Taste Around NMB 2026: North Myrtle Beach’s Premier Restaurant Month Is Back

There’s a particular kind of pleasure that comes with eating your way through a town you love — not hurrying through a to-do list, but following your appetite from one table to the next, lingering a little longer somewhere you didn’t expect to linger, and winding up with stories you’ll be telling next year. That’s the quiet premise behind Taste Around NMB, and every May it gives both locals and visitors a reason to do exactly that.

Taste Around NMB is North Myrtle Beach’s premier restaurant month — a self-guided dining event organized by NMB Parks & Recreation that sends participants across the city, receipt in hand, collecting visits to as many of the partnering restaurants as they can between May 1 and May 27, 2026. For two dollars and a genuine appetite, you get a restaurant card, a shot at some seriously generous grand prizes, and a built-in reason to try places you’ve been meaning to visit since you rolled across the Intracoastal last spring.

Twenty-three restaurants are participating this year — from laid-back beach bars and old-school Southern joints to name-brand favorites and local institutions that have been feeding this stretch of the Grand Strand for decades. Whether you’re staying in Cherry Grove, spending the week down in Ocean Drive, or just passing through for the weekend, Taste Around NMB gives your May visit a little extra something to organize around.

Here’s everything you need to know — how it works, what restaurants are on the card, how the prizes are decided, and how to make the most of the whole thing if you’re planning a trip around it.

What Is Taste Around NMB?

Taste Around NMB is a community dining event run by North Myrtle Beach Parks & Recreation. Think of it as a self-guided restaurant passport — you buy a ticket, you get a restaurant card printed with all the participating spots, and then you have the better part of a month to visit as many of them as you can. No reservations required, no guided tour, no schedule to keep. You go at your own pace, in whatever order makes sense for your week.

The concept works well here because North Myrtle Beach’s restaurant scene is genuinely spread out. The city runs from Windy Hill in the south up through Crescent Beach and into the heart of the Ocean Drive district, and the restaurants on the Taste Around NMB card are scattered across that range — meaning a week of casual dining naturally pulls you through different neighborhoods, different atmospheres, and different menus you might not have otherwise crossed paths with.

For locals, it’s a tradition that doubles as a reason to venture outside the usual rotation. For visitors, it’s something genuinely rare: a structured, low-cost way to experience a destination’s dining scene as residents do — not through a curated foodie itinerary, but through twenty-something real restaurants that the community actually uses and supports.

How to Participate

Participation is open to the public, but you do need to be 21 years of age or older to register. The ticket costs just $2 per restaurant card — one card per person — and tickets will be available beginning May 1, 2026. You can purchase yours online through the NMB Parks & Recreation registration page, which opens May 1st.

Once you have your ticket, print your restaurant card and start dining. Between May 1 and May 27, visit as many of the partnering restaurants as you can. The key rule: save your receipt from each visit. When you turn in your card at the end of the event, you’ll need receipts from each restaurant you’ve marked off. Receipts must fall within the event dates — any visit before May 1 or after May 27 won’t count, and without a receipt, that box cannot be marked.

At the end of the event, bring your completed restaurant card, your purchased ticket, and all of your receipts to NMB Parks & Recreation at the J. Bryan Floyd Community Center, located at 1030 Possum Trot Road, North Myrtle Beach, SC 29582. Everything must be submitted no later than 4 pm on Friday, May 29, 2026. Note that while dining ends May 27, ticket purchases and drop-offs are accepted through May 29 — those two extra days are for getting your paperwork in order.

Don’t forget to share your dining adventures along the way. Capturing your meals and tagging #TasteAroundNMB on social media is encouraged — it’s a fun way to follow other participants’ progress and show some well-deserved love to the local restaurants putting this together.

Key Dates & Deadlines

Missing a deadline would be a shame after all that good eating. Here’s a clean summary of every date that matters:

Prize winners will be called by phone and asked to pick up their prize at the J. Bryan Floyd Community Center. Winners must bring a valid ID and must be 21 years of age or older as of May 29, 2026. If a prize goes unclaimed, a new winner is drawn on June 12.

Grand Prizes & How to Enter

There will be two grand prizes awarded at the conclusion of the event — a first and a second — both containing gift certificates from multiple partnering restaurants, along with additional prizes from event sponsors. The total value of each prize scales with the number of participating restaurants, which this year means the packages are quite substantial.

Your entries are earned through dining. For every restaurant you visit and mark off on your card, you earn one entry. For every five boxes marked, you receive an additional bonus entry. And if you manage to hit every single restaurant on the card, you earn ten bonus entries on top of everything else — a significant reward for the most committed participants.

Each restaurant card entered is only eligible to win one of the two prizes. Odds of winning depend on the total number of participants and the total entries submitted. But strategically speaking, the more restaurants you visit — and especially the more you cluster toward groups of five — the better your chances become.

All 23 Partnering Restaurants

The 2026 Taste Around NMB restaurant card features 23 participants spanning a wide range of styles, price points, and atmospheres. This is one of the more diverse lineups the event has seen — you’ve got casual deli lunches sitting alongside beachfront dining institutions, local late-night bars next to national favorites with devoted local followings. A few highlights worth knowing about:

Greg Norman Australian Grille is one of the most celebrated dining rooms on the entire Grand Strand, sitting above Barefoot Landing with views that make every meal feel a little more like an occasion. House of Blues, also at Barefoot Landing, brings a massive menu and a stage that has hosted serious musical talent for years. Snooky’s Oceanfront is a North Myrtle Beach institution with the kind of no-frills oceanfront setting that reminds you why you came to the beach in the first place. Mellow Mushroom draws devoted fans with its creative pizza menu, and Hickory Tavern offers a reliably excellent sports bar experience with a menu that punches above its category.

Rounding things out are local favorites like Dagwoods Deli (a sandwich staple), Hoskins (a long-running family dining institution), and OD Arcade & Lounge, which brings a livelier, later-evening energy to the mix. The full list of partnering restaurants for 2026:

That’s a genuinely eclectic range — a place for every appetite, every budget, and every mood. Whether you start your morning at Parlor Doughnuts, grab lunch at Spuds-N-Subs, and wind the day down at Honey Barrel, or work your way methodically from one end of the card to the other, the logistics are manageable and the eating is very much the point.

Plan Your Stay Around the Event

May is one of the quieter, more comfortable months along the Grand Strand — warm enough to spend real time on the beach, but before the full summer rush has arrived. The water temperature is rising, the crowds are manageable, and the light in the late afternoon along the shore has that particular quality that makes North Myrtle Beach feel like the best-kept secret on the East Coast.

If you’re planning to participate in Taste Around NMB, a week-long stay gives you enough time to work your way through a solid portion of the card without rushing. The event runs nearly four weeks, but a seven-night vacation from May 1 onward means you can hit twelve to fifteen restaurants at a comfortable pace — enough for multiple bonus entries and a real chance at the grand prize.

Staying in one of the oceanfront vacation homes or oceanfront condos offered through Thomas Beach Vacations puts you within easy reach of most of the restaurants on the list. The sections of North Myrtle Beach — Ocean Drive, Crescent Beach, Cherry Grove, and Windy Hill — are all close enough that navigating between restaurants is genuinely easy, even on the relaxed timeline of a beach vacation.

A practical tip: keep a dedicated folder on your phone for photos of your receipts as you go. Losing a receipt from early in the trip can cost you an entry you’ve already earned — snapping a quick photo the moment you leave each restaurant means you’ll have a backup no matter what. And when the final week arrives and you’re sorting through a stack of them, you’ll be glad you were organized from the start.

Frequently Asked Questions

South Coast Beer Project Is Opening in Carolina Forest — And It’s Unlike Anything the Myrtle Beach Area Has Seen

The Grand Strand has never been short on places to eat and drink, but every so often something new comes along that genuinely changes the conversation. South Coast Beer Project is shaping up to be exactly that. Tucked into the Carolina Forest corridor of Myrtle Beach, this family-friendly restaurant and craft brewery is putting the finishing touches on a space that’s part beer hall, part backyard, part neighborhood gathering spot — and it’s set to open before summer kicks into full gear.

Carolina Forest has been one of the fastest-growing communities along the South Carolina coast for good reason. It sits just inland from the beach, draws families who want proximity to the ocean without the noise of the strip, and it’s been hungry for exactly this kind of destination. A place where the beer is made on-site, the food is made in-house, the kids have room to run, and nobody feels rushed.

Whether you’re renting a vacation home along Cherry Grove Beach or settling in for a longer stay on Ocean Drive, South Coast Beer Project is the kind of inland detour worth building into the itinerary.

A New Kind of Gathering Place

The concept behind South Coast Beer Project is deceptively simple: build the kind of place where a family can show up on a Friday evening, the kids can disappear into the outdoor play area, and the adults can settle into a cold craft beer and a basket of wings without anyone watching the clock. In a market that can sometimes skew loud and tourist-heavy, that’s a real proposition.

The brewery spans a 9,000-square-foot indoor restaurant space alongside a 20,000-square-foot outdoor area — nearly three-quarters of an acre of lawn, seating, garden space, and entertainment. The indoor dining room is designed with an open-air feel, floor-to-ceiling windows looking directly into the brewing tanks, and a full-service bar running the length of the room. Step outside and the whole operation opens up into something closer to a well-designed backyard than a commercial venue.

The coastal theme runs throughout — palm trees rising from the restaurant floor, slat walls lined with tropical greenery, painted wooden surfboards, and beach scene artwork. It reads like the Grand Strand itself: easy, unhurried, and comfortable in its own skin.

The People Behind the Project

South Coast Beer Project is the work of Chris Evans and Susan Heryadi of Coastal Concepts Hospitality, a team with deep roots in the Myrtle Beach restaurant scene. Evans and Heryadi launched their first Grumpy Monk location back in 2015, eventually growing to three restaurants under that brand. They also operate Hop N Wich in Conway and The Sneaky Beagle in Carolina Forest — which happens to sit just next door to their newest venture.

They know the market here. They know who lives in Carolina Forest — middle-class families looking for a good meal and a place to unwind without driving across town — and they’ve built their businesses around that understanding. The approach is practical and genuine: quality food, fair prices, and a setting that makes people want to come back.

Guiding the brewing side of the operation is head brewer Brock Kurtzman, a name that carries considerable weight in the local craft beer world. Kurtzman built his reputation working at New South Brewing and Southern Hops Brewing Company, two of the more respected names in the regional craft scene. His involvement signals that the beer program here will be serious — not an afterthought to the kitchen, but a genuine focus in its own right.

The Restaurant: Coastal Vibes and Serious Food

The indoor dining room seats around 150 people. Large windows face the brewing tanks on one side, so guests can watch the operation in progress — there’s something genuinely satisfying about seeing where your pint came from while it’s still cold in your hand. The full-service bar runs along the room and carries a rotating lineup of a dozen or more house-brewed labels.

The menu centers on pizza and wings — and Evans, a Buffalo, New York native, takes the latter seriously. The kitchen also plans to offer around ten sandwich options, a selection of salads, and a full range of appetizers, all prepared in-house. It’s a menu built for groups and for lingering, which fits the overall design of the place exactly.

For guests who prefer the outdoor seating, walk-up service windows on the exterior of the building allow orders to be placed without stepping inside — a practical detail that keeps the outdoor flow easy and unhurried, especially on busy evenings when every table under the umbrellas is taken.

The Outdoor Experience: Built for the Whole Family

Twenty thousand square feet is a lot of space to work with, and Coastal Concepts Hospitality used every bit of it. The outdoor area is laid across artificial turf and organized into clusters of tables, patio chairs, and umbrellas — the kind of seating arrangement that invites groups to pull chairs together and stay a while. Several sections of the space are dedicated to inflatable playground equipment for younger kids, which means parents can actually relax instead of spending the evening on kid duty.

On one side of the building, an 18-foot outdoor screen anchors a space designed for movie nights and special events — a programming element that positions South Coast Beer Project as a community venue, not just a restaurant. The pond-side seating area offers something quieter: a corner of the property that seems designed for the conversation you actually want to have, away from the louder corners of the space.

One of the more memorable design touches is a fountain shaped like a giant beer mug that pours continuously into a pool — part sculpture, part visual joke, entirely on-brand for a brewery that knows it doesn’t need to take itself too seriously. The beer garden beyond the main dining room holds seating for at least 250 guests, making this one of the more generously scaled outdoor hospitality spaces in the entire Myrtle Beach area.

Families staying in one of our North Myrtle Beach oceanfront homes or oceanfront condos will find it an easy drive down the coast for an evening out — the kind of relaxed night that doesn’t feel like a production to organize.

The Walking Path: Two Restaurants, One Experience

Perhaps the most distinctive element of the whole South Coast Beer Project concept isn’t a dish or a brew — it’s a sidewalk. Between the new brewery and The Sneaky Beagle next door lies a retention pond, and the team realized they could use that natural boundary as a feature rather than a divider. The result is a 1,000-foot paved, lighted walking path that connects the two restaurants around the perimeter of the pond.

The practical upside is obvious: if South Coast Beer Project is at capacity on a Friday night, guests can walk next door, put their name in at The Sneaky Beagle, grab a drink, and wander back when the wait is over. But the larger intention goes beyond logistics. The path creates a mini-district — a pedestrian-friendly circuit of two completely different restaurants that can be experienced as a single outing. It’s an idea that fits naturally into how people in the Grand Strand like to spend an evening: unhurried, outside when the weather allows, moving at their own pace.

Visitors exploring the broader Crescent Beach and Windy Hill sections of the coast will recognize the appeal immediately — this region of South Carolina has a long tradition of informal, community-centered evenings out, and the walking path leans directly into that tradition.

The Beer: Meet the Brews

South Coast Beer Project operates a 7-barrel brewing system — a setup large enough to maintain eight to twelve house labels on tap at any given time, with room for specialty and aged releases as the program matures. The range covers enough ground to satisfy a group with very different tastes, from approachable sessionable ales to more adventurous styles.

Among the opening lineup: a blond ale called Blonds Do It Better, a raspberry wheat named Summer in the South, an American brown called Board Meeting, and a mocha white stout going by Queen Anne’s Revenge. The names have personality — they’re the kind of labels that reward a second look and make ordering at the bar into a small act of self-expression. Expect the tap list to rotate and expand as Kurtzman settles into the system and starts experimenting with seasonal and limited-run batches.

For non-beer drinkers, a full bar ensures the rest of the group is equally well taken care of — no one at the table is an afterthought here.

Location and Hours

South Coast Beer Project is located at 5020 Carolina Forest Blvd. in Myrtle Beach, SC — just down the road from The Sneaky Beagle and accessible from most of the North Myrtle Beach area with a short drive down Highway 17. The expected opening is by the end of May 2026, putting it right at the start of peak summer season along the Grand Strand.

Once open, hours are planned as 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. That Friday-Saturday closing hour means there’s no need to rush — this is a place built for late afternoons that turn into evenings without anyone noticing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sea Captain’s House: A Myrtle Beach Restaurant Legend More Than 60 Years in the Making

Get within two blocks of Sea Captain’s House on a warm Myrtle Beach morning and something happens before you even see the building. The salt air carries something with it — something richer, warmer, unmistakably from a kitchen that has been at this a very long time. By the time you round the corner onto North Ocean Boulevard and spot the weathered roofline tucked behind a curtain of sea oats, you already know you’re somewhere that matters.

Sea Captain’s House has been feeding Myrtle Beach since 1962 — longer than most of the hotels that crowd the shoreline today, longer than the convention center, longer than nearly every other restaurant on this 60-mile stretch of coast. Only Peaches Corner and The Bowery predate it among Myrtle Beach dining institutions. That kind of staying power is not an accident. It is the result of a particular philosophy: keep the food honest, keep the hospitality warm, and give people a reason to come back year after year until the tradition becomes a part of who they are.

For visitors exploring the Grand Strand from a base in Cherry Grove Beach or Ocean Drive, Sea Captain’s House is the kind of destination that earns a dedicated reservation — not merely a place to grab a meal, but a piece of living coastal history worth the short drive south to Myrtle Beach’s oceanfront strip. The story of how this particular cottage survived demolition, outlasted storms, and quietly became a Southern landmark is as good as anything on the menu.

A Cottage That Almost Disappeared

The building that houses Sea Captain’s House was not built to be a restaurant. In 1930, Henry Taylor of High Point, North Carolina, constructed it as a private oceanfront vacation cottage. For more than a decade the Taylor family arrived each summer to listen to the tide come in, to sit on the porch, to let the ocean do its slow, necessary work on the mind. It was exactly the kind of place that made the Grand Strand worth the trip.

In the 1940s, Charles W. Angle purchased the cottage and continued to enjoy it for what it was — a quiet, salt-worn retreat at the edge of the Atlantic. Then, in 1954, Mrs. Nellie G. Howard acquired the property and transformed it into Howard’s Manor, a nine-room guesthouse that provided three home-cooked meals daily. Mrs. Howard understood something essential: what guests on the South Carolina coast wanted most was not a transaction but a welcome. Howard’s Manor was described as a place where friends meet each year with the beach at their front door, and that framing would eventually become the philosophical DNA of everything Sea Captain’s House stood for.

That same year, 1954, Hurricane Hazel made landfall near the North and South Carolina border as a Category 4 storm. Hazel’s fierce winds and storm surge uprooted the supports of Howard’s Manor’s screened front porch, and Mrs. Howard responded by replacing the porch with a Florida Room — a sheltered yet scenic spot to enjoy the ocean’s beauty. That room still sits in the building today, a quiet monument to resilience dressed up as a dining space with a view.

By the early 1960s, the vacation tastes of coastal tourists were shifting toward larger, more modern hotel accommodations. The old guesthouse model was fading. The cottage at 3002 North Ocean Boulevard was slated for demolition — a high-rise hotel would take its place. What seemed like the end of the story turned out to be only the turn of the page.

The Brittain Family and the Birth of an Icon

In 1962, the Brittain family stepped in and gave the old cottage new purpose, opening it as Sea Captain’s House. The demolition crew never came. Instead, the kitchen got to work. What the Brittains created was something the Grand Strand had not quite seen before: a full-service oceanfront restaurant that felt personal, that carried the texture of a real place rather than a brand — somewhere the food tasted like it was made with intention, and the view through the dining room windows was not a decoration but the whole point.

Today Sea Captain’s House remains part of Brittain Resorts and Hotels, a full-service hospitality company that has been enriching Myrtle Beach since 1943. That continuity of ownership is a significant part of what has kept the restaurant’s identity intact across more than six decades of change on the Strip. The building at 3002 North Ocean Boulevard has not been flipped, rebranded, or absorbed into a chain. It is still exactly what the Brittains intended it to be: the place for seafood where friends meet year after year.

A Place Generations Return To

It is one thing for a restaurant to attract customers. It is another thing entirely for it to attract the same customers across half a century. Sea Captain’s House has managed the latter with a consistency that says something real about what gets served here — not just the food, but the feeling.

On March 13 of this year, a man named Roger celebrated his 100th birthday at Sea Captain’s House. He had been coming to the restaurant for more than 50 years. His wife Sophia, age 97, made the trip with him from Wilmington, North Carolina, for the Saturday birthday luncheon. Sophia told the staff that Sea Captain’s House is Roger’s favorite restaurant, and when a person turns 100, their preferences get honored without argument. The couple has been crossing the state line to eat here since before most of the surrounding hotels were built. That is the kind of loyalty that gets created only in places where something genuine is happening.

This is not unusual at Sea Captain’s House. The dining rooms here are full of people who have a history with the place — grandparents who brought their children, who now bring their children’s children. Visitors staying in Crescent Beach or Windy Hill who make the drive to Sea Captain’s House often find that the experience becomes woven into their own Grand Strand ritual. You come once and you understand. Then you start making reservations a year in advance.

The People Who Make It Run

The long-standing relationships at Sea Captain’s House are not limited to the guests. In January of this year, the restaurant celebrated an extraordinary milestone: Beverly Marie Stowe marked 45 years of continuous service at Sea Captain’s House. She joined the staff in the late 1970s, when the restaurant was still a young institution finding its place on the Myrtle Beach dining map, and she has been part of the fabric of this place ever since. The restaurant’s leadership cited her dedication, integrity, and loyalty as forces that have helped shape the very foundation of the Sea Captain’s House legacy.

That kind of tenure tells you something you cannot learn from a menu. It tells you that the people who work here want to be here, that something about the culture of this place is worth staying for, and that the warmth guests feel when they walk through the door is not a scripted hospitality exercise but something that has been practiced and refined for decades by people who genuinely care about the table in front of them.

What to Expect on the Menu

Sea Captain’s House is open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the kitchen takes each service seriously. Breakfast runs from 7:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and features both a buffet option and a full made-to-order menu. The signature morning item is the Crab Cakes Benedict — two fresh lump crab cakes served on fried green tomatoes, topped with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce. There are also shrimp and crabmeat omelets, thick-cut French toast, and stone-ground cheddar grits that accompany most plates. The breakfast buffet includes a fresh fruit bar and omelet station.

Lunch leans into the coastal pantry with options that are neither fussy nor forgettable. The She Crab Soup is the soup of record here — rich, cream-based, and the sort of thing that makes first-time visitors understand why regulars come back. The lunch menu also features a Sea Captain’s Specialty plate combining flounder, shrimp, and a jumbo scallop, served broiled or fried. The bang-bang shrimp tacos, seared grouper Reuben on rye, and homemade shrimp salad wrap round out a roster of midday options that do not require a special occasion to justify.

Dinner is where Sea Captain’s House earns its standing most fully. The restaurant leans on low-country tradition and the freshness of coastal sourcing. The kitchen works with local farmers and local fishermen as a matter of principle, not marketing. Sesame-crusted bluefin tuna over sushi rice with a sweet soy drizzle and wasabi represents the more contemporary edge of the menu, while shrimp and grits — shrimp, onions, celery, and bacon sauteed in cream sauce, served with a fried cheese grits cake — anchors the deep-South soul of the place. The Lowcountry Jambalaya arrives loaded with jumbo shrimp, andouille sausage, and okra in a spicy tomato sauce over white rice, and the Charleston-style crab cakes hold their own against any version served anywhere on the Grand Strand. During the warmer months, live music plays seasonally on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings on the oceanfront lawn, weather permitting.

The panko fried green tomatoes with smoked gouda pimento cheese sauce have become a fixture on the appetizer menu and reflect the restaurant’s ability to give a Southern staple a sharper, more refined edge without losing its regional identity. And then there is the hummingbird cake — when it appears on the dessert menu, order it. It does not wait for you.

Awards and Recognition

The accolades that have followed Sea Captain’s House over the decades are not the kind collected from paid directories or promotional placements. They are the kind that come from sustained, verifiable guest satisfaction and from editors who have eaten here and come away convinced.

Sea Captain’s House has been named among the South’s most legendary restaurants as part of Southern Living magazine’s South’s Best 2026 awards. Southern Living’s 2026 South’s Best Awards represent the tenth annual installment of the program, with the magazine celebrating its 60th anniversary year and once again turning to trusted readers to identify the South’s finest dining and travel experiences. Being recognized as one of the South’s legendary restaurants in that context is not a minor distinction.

Sea Captain’s House consistently earns the Tripadvisor Travelers’ Choice Award, including for 2024 and 2025, placing it in the top 10% of restaurants worldwide based on consistent, positive guest feedback. The restaurant has also earned recognition for Best Seafood, Best Outdoor Dining, and placement on a Top 10 US Restaurants with Scenic Views list — a category where the oceanfront Florida Room and the open-air lawn dining area make the case without any persuasion necessary.

Planning Your Visit

Sea Captain’s House sits at 3002 North Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach, directly on the oceanfront. The restaurant is open Monday through Sunday for breakfast from 7:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., with lunch and dinner service running from 11:30 a.m. through the evening. Reservations are accepted and are strongly encouraged during the peak summer season and on weekends year-round. The restaurant takes reservations through the early afternoon but holds availability for walk-in diners as well — calling ahead before you arrive is always the smart move.

The dining room layout offers multiple seating experiences, from the original interior rooms with their warm wooden character to the Florida Room with wraparound ocean views and the outdoor lawn area that becomes a destination in its own right on clear evenings when the live music is going. If you have a preference, mention it when you call. The best seats at Sea Captain’s House fill up early.

For guests staying in oceanfront homes or oceanfront condos in North Myrtle Beach, the drive south to Sea Captain’s House is an easy twenty minutes along the Grand Strand — the kind of outing that turns into a recurring highlight of a beach vacation rather than a one-time detour. Come for the She Crab Soup. Come for the crab cakes. Come because you want to sit in front of the same ocean that Henry Taylor’s family once sat in front of and feel, for a meal at least, that the coast is still exactly what it has always been.

Frequently Asked Questions

SeaBasil Thai & Seafood: Carolina Forest’s Bold New Restaurant Is Worth the Drive

There is something that happens to a dining room when the person cooking your food also caught it. The fish on the plate was not processed through a warehouse or shipped from a continent away. It came off a hook somewhere past the horizon, out past the sandbars and the inlet, out where the water turns from green to deep blue and the Gulf Stream runs warm. That is the story behind SeaBasil Thai & Seafood, a new restaurant in the Carolina Forest area of Myrtle Beach that opened in mid-February and is now gearing up for a proper grand opening celebration on March 27.

The Grand Strand has no shortage of seafood restaurants, and it certainly has its share of Thai food. But a restaurant where the owner pulls tuna, mahi mahi, wahoo and cobia from the open Atlantic, then serves them at a table in a beautifully renovated dining room with Thai herbs, basil-forward sauces and handcrafted cocktails? That is something genuinely new. SeaBasil is the kind of place that comes along when someone with decades of culinary experience decides to stop doing things halfway and build exactly the restaurant they always wanted.

For visitors staying in North Myrtle Beach or anywhere along the Grand Strand, SeaBasil is a worthy dinner destination. For locals and food-focused travelers, it is already shaping up to be one of the more interesting openings this area has seen in a while. Here is what you need to know before you go.

A New Restaurant with Real Roots in the Grand Strand

SeaBasil Thai & Seafood sits at 4036 River Oaks Drive in the Village Forest plaza in Carolina Forest, sharing a shopping center with a Food Lion. It is not the flashiest address on paper, but the Carolina Forest corridor has grown into one of the most active dining and retail zones in the Myrtle Beach metro, and the Village Forest plaza draws consistent foot traffic from residents throughout the surrounding neighborhoods.

The restaurant soft-opened in mid-February, giving the kitchen time to settle in and the staff time to find their rhythm before the formal grand opening. That is a smart move for any new restaurant, and it shows an owner who understands the business. The March 27 celebration will be the official moment, complete with a ribbon cutting with the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce at 4 p.m. and a full evening of music and cocktails running until midnight.

The Woman Behind SeaBasil: From Fishing Boat to Front of House

Laddawan Fox is not a newcomer to the Myrtle Beach restaurant scene. She has owned and operated a string of well-regarded Thai restaurants over the years, starting with King Kong Sushi, which she ran in both Carolina Forest and at Broadway at the Beach. After selling those, she moved to the Charleston area and built Thai Elephants and Thai Elephants II before eventually returning to Myrtle Beach, where she has spent the past several years running Thai Cuisine in downtown Myrtle Beach.

Through all of those ventures, Fox kept fishing. She owns a boat and regularly heads out to the Gulf Stream off the Grand Strand coast, trolling for pelagic game fish like tuna, mahi mahi, wahoo and cobia. She also does bottom fishing for black sea bass, snapper and grouper, and she goes crabbing and flounder gigging in Murrells Inlet. Fishing was never just a hobby. It was always pointing toward something.

After divesting from her Charleston restaurants, Fox took a short break, about three months, before the itch to cook and create brought her back. The result is SeaBasil. She described the concept simply and directly: she always wanted to sell seafood, and she decided to pair it with herbs and Asian ingredients. That is how SeaBasil came to be. The name itself says it plainly. Sea and basil. Ocean and herb. It is a clear concept executed with the confidence of someone who has been building toward it for years.

Carolina Forest’s Restaurant Scene Has a New Anchor

Carolina Forest has evolved considerably over the past two decades. What was once a sparsely developed area west of Highway 17 Bypass is now a full-scale community with tens of thousands of residents, a growing network of restaurants, and the kind of local dining culture that sustains a great neighborhood spot. The dining options in Carolina Forest have expanded steadily, from fast casual chains to locally owned restaurants that draw diners from across the Grand Strand.

The space that SeaBasil now occupies has a history in the local restaurant world. The location has housed Asian restaurants for years, most recently Hana Teppanyaki House, and before that, an early Asian restaurant tenant that held an exclusive agreement with the property for the category. That history speaks to the demand for this kind of dining in the area. Fox has taken that legacy and built something entirely new in the same footprint.

For visitors renting a vacation home in North Myrtle Beach or staying anywhere along the Grand Strand, a drive to Carolina Forest for dinner at SeaBasil is completely reasonable. The restaurant is close enough to the beach that it works as a dinner excursion without feeling like a long haul, and the food is distinctive enough to be worth the trip.

A Vision for River Oaks Drive That Started Two Decades Ago

Fox has been watching the River Oaks Drive corridor for years. Long before the strip malls and restaurants and subdivisions filled in around it, she drove past what was then mostly woods and empty land and saw something most people did not. She saw what it would become. That kind of long-range vision is rare, and it is one of the things that separates restaurateurs who build lasting places from those who simply open restaurants.

The strip mall where SeaBasil is located was built around 2008. Fox has coveted a location in that area for years, and when the right space finally became available, she moved on it. The restaurant is the fulfillment of a vision she held for a long time, which may be part of why the concept feels so fully formed. This is not a restaurant built out of opportunism. It is one built out of conviction.

Inside SeaBasil: A Completely Reimagined Space

When Fox took over the space, she rebuilt essentially everything except the floor. The bar, the furniture, the kitchen equipment, the entire interior design, all of it is new. The renovation was overseen cooperatively by New Wave Renovations and McKeithan Design Studio, a Tennessee-based design firm. The result is a dining room that feels intentional and finished, not like a rebranded leftover from whatever came before.

The bar is a centerpiece of the new layout, which matters for a restaurant with a serious cocktail program and a liquor license that just came through. A dining room built around a proper bar creates a different energy than one that treats drinking as an afterthought. At SeaBasil, the bar is clearly part of the experience, and the cocktail menu reflects that investment.

The Menu: Where Gulf Stream Catches Meet Thai Tradition

The SeaBasil menu covers a lot of ground, but it does so with a clear organizing principle. Seafood and Thai cooking are the two poles, and the menu finds ways to bring them together while also honoring each tradition independently. The seafood side features scallops, shrimp, clams, mahi mahi, salmon and flounder alongside the kind of proteins that give a menu range, including filet mignon and New York strip steaks.

Seafood Fusion Highlights

The Basil Mixed Seafood is a strong example of what SeaBasil does best. The dish combines shrimp, scallops and clams stir-fried with sweet chili sauce, garlic, bell peppers, onions, basil and a house sauce, served over rice. It is the kind of dish that works precisely because the components are familiar but the combination is not something you find on every menu in town. Seafood with drunken noodles is another standout, bringing Thai noodle tradition into direct contact with fresh catches.

Traditional Thai Offerings

For diners who love traditional Thai food and do not need the fusion angle, SeaBasil delivers there too. The menu includes duck and stir-fried basil, a variety of appetizers and soups, hibachi plates, fried rice dishes, larb, papaya salads and a traditional salad. There is a kids’ menu, which makes it a practical option for families staying in the area. Desserts include coconut custard, which is the kind of thing that ends a meal on a note you remember.

Lunch combo specials are available daily, giving the restaurant a reasonable midday option for diners who want something more interesting than the usual strip mall lunch. The range of the menu means SeaBasil can serve a quick weekday lunch and a serious weekend dinner without feeling like it is trying to be two different things at once.

Cocktails, Sake, and Something a Little Different

The drink program at SeaBasil reflects the same blending instinct as the food menu. Specialty cocktails carry Thailand-related names and themes, and the bar offers a selection of wines, hot and cold sakes, and several bottled beers. The cocktail that is already drawing attention is a riff on an Old Fashioned, built with whisky, charcoal powder, lemon juice, house-made ginger and simple syrup, finished with a flaming orange peel on the rim. It is a confident cocktail that shows the bar program is serious without being pretentious.

SeaBasil also carries High Rise THC-infused fruit seltzers, a nod to where the beverage market is heading. For non-drinkers, the restaurant offers bubble teas and several other teas, which fits naturally with the Thai identity of the place. Happy hour runs from 4 to 6:30 p.m. daily, giving early diners a reason to settle in before the dinner rush.

Grand Opening Celebration: March 27

The formal grand opening for SeaBasil is scheduled for Thursday, March 27. The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce will be present for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 4 p.m., joined by local dignitaries. The celebration then shifts into full gear at 5 p.m. with live music and signature cocktails running through midnight. A liquor license was secured just this week, meaning the bar will be fully operational for the event.

Grand opening nights at good restaurants have an energy that is difficult to replicate. The kitchen is firing on all cylinders, the staff is genuinely excited, and the crowd that shows up tends to be the kind of people who pay attention to what is new and interesting in their city. If you are in the Myrtle Beach area on March 27, SeaBasil is the event worth putting on the calendar.

Hours, Happy Hour, and What to Expect

SeaBasil Thai & Seafood is located at 4036 River Oaks Drive in the Village Forest plaza in Carolina Forest. The restaurant is open Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Lunch combo specials are available during daytime hours, and happy hour runs from 4 to 6:30 p.m. daily.

For visitors exploring things to do in Myrtle Beach beyond the oceanfront strip, Carolina Forest is a neighborhood worth discovering. SeaBasil sits in the middle of a busy dining corridor that reflects how much the area has grown, and it brings something genuinely original to the table. It is a destination restaurant in a location that happens to be convenient for locals, and for visitors staying in North Myrtle Beach, it is an easy drive down Highway 17 that rewards the effort. Keep an eye on this one as it hits its stride after the grand opening.

Frequently Asked Questions