of" list by committing fully to what it actually is: a backyard party with a world-class kitchen attached, no fine-dining polish required. The Maybank Highway traffic and the mosquito bites are a small toll against a night that feels genuinely unlike anywhere else in Charleston. Open daily from 4:00 to 10:00 p.m., weather permitting.