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