Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

When it comes to food, Myrtle Beach's tastes are fairly basic. You will find a variety of restaurants, but seafood and steak prevail.

Three things you'll come across repeatedly in South Carolina restaurants are grits, hush puppies and iced tea. Grits are made from corn ground to a thick, creamy consistency and are served with butter. You won't see grits very often at any meal other than breakfast. Hush puppies are small, deep-fried balls of cornmeal, reminiscent of plain donuts. They are served in a lot of the family-style, less expensive seafood restaurants as soon as you sit down at the table. Most restaurants serve 'bottomless glasses' of iced tea all year-round, but you need to specify sweet or unsweetened.

Seafood

Fresh shrimp, oysters, flounder and catfish caught from local waters are always available. One style of seafood you'll often see advertised is Calabash Seafood. Named for the small fishing village on the North-South Carolina border, the four fish are usually fried and inexpensive. Capt. Bennett's Calabash Seafood in Myrtle Beach on Restaurant Row and in three other locations is popular with families. Children ages 3-5 eat for USD2.95, and children under age three eat free. Its seafood buffet offers a huge variety of fish as well as beef and poultry. Kids under age 5 eat free. The Sea Captain's House Restaurant is another award-winning restaurant worth visiting. Open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner, it offers a wonderful variety of unique fish dishes as well as poultry, steak and pork. Enjoy a wonderful meal and a beautiful ocean vista at the same time. Steak

South Carolinians love their steak. Almost every restaurant serves steak even though it is advertised as seafood or other type of restaurant.

When you order one of the delicious, large steaks at the very popular Carolina Roadhouse Restaurant & Bar on King's Highway in Myrtle Beach, be sure to order a salad as well. The honey mustard-hot bacon house dressing is outstanding as are the croissants, which come with it.

The Yamato Steak House of Japan cooks your food right in front of you at your Hibachi table. It offers steak, seafood and chicken and Sushi bars.

Italian

There are quite a few Italian restaurants scattered up and down the Grand Strand. Chianti South Italian Restaurant in North Myrtle Beach has some of the best homemade pasta and an extensive award-winning wine list. Near Restaurant Row in the Galleria is Rossi's, a large Italian restaurant. Even though prices are in the average range, the food is excellent and the service superb. After dinner, you can listen to piano music in the Eighty-Eights piano bar until 2a.

Themed Restaurants

For a truly unique experience, be sure to try Medieval Times or Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede dinner and show combinations. Be transported back to the 11th century at Medieval Times. This spectacular show features Andalusian Stallions, incredible horsemanship and jousting tournaments. Oh yes, and dinner is included. Dixie Stampede includes a four-course meal and an impressive show with 32 horses, trick riding, comedy, and buckboard and ostrich racing. The finale is a stirring patriotic number.

If race cars are more your speed, then the NASCAR Café is probably right up your alley. Absolutely everything is race car themed. For example, booths are called 'pits;' appetizers are called 'Qualifying Lap;' and drinks are called 'Liquid Fuel.' You get the idea. There is a race car museum on the grounds, race car go-carts, and a gift shop where you can purchase NASCAR-certified race wear. Family and Children

The Spring House Family Restaurant in North Myrtle Beach, Myrtle Beach and Murrells Inlet serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is inexpensive and has a large children's menu.

Upscale

Myrtle Beach is a very informal place. You very rarely need to dress up in more than shorts or slacks and a t-shirt or golf shirt. That doesn't mean, though, that there are not some nice upscale restaurants where you can experience very fine dining. Examples are The Brentwood Restaurant and The Parson's Table in North Myrtle Beach, Greg Norman's Australian Grille at Barefoot Landing, and Cagney's and Thoroughbred's in Restaurant Row. Each is expensive, but the unique menus and elegant décors are worthy of a special occasion.

Other For the sports enthusiast, try the Overtime Sports Café in North Myrtle Beach. They have a general menu and TV screens everywhere so that you can watch more than one sport at a time. It tends to be loud as whooping and hollering fans route for their favorite teams.

The Horst Gasthaus is one of two German restaurants in Myrtle Beach. Enjoy authentic German food and join the sing-along—when your mouth isn't full, that is.

Myrtle Beach's history is a story of persisting, starting over and reinventing. Due to the ecological make-up and relative remoteness from early settlements in Charlestown and inland, it took a while for its founders to realize that the ocean, frequent blue skies, beautiful flowers and shrubs and unusual birds would attract vacationers.

Chicora

Myrtle Beach's first inhabitants were the American Indian Waccamaw and Winyah tribes. 'Waccamaw' and 'Chicora' (meaning 'the Land') are names still in use today as the area settlers respectfully tried to preserve the rich Indian heritage. An Indian burial site on Waites Island near Little River, and the remains of an Indian village on Wachesaw Plantation near Murrells Inlet have been preserved.

The Spanish explorer Lucas Vasques de Allyon was the first non-Indian to try to settle in the area in 1526. Within a year, though, the entire settlement died from disease. The English Arrive

In the late 1600s, the English were more successful. They began trading with the Indians north of Charles Town (later, Charleston). Eventually, the English established settlements in what are now Horry (location of Myrtle Beach) and Georgetown counties. The main street of Myrtle Beach, King's Highway, became the primary overland route between seaports in northern states and Charleston and Savannah, Ga.

Prince George Parish (now Georgetown) was established in 1730. In the late 1700s, an agricultural economy emerged as rice plantations flourished because of the many marshes and rivers in the area. Indigo and tobacco crops were prosperous as well. Many Americans are surprised to learn about how profitable and important rice was to the Southern economy. You can learn more about it by visiting the Rice Museum in Georgetown from March through November. Legends and Lumber

Further north, the famous pirate Edward 'Blackbeard' Teach was busy bullying the waters off the coast of the Grand Strand until his death in 1718. Legend has it that another infamous pirate, Captain Kidd, buried some treasure near Murrells Inlet. Another legend is that of Murrells Inlet's most famous inhabitant, Alice Belin Flagg (1833-1849). It is said that she will appear if you walk around her Pawley's Island grave backwards 13 times.

In the 1820s, Henry Buck moved from Maine and established the first sawmill and the beginnings of the next phase of the area's history. He soon became Horry County's richest citizen by establishing the area as a primary producer of pine timber, tar and turpentine products.

After the Civil War, Franklin G. Burroughs, a young man native to the area, teamed up with Benjamin Collins to form the Burroughs & Collins Company. The two young entrepreneurs expanded their operations from turpentine and mercantile stores to timber, farm credit, riverboats and farming. Burroughs had enough foresight to see Myrtle Beach as a seaside resort, and he and Collins built the first railroad between the beaches and the western part of Horry County.

By 1907, 'New Town,' as Myrtle Beach was known, finally became a popular vacation destination. A contest was held to give the area an official name. Addie Burroughs, the widow of Franklin G. Burroughs, proposed the name 'Myrtle Beach' for the large Wax Myrtle Shrubs with red, purple or white flowers that resemble crinkled crepe paper. Myrtle Beach Finds its Niche

Catering to the wealthy, a group of businessmen built the Arcady resort in 1920. The resort included the area's first golf course, Pine Lakes International Country Club, and the lavish Ocean Forest Hotel. Once again, though, Myrtle Beach's economy was thwarted, this time by the Great Depression. Arcady was dissolved, and the Ocean Forest Hotel was razed.

Finally, after the Great Depression and World Wars I and II, Myrtle Beach's economy started to revolve exclusively around tourism, instead of agriculture. For about ten years, the beach tourism industry flourished. Hotels and cottages were built by the dozens. Vacationers flocked to the area in horse carriages and by train. Claude Dunnagan, a local reporter, dubbed Myrtle Beach as “the Grand Strand” in 1949, and the name stuck.

One More Time

It is no secret that South Carolina's entire coastline is susceptible to hurricanes. In 1954, Hurricane Hazel blew into the area with winds in excess of 150 miles per hour and wiped out cottages, shops, restaurants and hotels. Myrtle Beach's economy was devastated once more.

The resilience and hard work of the South Carolinians persisted, and Myrtle Beach was rebuilt once again. Taking a lesson from Arcady, the developers built golf courses on the former rice and tobacco plantations, as well as amusement parks, cottages, motels and hotels. The area's economy quickly boomed. The permanent population tripled in the 1970s, and even Hurricane Hugo in 1969 couldn't drown the growth and popularity of the Grand Strand.

Myrtle Beach continued to grow through the 1990s. Now, Myrtle Beach has more than 100 golf courses, 1800 restaurants, nearly a dozen live entertainment venues, and countless other attractions. It is South Carolina's number one tourism destination and has been reported by the Travel Industry of America (TIA) as second only to Orlando as the most popular summer destination in the US.