Michael Toscano runs four Charleston concepts. Le Farfalle. Da Toscano Porchetta Shop. Fugazzi inside Revelry. The taco spot Blanca Estrada.
Coffee was never on the list.
Then his buddy Chris Harriman — Australian, and an assistant basketball coach at Clemson — floated the idea of a café. Toscano, who wasn't a coffee drinker at the time, went in headfirst.
The result lands later this year: The Larrikin, an all-day room that pours espresso in the morning, feeds you at noon, and turns into a bar at night.
"It's an everyday place that you can count on morning, noon and night," he told the Post & Courier.
Not a Corner-of-the-Room Café
Here's the part that matters. Toscano isn't dropping an espresso machine in a corner and calling it a coffee program.
He's treating beans like a tasting menu.
The Larrikin sources from Second State here in Charleston, Methodical out of Greenville, and Black & White up in Wake Forest. Drip. Two cold brews. Two espressos pulled across 4-, 6- and 10-ounce drinks — cortados, caps, lattes — plus around a dozen pour-overs.
You can grill the barista about origin and process. Or you can grab an iced oat latte and keep walking. Both are the point.
(We're) kind of taking the chef mentality and applying it to this coffee program.
Then It Flips
The room seats about 60 — banquettes, plus a long communal table running straight down the middle.
Lunch leans healthy but not sad: rotisserie chicken, grain bowls buried in vegetables.
By night it changes character. Revelry beers in frosty glasses. Margaritas. Rum and cokes built with fresh juice and real spirits instead of a soda gun.
Same room. Three different days inside it.
About That Name
Worth a note, since the whole thing started with an Australian: a larrikin is Aussie slang for a likable troublemaker — the one who's good at everything but refuses to take it too seriously.
For a coffee bar that moonlights as a cocktail room, dreamed up by two friends, it fits.
The Bottom Line
Toscano keeps stacking concepts, and he keeps making them feel built rather than franchised.
You don't have to wait for the buildout, either. The Larrikin is already popping up some mornings at Blanca Estrada (15 Beaufain St.). Follow @thelarrikinchs for the schedule.
A guy who didn't drink coffee a year ago is about to run one of the more obsessive coffee programs in town.
That tracks for Charleston.
The Larrikin will be located at 157 Market Street.
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