Myrtle Beach Local Restaurants: Areas and Orders

For a lighter downtown lunch, choose Winna’s Kitchen. For a seafood dinner with an ocean view, choose Sea Captain’s House. Myrtle Beach’s restaurants stretch from the central streets to northern Kings Highway, so pick the meal and setting together, rather than treating every address as part of one dining strip.

Main Street, Kings Highway or the oceanfront

Restaurant	Area	What to order	Typical spend per person
Winna’s Kitchen	Downtown, 9th Avenue North	Thee Cheese Toast	$15–25
Sun City Cafe	Downtown, Main Street	Potato Burrito	$25–35
Big Mike’s Soul Food	Central town, 16th Avenue North	Big Mike’s Special with fried chicken	$15–25
Mr. Fish Seafood Market & Grill	Northern Kings Highway	Traditional Fish Sandwich, blackened	$20–30
Hook & Barrel	Northern Kings Highway	Pan-seared scallops	$40–60
Sea Captain’s House	Oceanfront, North Ocean Boulevard	She-crab soup, then a main	$40–60

These estimates cover the named lunch order or a substantial dinner with a non-alcoholic drink, including a main after the soup at Sea Captain’s House. Tax and tips are additional, and extra courses or alcohol increase the bill.

Main Street and 9th Avenue North form the downtown cluster, with Big Mike’s farther north. The Kings Highway venues are separate northern destinations. Choose Sea Captain’s House for seafood and ocean views. An inland location does not guarantee a cheaper meal.

Reserve a fixed-time dinner or group meal, especially around holidays, and request view-facing seating when the outlook matters. Local ownership or history does not mean every diner is a resident.

For the boardwalk, Peaches Corner is beside it at North Ocean Boulevard and 9th Avenue North. For a separate break before or after eating, use local coffee stops in Myrtle Beach.

Winna’s Kitchen on 9th Avenue North

Winna’s Kitchen is a family-owned choice for a lighter downtown lunch on 9th Avenue North. Order Thee Cheese Toast: toasted sourdough with cheese, honey and crunchy sea salt, accompanied by a side salad. The honey adds sweetness while the cheese and salt keep it firmly on the savoury side of lunch.

Choose it when you want a seated meal without committing to a large plate. The salad gives the toast a fresh accompaniment, but this is still a bread-and-cheese lunch rather than a snack to eat between courses. If your idea of the best lunch is something modest in size with a distinctive sweet-savoury combination, this is the downtown pick.

Make this a daytime meal rather than a dinner plan, with the toast and salad as your lunch order.

Sun City Cafe on Main Street

Sun City Cafe’s Potato Burrito makes it a choice for a substantial, seated dinner on Main Street. Smashed potatoes, black beans and tomatoes fill the burrito, which is covered with spinach cheese sauce and salsa before going into the oven. Baking is central to this preparation, not just a final warming step.

The sauce-covered finish makes this a plate to settle down with, rather than a handheld burrito. Potatoes and beans give the filling its substance, while the tomatoes and salsa bring contrast to the cheese sauce. Choose this particular order when you want the filling, rather than a meat centrepiece, to carry dinner.

Its downtown location suits an evening centred on the Main Street area. Allow yourself time to eat the baked dish at the table instead of planning it as food to carry along the boardwalk.

Big Mike’s Soul Food on 16th Avenue North

Big Mike’s Soul Food makes a Southern lunch out of fried chicken with a choice of homemade sides. Order Big Mike’s Special, its meat-and-three plate, which means one meat, three sides and cornbread. Choose fried chicken as the meat, then build the rest of the meal around what you feel like eating.

This format is useful when your appetite calls for more than a sandwich: the sides are part of the meal, not an afterthought. Think of the plate as a combination you choose rather than a fixed chicken dish. Leave room for the cornbread instead of adding another course before you have decided on your sides.

Owner Mike Chestnut gives Big Mike’s its local connection. On 16th Avenue North, it sits farther north within the central town than the Main Street dining cluster. For an evening meal, Monday–Thursday service finishes at 8pm, earlier than the Friday–Saturday finish.

Mr. Fish Seafood Market on North Kings Highway

Mr. Fish Seafood Market & Grill is a northern Kings Highway choice for a fish sandwich with a specific preparation. Order the Traditional Fish Sandwich blackened. Blackening usually means coating the fish with spices and cooking it over high heat to make a dark, seasoned crust, rather than covering it in a fried batter.

For a meal shaped around the seafood display, choose the Build Your Own Platter instead. You can select a displayed protein and have it fried, grilled, blackened or steamed. That display-to-cooked-meal arrangement is the market’s distinctive attraction: you choose both what goes on the plate and how it is prepared.

The sandwich suits a straightforward lunch, while the platter gives you more scope to choose the seafood itself. Arrive from 11am for the grill, rather than treating the market’s earlier opening as the start of prepared-food service. This is a separate northern dining destination, not part of the downtown Main Street cluster.

Hook & Barrel on North Kings Highway

Hook & Barrel pairs pan-seared scallops with an open-kitchen setting for a sit-down seafood dinner on northern Kings Highway. Scallops are the named order here, and pan-searing usually gives them a browned surface while keeping the centre tender. Choose this when the seafood main is the focus of your evening.

The open kitchen adds something to watch beyond the table, making the preparation part of the restaurant setting. Give the meal room in your evening rather than treating this as a quick stop between activities. It is a higher-spend dinner choice, especially if you add drinks or another course.

Its northern address makes it a dining destination in its own right. Settle on this part of town before making dinner arrangements, so your evening is centred on the restaurant rather than on a downtown walk.

Sea Captain’s House on North Ocean Boulevard

Sea Captain’s House belongs in this selection for an ocean-view dinner that starts with she-crab soup. The restaurant began operating in 1962, giving this North Ocean Boulevard address a long dining history as well as its outlook. Choose it when the view is part of what you want from the meal.

She-crab soup is a rich crab soup, usually made with cream, crabmeat and a touch of sherry, with crab roe traditionally contributing flavour and colour. It is a starter here, so leave room for a main rather than treating the soup alone as your dinner. A cup is the more restrained start when you want your appetite to last through the next course.

Dinner is served daily from 4pm to 10pm, allowing an early evening meal as well as a later dinner. Make the oceanfront setting part of the occasion: sit down for the soup and main, rather than choosing this address solely because it is beside the beach. The food and the outlook both matter to this choice.

Sources & fact-checking

Checks against the sources below cover: key figures, services, opening hours, and closures.

• Big Mike’s Soul Food — key figures
• Mr. Fish Seafood Market & Grill — service
• Mr. Fish Seafood Market & Grill — opening hours
• Winna’s Kitchen — opening hours
• Hook & Barrel — opening hours
• Hook & Barrel — key figures
• Sea Captain’s House — closures
• Sea Captain’s House — key figures