The Two North Myrtle Beach Restaurants Guy Fieri Filmed, and When to Actually Eat There

Highway 17 through North Myrtle Beach is not a road anyone photographs. It is four lanes of strip plazas, tire shops, mini-golf and the occasional palm, and most visitors drive it with their eyes on the next turn toward the water. Which makes it a strange and pleasing thing that two of the best meals on the north end sit a single block apart on that highway, in buildings you would pass a hundred times without looking twice.

Both of them are about to be on national television. Krave Bagel at 1434 Highway 17 South and Brisket at 1501 Highway 17 South were filmed for Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, and the episode premieres Friday, November 13, at 9 p.m. on Food Network. Guy Fieri shot the segments in September while he was on the Grand Strand opening his second Downtown Flavortown.

What follows is the local version of the story: what these two kitchens actually do, why both of them earned the attention, how to eat there once the rest of the country finds out, and what else is worth your appetite on this end of the beach.

The Block That Made Television

Two independent restaurants, one block apart, filmed for the same episode. That does not happen by accident, and it is not a coincidence of geography either. The stretch of Highway 17 south of the main beach accesses has quietly become the working spine of the north end’s food scene, the place where the kitchens that cook for locals rather than for oceanfront foot traffic have ended up.

They are different operations in almost every respect. One opens early and sells breakfast. One runs a smoker overnight and keeps a bar. What they share is that both are owner-operated, both make the central thing on the menu from scratch rather than buying it in, and both are the sort of place a visiting family finds by accident in year one and returns to deliberately every year after.

Brisket: Texas Cooking on a Carolina Highway

Brisket exists because Jeff and Laney Vallancey could not find what they had left behind. Jeff grew up in Greenville, Texas, and after the family settled in South Carolina the barbecue around them was Carolina barbecue, which is a fine thing and an entirely different thing. So they bought a custom rotisserie smoker built in Texas and started cooking the way Texas cooks. Their son Shane runs operations.

The method is the whole argument. The meat is dry-rubbed and smoked without sauce, and the four house sauces live on the table rather than in the pit, which is the line that separates Texas barbecue from most of what is sold on this coast. Brisket and pork butts run twelve to fourteen hours. Chicken, turkey and ribs go three to four hours, around 200 degrees. That is an overnight commitment, every night, for a restaurant that seats a modest room.

The menu reaches past barbecue into Frito pie, sausage, salmon and steaks, and the room includes an 1800s-style western bar with a daily happy hour from four to seven. The episode description mentions burnt ends mac and a taco trifecta among the dishes featured. Brisket is closed Mondays and otherwise opens at 11:30 a.m. and runs to 10 p.m.

Krave Bagel: Why Scratch Matters

A bagel shop making a barbecue-and-taco show is an unlikely thing until you understand what is unusual about it. Krave Bagel, owned by Jeff Pietila and also known as Krave Bagel Bistro, makes its bagels from scratch. Most bagels sold along this coast arrive frozen and get baked off on site, which produces something bagel-shaped and perfectly edible and not the same food at all.

The segment features the everything bagel and the French toast bagel, and the honey cinnamon cream cheese and the chicken salad also got Fieri’s attention. The French toast bagel is the one that tells you what kind of kitchen this is: a sweet bagel is easy to do badly, and doing it well requires actually caring about the dough underneath.

Practically, this is a morning stop. Families staying in Crescent Beach and Windy Hill are closest, and a bag of bagels brought back to a rental kitchen feeds a houseful for a fraction of what a sit-down breakfast costs a group of ten.

When to Go Once the Episode Airs

Here is the part worth planning around. Restaurants featured on this show reliably see a surge, and the surge does not fade the way ordinary press does, because the reruns keep arriving for years. Small independent kitchens absorb that unevenly. Expect lines.

Barbecue adds one more consideration that has nothing to do with television. A smoker produces a finite amount of brisket in a day, and when it is gone it is gone. Going late on a busy evening is how you discover the thing you came for sold out at seven. If brisket specifically is the point of the trip, go earlier rather than later.

The Rest of the North End Table

Two restaurants do not make a food scene, and it would be a shame if a television episode convinced anyone that these are the only two worth the drive. Barefoot Landing, at the southern end of the city on Highway 17, carries the concentrated version: Greg Norman’s Australian Grille on the waterway, the Flying Fish Public Market, and LuLu’s on the water, all within a walk of each other and all open year-round.

Up at the north tip, the Grove House on Sea Mountain Highway opened in 2026 and has become a Cherry Grove fixture quickly, and Boulineau’s IGA a little further along is the institution that feeds half of Cherry Grove Beach out of its deli. In the Ocean Drive section, Main Street runs its own small ecosystem of kitchens and bars around the shag clubs, which stay open through the winter when much of the oceanfront does not.

For the wider picture across the Strand, our guide to things to do in Myrtle Beach maps the rest of the coast, and things to do in Myrtle Beach at night covers where the evening goes after dinner. If the weather turns, the indoor rainy day guide is the fallback, and families with younger children will get more out of our kid-friendly rundown.

Staying Within Reach of It

Highway 17 runs the length of North Myrtle Beach, which means both restaurants are a short drive from every beach section, but the math is not identical. Guests in Crescent Beach and Windy Hill are closest, a matter of a few minutes. From Ocean Drive and Cherry Grove at the north end, allow ten to fifteen.

What matters more for a food-led trip is the kitchen you come home to. An oceanfront home gives an extended family the counter space and the table to turn a tray of smoked brisket into a proper evening, and reheating barbecue well is easier in a real kitchen than in a condo galley. For a couple or a small group, an oceanfront condo is the simpler proposition, and a bag of bagels on a balcony in the morning is one of the better arguments for being here at all.

Winter is the moment to do this. The north end is at its quietest between late November and February, rental rates sit at their lowest, and you can eat at the two restaurants everyone is about to be talking about without standing in line behind the whole country.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources: Myrtle Beach Sun News reporting by Terri Richardson, November 9, 2026; Destination BBQ; restaurant listings for Krave Bagel and Brisket. Air dates, hours, menus and prices are set by Food Network and the individual businesses and change without notice — confirm before visiting. Published November 2026.