Sandwiches in Greenville

Two floors and two full bars, on Coffee Street just off Main, tell you what SOCIETY is really after. It calls itself a sandwich bar and a social club, and both halves hold up: the kitchen and the bars run until 2 a.m. every day, so a weekday lunch here has a way of turning into happy hour and then into something later in the night. The menu pairs gourmet sandwiches with ramen and a real cocktail program, a mix you do not run into often around the Upstate. The sandwiches cover plenty of ground, from the Hot Chick to Philly cheesesteak and Italian beef, and the ramen bowls hold their own beside them. Starters get as much attention as the mains, the Philly cheesesteak eggrolls in particular. What people mention most is the whole feel of the place: generous plates, bartenders and servers who actually talk to you, and a room that stays social well into the night. First time in, the Hot Chick Ramen is the bowl regulars tend to steer newcomers toward.

The counter sits a step off Main Street downtown, with a few sidewalk tables out front and, at peak, a line worth an app order to skip. You order at the counter, and on Friday and Saturday nights the kitchen keeps going long after the bars have emptied. What draws people is the steaming: since 2013 the shop has built its bagel sandwiches to order and run them through a steamer until the bread goes soft and the fillings warm and melted through. It stays firm on the distinction, not a bagel shop but a sandwich shop that happens to put everything on a bagel. The board is a wall of named steamers, most of them playful nods to pop culture, among them the Griswold, Mr. Burns, the Club Steamer, the Nacho Maximus, and the breakfast-leaning Sister's Sunrise. Classics like Phillies, Reubens, and Italians sit alongside lighter builds, vegan hummus and vegetables, and a build-your-own for starting from scratch. Gluten-friendly bagels are available for anyone who needs them. The steamed idea tends to convert the doubtful. Reviewers who walked in unsure what a steamed bagel sandwich even was describe leaving won over, and the same points come up again and again about quick service and easy ordering through the app when the morning is short on time.

Ask around Greenville about the Stecca bread and you'll get directions here before you finish the sentence. Those long, craggy loaves come out of the in-house bakery, and for a lot of people they're the first reason to pull off the trail. What keeps them coming is the idea behind the place: nearly everything on the shelves traces to a named local farmer or maker, more than 300 of them across the region. It runs as a full grocery, not a gift shop with a coffee machine. Local and organic produce, pastured meats and eggs, milk, flowers, beer and wine, and prepared food fill the shelves, while the café out back pours Counter Culture coffee and espresso, sweetened if you like with syrups made from farm produce. A wood-fired kitchen turns local flour and vegetables into pizzas paired with craft beer, and much of the menu can be made gluten-free. Mary Walsh and Jac Oliver started it in 2011 to make responsibly grown food easier to reach, and it has grown into a hub of the state's local-food scene. Inside, it runs cheerful and busy: riders off the trail, kids in the fenced play yard, lunch tables filling, bread leaving the oven. Sitting right on the Swamp Rabbit Trail about halfway between downtown and Travelers Rest, it works as a ride-day coffee stop, an unhurried weekend lunch, and the week's grocery run all at once.

For a lot of people around Greenville, the sweet tooth got its start behind these glass cases. Richard Strossner, a German immigrant who trained as a Konditor and baked at the old Poinsett Hotel, opened the family bakery in 1947, and three generations later his grandson Tapley runs it. It's the oldest family-owned bakery in town, and the cases up front, rows of cakes, pies, cookies, petit fours, and pastries, are still what hits you first when the door swings open. Over the decades it grew well past the bakery counter into a full cafe and deli, so the same stop that sells you a birthday cake will also put a sandwich, a quiche, or a plate lunch in front of you. The petit fours and the European-style pastries are the pieces that carry the old Konditor training forward, and after nearly eighty years they are still made by hand the same way.

Part cafe, part curated market, The Pantry is the kind of downtown spot where you can grab a matcha latte and a breakfast taco, then walk out with a bottle of wine and a gift you meant to buy for yourself. Emily Fournier runs it as a gourmet bodega tucked below Menkoi on North Main, and the "little bit of everything" is the whole point: hot food, coffee and espresso, grocery finds, charcuterie, small-vineyard wines, cold local beer, and shelves of sundries and local goods. The kitchen leans farm-to-table and seasonal, cooks seed-oil free, and works around food allergies rather than treating them as an afterthought. Mornings bring bagels with house spreads, loaded omelets like the short rib with manchego, and gluten-free pastries baked in house. Lunch moves to bright salads and artisan sandwiches. There's a small eating nook under the stairs if you'd rather stay a while, plus the occasional wine night or truffle tasting. Locals have taken to it fast, trading it around as one of Main Street's hidden gems. What the shelves and the menu don't spell out is the backstory. Emily left a career as a litigator to chase a restaurant dream at fifty, and The Pantry is only the first of two concepts she's bringing to this stretch of Main.