We all work hard to have a good time, strolling the beach in that soft sand, fighting the waves, spiking volleyballs, spotting and picking up all those pesky shells, stretching out on beach towels and working on a tan. Whatever you do here on the Grand Strand, you’re going to work up an appetite whether you like it or not.
Nearly 1,600 restaurants accommodate our various palates. If you want to try every one of them on your next visit, plan on staying and eating three square meals a day for one year, five months. With this many restaurants from which to choose, this chapter can’t begin to do justice to all the area’s offerings. So we’ve opted to highlight a handful of favorites—mostly individually owned restaurants unique to the Strand. Of course, there are lots of good places we don’t have room to cover, so our best advice for you is to explore!
One caveat: You might have to look a little harder to find a selection of exotic ethnic cuisine. Grand Strand restaurants have easy access to fresh seafood and therefore rightly emphasize the fresh catch and local nettings; you’ll definitely find more family-style seafood buffets here than any single genre, followed closely by pancake houses. But as Myrtle Beach grows, so do our tastes, and restaurant owners are branching out into Thai, Fusion, Australian, and Mediterranean, establishing some of the finest restaurants in America right in our biscuit-and-country-ham kind of town. Sushi? We are on the ocean after all.
And the number of restaurants is growing almost weekly. The village of Murrells Inlet, on the South Strand, is billed as the “seafood capital of South Carolina” with its several dozen restaurants; the town of Calabash, North Carolina (on the North Strand), is credited with inventing Southern-fried seafood; and the stretch of US 17 between Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach has been dubbed Restaurant Row because of its historical concentration of eateries. The opening of Broadway at the Beach and downtown Myrtle Beach establishments and their efforts to be competitive have brought even more restaurants into the mix.
Overview
What to wear? What to wear! Yes, you can dine in long dresses and dark suits in some of the Strand’s establishments, but you can also wear shorts and even bathing suits in others. From candlelight elegance to beer bashes in flip-flops, it’s all here.
Don’t think even for a minute that the phenomenal number of restaurants or the incredible choices of cuisine are Johnny-come-lately ventures for tourism’s sake. The dining heritage of the Grand Strand goes back 200 years and is deeply entwined with the ghost stories, pirate adventures, and folklore of this historic strip.
Hush puppies, the deep-fried and seasoned dollops of cornmeal served with most Southern seafood dishes, are delivered as baskets of delicious little Ping-Pong-ball-size treats. The tasty morsels were invented more than 150 years ago, when it was fashionable for families to let dogs sleep under the table while they were eating. It was at one particular Murrells Inlet plantation that the cook decided to do something about the dogs that weren’t sleeping as much as they were begging for treats from the table—especially when the meal was full of the aroma of fresh-cooked fish. This cook decided to take some leftover breading, add a little sugar, and make some quick-fried dough balls to set in baskets on the table. The idea was that when the dogs began begging, diners would toss a couple of dough balls under the table to “hush” the puppies. Of course, it wasn’t long before the humans at the table took a taste, and soon the dog pacifiers were “hushing” people, too.
Over the years many seafood restaurants nationwide have offered hush puppies, but it is only in Murrells Inlet that the original sweet-flavored treats retain that unique plantation recipe. The cook at one Inlet restaurant today claims that his hush puppy recipe was handed down through eight generations. Even restaurants along the North Strand are often baffled by the South Strand flavor that seemingly no one has been able to duplicate; most Calabash-style restaurants serve hush puppies with onions in place of the sugar-sweet flavor.
Calabash is a word you’ll see a lot when you go cruising for restaurants along the Strand. Calabash is a little fishing village in North Carolina, just across the state line, where Myrtle Beach vacationers have driven the 25 or so miles north on US 17 to enjoy the delicious fresh seafood meals since the 1930s. But in the past decade or so more than half the seafood buffet restaurants in Myrtle Beach have incorporated the word Calabash into the menus or signs describing their seafood. It has come to refer to the style of cooking that made tourists flock to the town: oily seafood dipped in a light cornmeal batter, deep fried and smothered with seasoned butter, then delivered to your table golden brown and piping hot.
Also in the Grand Strand’s gastronomic mix are plenty of regionally and nationally known restaurants whose quality you can always count on: Cracker Barrel, Shoney’s, Quincy’s, Red Lobster, the Olive Garden, Pizza Hut, Fuddrucker’s, T.G.I. Friday’s . . . the list is nearly endless. And we haven’t even considered the fast-food regulars, all of which are present here.
Please note that many Grand Strand restaurants don’t accept reservations, and long lines are common at the more laid-back walk-in places. The best bet here is to call before going or just drop in and see. As Insiders, one thing we have learned is that half the fun of eating at the beach is the adventure of finding a new favorite.