Eli's Table will unveil a new mural by Charleston painter Stephen Cefalo on Thursday, September 17, at a private reception in its dining room at 129 Meeting Street. The work covers the interior wall of the main dining room and stays with the room permanently. It is the second piece Charleston Hospitality Group has placed at the restaurant with Decco Art Network.

Cefalo's subject is American gardens. “I really wanted to convey the joy of people getting together in such a beautiful public space. The mural moves left-to-right through all four seasons, as well as through the various times of day,” he said. The mural arrives less than a year after the restaurant reopened. The November 2025 renovation reshaped the room around the way people spend an evening in it: the courtyard was opened up and planted, the bar grew from five seats to sixteen, the wood rafters of the historic French Quarter building were exposed, and the kitchen was opened to the dining room. Eli's Table is a dinner house and only a dinner house, serving Wednesday through Sunday, 5 to 10 p.m., a short walk from every hotel on the lower peninsula. The room draws the evening that takes its time: anniversaries, birthdays, proposals, a table that came for one course and stayed for three.

Cefalo studied illustration and painting at the School of Visual Arts in New York under Steven Assael, Max Ginsburg and Nelson Shanks, and has taught painting and figure drawing for more than two decades. He took First Place at this year's Lowcountry Tri-State Juried Exhibition, and in 2024 took Best in Show at the Piccolo Spoleto Juried Exhibition and First Place in the ArtFields portrait competition in Lake City. In July he opened Cefalo Gallery & Atelier in Avondale, West Ashley, where he shows work for sale and trains students in traditional drawing and painting.

The mural is not the only work by a local artist in the building. Paintings by Jeleata Nicole hang in the restaurant's Red Room. Philadelphia-born and Charleston-based, Nicole is a mixed media artist working chiefly in oil portraiture, with more than twenty years behind her. Her work is held in private collections, in Philadelphia City Hall and at Trinity Church in Boston, and she has painted three murals in her home state of Pennsylvania.

Showing working artists in a room people sit in for two hours is deliberate. Charleston Hospitality Group builds rooms that hold more than dinner: dueling pianos Wednesday through Saturday at John King Grill, pizza-making and bartending classes at Toasted Crust, line dance lessons at HonkyTonk Saloon in Ladson. Eli's Table is where that instinct meets the visual arts. Two placements into the Decco partnership, the restaurant has become a standing invitation to Charleston's artists, galleries and collectors, and the September 17 reception is built as a night for that community as much as for the restaurant's own guests.

About Eli's Table
A dinner restaurant at 129 Meeting Street in Charleston's French Quarter, serving Wednesday through Sunday, 5 to 10 p.m. Named after the owner of Charleston Hospitality Group's son Eli, the restaurant is sentimental for many reasons. Eli's Table features a menu offering bold, worldly flavors while using fresh and local ingredients. @elistable

About Charleston Hospitality Group
Owner and operator of Toast! All Day, Eli's Table, Toasted Crust, John King Grill & Dueling Piano Bar, Cachita's Kitchen and HonkyTonk Saloon across the Charleston area and Savannah. Its rooms carry live music, classes and original artwork alongside the food, on the view that a restaurant is one of the few places a city's creative community can reliably gather. teamchg.com · This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

About Decco Art Network
A Charleston-based distributed gallery network that places curated original artwork in homes, hospitality venues and design-forward spaces.

About Stephen Cefalo
A Charleston-based oil painter, illustrator and portraitist trained at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and the founder of Cefalo Gallery & Atelier in Avondale, West Ashley, opened in July 2026.

About Jeleata Nicole
A Philadelphia-born, Charleston-based mixed media artist specializing in oil painting and portraiture, with work in private collections, Philadelphia City Hall and Trinity Church in Boston. Her paintings hang in the Red Room at Eli's TableEli's Table.