Upscale North Myrtle Beach - Salt and Stained Glass
I lived on this coast for two years, and my family still calls it home, which means I've logged more hours on the north end of the Grand Strand than almost anywhere else I write about. And every single time I tell someone I'm headed to Myrtle Beach, I get the same face. "Aww, taking the kids?" No. No kids. Just a martini with my name on it, about twenty minutes north of everything you're picturing.
Everyone knows the Myrtle Beach of minigolf and airbrushed t-shirts. Almost nobody talks about what happens when you keep driving north, past the SkyWheel, past the last dinosaur putting green, to where the signs start saying North Myrtle Beach and then Little River. The buildings get lower. The drinks get better. The grown-ups have been up here the whole time.
After years of collecting these places, I finally wrote it all down. Here's what I keep coming back to.
A Martini on the Intracoastal
Mom loves her cucumber infused drinks!
Start where I always start: Clark's in Little River, at a waterfront table right at golden hour. Cold martini, fishing boats, masts, the Intracoastal doing its nightly trick of turning pink. It's the single fastest way to understand what this end of the coast is about. The first time I sat there I remember thinking, this cannot be the same zip code as the airbrush stands. It isn't, technically. That's the point.
Ask for the waterfront seating. Yes, it matters.
Dinner in a Victorian, Dinner in a Church
Little River doesn't look like much from Highway 17, which I've decided is deliberate. This tiny old fishing village is hiding the two most atmospheric dining rooms on the entire Grand Strand.
The Brentwood is French dinner inside a 1910 Victorian home, porches and creaking wood and an upstairs wine bar where the staff will tell you ghost stories if you ask nicely. They run actual ghost tours with dinner twice a week. I am exactly the target audience for this and I will not be apologizing.
A few blocks away, The Parson's Table is fine dining inside a converted 19th-century church, original stained glass and all. When the light comes through those windows at dinner, you forget you're twenty minutes from a store shaped like a giant shark. The amaretto cheesecake has its own congregation, fittingly.
The Speakeasy You Have to Earn
Also in Little River: Twelve 33 Distillery, which looks like a craft distillery because it is one, and also has a hidden speakeasy behind it. There's one way in, and it's not a password. Live piano some nights, cocktail flights of their own spirits, and almost never a crowd. It closes early, which fooled me once. Only once. The right way to slot it into your day is in the guide, because I had to learn it the hard way.
Main Street, Where the Shag Never Died
North Myrtle Beach invented the Carolina shag. The dance, to be clear. It's a smooth eight-count swing born on these boardwalks in the 1940s, and at Fat Harold's Beach Club on Main Street, the floor has been going since 1962. Free lessons. Regulars who've been doing the same steps together for fifty years. I dare you to watch a couple in their eighties glide across that floor on a Tuesday night and feel nothing.
Down the street, Wine Therapy is a husband-and-wife tasting room where the flights come with actual conversation about what you're drinking. And when you need a barefoot lunch between all this, Salty Brews has a fully dedicated gluten free kitchen and poke bowls worth planning around. If Corey's behind the bar, tell him I said hi.
An Accidental Wine Trail
Nobody designed this, which is why it works: Wine Therapy on Main Street, La Belle Amie Vineyard under the oaks in Little River, and Barn View Winery out in Loris, which grows European varietals in sweet-muscadine country, an act of open rebellion I respect enormously. Live music, a food truck, farm cats energy. String them together with the speakeasy as a finale and you have one of my favorite Saturdays anywhere. The order and the timing matter a lot, because these places keep farm hours. Guess where the working version lives.
Books, and a Mailbox Full of Strangers' Secrets
You know I can't do a coastline without finding its bookstore. This one required crossing a state line: Pelican Book Store in Sunset Beach, NC, run by a former librarian, which explains why the used books are suspiciously pristine and the Carolina authors shelf is actually curated.
A beach walk from there, on Bird Island, a plain mailbox stands alone in the dunes. The Kindred Spirit Mailbox. Inside are notebooks where strangers have been leaving letters for over forty years. Grief, gratitude, confessions, at least one proposal the day I visited. You can read them. You can answer them. Nobody's in charge of it, which is exactly the point. Check the tide before you walk out, and bring water. I didn't, and on the walk back I got stopped by beach patrol, who took one look at me and handed me a cold bottle. My heroes. Learn from me.
And Then There's the Castle
Forty-five minutes south, at Huntington Beach State Park, there is an actual Moorish castle on the Atlantic. Atalaya was built in the 1930s by Archer Huntington, a Gilded Age heir who chose to become a poet, for his wife Anna, a sculptor. Thirty rooms around a courtyard, sea light through iron grilles, and it costs $2 on top of the park entry. Two dollars. I've paid fifty euros in Europe for less.
Bring or rent bikes if you can. The park has a flat trail running past a freshwater lagoon where alligators sun themselves like they pay taxes there. One of them once startled my mom clean off her bike. She's fine. The alligator was unbothered. This remains a treasured family story that she does not find as funny as the rest of us do.
Across the road, Brookgreen Gardens is nine thousand acres of their sculpture garden. Then finish the day at Frank's Outback in Pawleys Island. Make a reservation, and ask for the Outback garden specifically. Outdoor seating is a must here, it's a genuine tropical haven, tables under the oaks and string lights, and it's the single best dinner setting on this entire coast. Thank me later. One warning that will save your day: Frank's is closed Sunday and Monday, and I built the whole southern day trip around that fact so you don't find out at 6pm in a parking lot.
Highlights of the Coast
Best martini with a view: Clark's, waterfront table, golden hour, no contest
Best "wait, is this a church": The Parson's Table, because it is one
Best excuse to believe in ghosts: dinner at The Brentwood
Best door you can't just walk through: the speakeasy at Twelve 33
Best free therapy: watching the regulars at Fat Harold's
Best act of rebellion: Barn View growing Chardonnay in muscadine country
Best reason to cross a state line: Pelican Book Store, then the Kindred Spirit Mailbox
Best $2 I've ever spent: Atalaya Castle
Best "thank me later": the tropical haven that is the Outback garden at Frank's
Best plot twist on a bike trail: the Huntington Beach alligators (ask my mom)
If you want the exact order I'd do all of this in, the timing that actually works, where to stay (three real answers and one very honest paragraph), how to get into the speakeasy, the full wine trail as a mapped Saturday, and every closed-day landmine that will quietly wreck your trip if nobody warns you, I built all of it into Salt & Stained Glass, my complete downloadable itinerary for the quiet end of the Strand. Twenty-eight spots, three zones, two day trips, one very useful table at the back. Link below.
The kids can keep the minigolf. This end is ours.
LINK: Salt & Stained Glass
🎧 Listening…
Some books set in the South, like this, and this, and this
🍷 Drinking…
Martini’s….of course
✈️ Planning…
Some reading, writing, theater and time with family and friends
💛 Recommending…
For you Southern Charm trip , pack these sandals, this matching set, the perfect dinner dress, a fashionable wrap skirt, and a pair of slides perfect for the beach/pool, perfect enough to wear straight to dinner!
