Web: www.toastofcharleston.com

Address: 155 Meeting St.

Phone: 534-0043

Hours: 6:30-10 p.m. Sun.-Thu., 6:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Fri.-Sat.

Just from its title, the restaurant Toast! suggests a generous spirit, almost certainly emanating from owner Sam Mustafa. Cut from an industrious cloth, Mustafa owned his first restaurant by the time he was 19.

Now, a wee bit older and wiser, Mustafa has corralled the devotion of locals and tourists alike, fashioning Toast! into a lively nook close to the City Market. It's true particularly on weekends when the restaurant teems with folks angling for omelets, breakfast sandwiches or dinner plates.

The restaurant (formerly Diana's) is in fact the bedrock of Mustafa's restaurant hospitality group, which also is working feverishly to transform Market Street Saloon into a brand-name barbecue joint. Check back, this bears watching.

As for Toast!, breakfast likely begs the Deluxe French Toast ($7.50 single, $9.50 double), so good The New York Times came a-callin' a couple of years ago, lavishing praise on the hand-cut currant bread, which is chock-a-block with either cinnamon apples or peaches, and topped with sugary-sweet apple or peach cider syrup.

But don't discount the Eggs Meeting Street ($8.50 single, $11.99), a triple layer of flavor, consisting of one part fried green tomato, topped with a crab cake and ringed with poached egg. A crumbly-soft, homemade, buttermilk biscuit fills out the picture.

Just the crab cake can be ordered otherwise, either as an appetizer ($9) or sandwich, a la Crab Cake Sammie ($9), which arrives as a plump, rich disc of blue crab meat, blended with peppers and onions. Encrusted with crunchy Panko breadcrumbs, the sandwich is also slathered with a sweet, red pepper remoulade.

It's dang tasty, and, like Toast, a pleasant, surprising treat. Cheers indeed.