Cribb's Sandwich and Sweet Shop

Cribb's is the kind of place that makes you wonder how you missed it for this long. It sits on South Church Street in downtown Lexington, a country-themed deli with a rooster sculpture out front, and it has been there since August 25, 1997. That is nearly thirty years of chicken salad, homemade soups, and coconut custard pie, and the lunch line still moves the way it always has.

The story behind it is the reason I like telling it. Joe Cribb spent years working in printing, and one day he told his wife Lisa, let's open a sandwich shop. They took out a second mortgage on their home to get it started and lived paycheck to paycheck while they did. They did no advertising at all. The place turned a profit in its first week, and Joe says they have thrived or survived ever since. That is the whole story of small business in one sentence.

The food is made to order and made in-house. The chicken salad, egg salad, tuna salad, and a pimento cheese with a secret recipe that nobody is getting out of them. Hot sandwiches like the French Dip and the BLT. Soups like Squaw Soup and corn chowder. And the sweets, cookies, brownies, red velvet cake, lemon cake, and a coconut custard pie that people plan their trips around.

In February 2026, Chowhound named Cribb's South Carolina's top hole in the wall sandwich shop. I have to admit, I smiled when I saw that, because it is exactly right. It is not fancy, and nobody pretends otherwise. It is a family-owned shop that has been doing the same thing well for almost thirty years, and downtown Lexington would not feel the same without it.