After dinner one night, we were walking along the streets of the French Quarter of Charleston enjoying the evening vibe the historic district had to offer. We came upon a place where people were lined up out the door to get into. It turned out it was a cafe/dessert bar that was very popular with the locals and tourists alike. A quick look at the menu convinced us that we had to get in line to have some dessert at Carmella's Cafe and Dessert Bar.
Brian Solari was born into an Italian family of chefs and food purveyors. The matriarch of the family was his Italian-immigrant grandmother Carmella who cooked recipes that had been passed down generations from the old country in Italy in her kitchen in South Philadelphia. Solari's family business was as distributors of Italian meats and delicacies in New Jersey and his uncle Dennis was a chef at an Italian restaurant. He had other relatives who owned dessert cafes around Philadelphia and they were all very well known. In 1993, grandma Carmella moved to Charleston to retire and two years later Brian moved to Charleston to go to college there.
Solari always felt that Charleston had a bit of European charm down to the cobblestone streets in the French Quarter and how people walked with ease about the neighborhood. One thing that Solari felt Charleston needed was an Italian-style dessert cafe - similar to the ones that were on Italian piazzas, and like the ones his relatives ran in and around Philadelphia.
Pictured right - Brian Solari. Photo courtesy Carmella's Cafe and Dessert Bar website.
Solari partnered with the Blandford family who owned a commercial construction company that did the build out on an old building in Charleston's French Quarter. In October of 2014, Carmella's Cafe & Dessert Bar opened. In December of 2023, a second location opened in Greenville, SC and plans are in the making for a third location in Columbia, SC sometime in 2025.
The line moved pretty quickly and we were inside within a couple minutes. Carmella's was packed that evening with people lined up at the marble-topped bar. The menu for the cafe was posted on flatscreen televisions behind the bar. Carmella's also has sandwiches, breakfast items, pizza-by-the-slice, and gourmet cookies including a lemon ricotta cookie that definitely caught my eye.
Carmella's isn't a large place with a few tables along the original inner brick wall of the building. With the door open on a warm and humid evening, the air conditioning was doing the best it could to keep up with the crush of people in the place. Fans mounted high on the wall helped keep the air moving to try and keep everyone comfortable.
While waiting in line we encountered the cake and pastry counter. They had tiramisu in a dessert cup, cannoli, key lime pie, and a lemon/blueberry cheesecake that made my legs buckle when I saw that. There was a honey orange cake that was a vanilla cake filled with a light orange curd and topped with a Swiss honey buttercream. Yum!!! Some of the pastries available at Carmella's come from recipes by way of Brian Solari's chef uncle Dennis who was mentored in pastry baking by world-renowned pastry chef Biagio Settepani of Bruno's Italian Bakery in New York City.
Carmella's is known for their "boozy" milk shakes and they have a full bar if you're looking for a cocktail or craft beer. Wine was also available along with specialty cocktails including hot and frozen drinks, and milk shakes such as a lemon vodka, lemonade, limoncello and vanilla gelato shake; and one with espresso liqueur, creme de cacao, and mascarpone gelato - basically a tiramisu drunken shake. Now, both of those also made my knees buckle when I was looking at them on the menu!
Of course, Carmella's has coffee, cappuccino, espresso and lattes, as well as gelato and sorbetto. My wife saw something at she had to try - The Resurrection. It featured espresso vodka (didn't know there was such a thing as espresso vodka or espresso liqueur until I went to Carmella's), espresso and espresso gelato. I told my wife that she was going to be drunk and awake all night!
I had to go with an affogato made with espresso and vanilla gelato. And for good measure, I had them put a shot of amaretto in with it. A spot had opened at the bar by the time our dessert drinks were served to us.
Oh my GOD!!! I love affogato, but I love it more with some sort of liqueur poured in with the gelato and espresso. It was so good to enjoy some gelato and get a buzz from the espresso and the amaretto.
From the first sip my wife took, she went, "My god", as well. "This is lethal," she laughingly exclaimed. I had a drink of it and - boy - did it taste good. We were just blown away at how good these dessert drinks were. But I was also blown away at the price. It was $24.50 before tax and tip. I suppose that's what happens when you add alcohol to already decadent dessert drinks.
We never made it back to Carmella's Cafe and Dessert Bar during our time in Charleston. And it's probably a good thing. The dessert pastries, cakes and cookies were enticing enough, but the boozy shakes and the chance to add liqueur to affogato was just plain sinful. It was so wickedly good and that it is probably outlawed in some areas of the U.S. What a great find Carmella's was! It makes me want to go back to Charleston tomorrow.
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