Best Places to Eat in Myrtle Beach
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Seafood drives the menu along the Grand Strand, and one small stretch of boardwalk is where you can actually name names.
The Murrells Inlet MarshWalk
Murrells Inlet calls itself the Seafood Capital of South Carolina, and the MarshWalk, a half-mile boardwalk over the marsh about 18 miles south of central Myrtle Beach, is where that claim holds up. Six spots line it worth knowing before you go: Dead Dog Saloon, Drunken Jack’s, Wahoo’s, Bovine’s, The Wicked Tuna, and The Claw House. Go for sunset if you can, since the marsh views are as much the draw as the food.
Calabash-style seafood
You’ll see “Calabash-style” on menus all over the Strand: lightly battered, flash-fried seafood, usually shrimp or flounder, served in generous portions. The style is named for Calabash, North Carolina, just over the state line, not for any town in South Carolina, and it’s the closest thing the area has to a signature seafood tradition. All-you-can-eat seafood buffets built around the same style are common on Restaurant Row north of the Boardwalk.
She-crab soup and shrimp and grits
She-crab soup, a cream-based soup named for the roe of female crabs, and shrimp and grits both trace back to Lowcountry and Charleston cooking and show up on menus throughout Myrtle Beach as a starter or a full plate. Frogmore stew, a one-pot boil of shrimp, sausage, corn, and potatoes, is another Lowcountry staple worth ordering if you see it. Gullah-Geechee cooking, rooted in the coastal communities of the region, underlies a lot of this: expect rice-based dishes and okra alongside the seafood.
What to skip naming
Barbecue exists in Myrtle Beach, but it’s a secondary tradition here, not a defining one the way Calabash-style seafood or the MarshWalk restaurants are; there’s no single standout worth singling out. Outside the MarshWalk, the honest approach is to pick by dish and area rather than chase a specific address, since the restaurant scene turns over fast in a resort town this size.
Practical notes
Expect a roughly 11.5% tax on a restaurant meal inside Myrtle Beach city limits, closer to 10.5% in unincorporated Horry County; both are worth checking against the receipt since rates shift. Reservations matter most for MarshWalk dinner tables on summer weekends, when the wait can run over an hour without one.
Read more: pair a MarshWalk dinner with an afternoon at Brookgreen Gardens and Huntington Beach State Park , both a short drive from Murrells Inlet, or see the full Myrtle Beach guide for when to visit.
One concrete tip: call ahead for a MarshWalk table on a Friday or Saturday night in July, since walk-ins can face waits over an hour at the six named spots above.