Good Eats in OBX?
 

Going to OBX first time this summer (staying in Duck). We LOVE BBQ and good food in general. Any recommendations for family friendly not overly expenseive food in the Outer Banks? No chains please (unless they are local) - we like to try new things and like places with good atmosphere - casual and laid back since we will be on vacation!!

Here is a link to Owen's Restaurant, a Nag's Head tradition for 60+ years http://www.owensrestaurant.com/ Their specialty is seafood. This is not a formal place, a great family restaurant and locally owned. They also serve steaks and ribs. Husband really like the steak so much, we went twice during our week at OBX (he is allergic to seafood).

I know this is off topic but.....

For years and years I used to see cars all over new jersey with the little white oval OBX sticker. you know what I mean....

It took my a long time to figure out it wasn't the symbol for "Outer Bridge Crossing" one of the bridges that connects NY and NJ.

Snow,


If your in Duck i would try the Sunset Grille. For BBQ be ready for North Carolina style. If you like NC BBQ then Sooey's is good. If you in the area I would check out Corolla some great food there. bad Bean Taqueria and Gigi's Italian restaurant are excellent.

I don't know that much at the Duck end of things -- we're South Nags Head folks. But we like Jockey's Ribs, Sam & Omies (especially for breakfast or lunch -- great clam chowder), and the restaurant on one of the piers, Jeannette's maybe. Nothing special about the food, but it's just so great going for breakfast or lunch on the pier.

For our somewhat fancier 'end of vacation' dinner, we like Pelican Isle.

Thanks, everyone! I would love to hear any other suggestions OBX regulars might have. Sooey's looks good for BBQ. What about inexpensive casual seafood restaurants (or shacks! like with buckets of clams, shrimp, clam stips, crab, etc)?

Any recommendations for a quick lunch to go in Duck that we could bring back to the house? Like with seafood sandwiches?

TTT

One of my favorites:

http://www.tortugaslie.com/

The Duck Deli has great BBQ sandwiches and breakfasts. Steamers II in TimBuck II Shopping Center in Corolla has very good steamed shrimp and other seafood goodies for takeout.

We just returned from Duck last night. We had a good lunch at Fishbone's and excellent breakfasts and dinners at The Lifesaving Station at the Sanderling Inn where we stayed. They advertised boxed lunches to go but I have no idea of quality or price. I am holding the OBX restaurant guide in my sweaty palms at this very moment and will give you some links:
www.grouperswinebar.com
www.steamersshellfishtogo.com
www.sooeysbbq.com
www.goodfoodgoodwine.com
thesanderling.com
www.redskycafe.com

Good luck and enjoy!

Had a 2 great meals at North Banks Restaurant & Raw Bar in Tim Buck II, Corolla. I'll be recalling the steamed shrimp and "mixed grill with tuna" for some time! Highly recommended. (It's very small and there is smoking at the bar unfortunately. No reservations either.)

As we are staying in Duck, it seems we are about equal distance from Corolla and Kitty Hawk. However I saw somewhere that it appears you get an extra lane on your way to Kitty Hawk. Would that make Kitty Hawk (and Kill Devil Hills) a more convenient option for dinner plans than Corolla? I've heard the road from Duck to Corolla can get pretty backed up.

Neither is more or less convenient.

The trip from Duck to Corolla is about half an hour. Two lanes all the way. Trip to KH proper is about 15 minutes but you need to add drive time for wherever you're actually headed.

>>However I saw somewhere that it appears you get an extra lane on your way to Kitty Hawk.<<

No, you get an extra road. Once you leave Southern Shores, from KH south you can either take NC12 (two lanes 25 and 35 mph) or 158 Business (4 lanes plus a suicide corridor). Restaurants are plentiful on both the beach and business roads.

>>I've heard the road from Duck to Corolla can get pretty backed up.<<

The only serious back up (barring accidents, obviously) will occur on weekends, in the morning headed south (people leaving OBX) and headed north from noon-ish to well into the later afternoon (people arriving). Saturday is worse than Sunday.

If your arrival day is Saturday, I strongly suggest eating at home or someplace walkable from your house. It's also a very crap day to go to the grocery store.

Also traffic crossing the Albemarle Sound onto the OBX can start to back up over the bridge by noon. Lots of people try to arrive as early in the day as possible and head for their ultimate destination. Hang out, eat lunch, go shopping, whatever until their house is ready. Put your realty company's number in your cell and call every 30 minutes or so to check. Most companies will allow you to check in whenever the house has been cleaned/inspected.

We're heading that way in less than two weeks ... can't wait!!!

TripAdvisor's #1 Outer Banks restaurant is Lone Cedar Cafe, and it's very near where we're staying. Any thoughts from Fodorites?

The Lone Cedar is one of those old school seafood restaurants. Good seafood, broiled or fried. Huge portions. Hushpuppies. Iceberg lettuce salad. Skip lunch. Or have lunch and cart the leftovers home for dinner.

The LC burned down last year and managed to rebuild and reopen in record time. It's a very popular place.

Are Trip Advisor's restaurant ratings as funky as their hotel ratings? I have and would recommend this place to go on the OBX but wouldn't rank it #1.

obxgirl - what would you recommend for casual family friendly good eats?

We are arriving on Sunday and I do plan on calling our rental agency to see if we can get in early - they told me if it's ready they'd let us in. I think we are planning to stop at a grocery (I read there is a Food Lion in Southern Shores and thought that would be our best bet on the way in to Duck) for a few basics Sunday but then eat out (or get carryout BBQ from Sooeys) that night. Head to the store for our big haul of grocerys some time during the day on Monday.

The Food Lion will be good for basics but the produce isn't especially good. Much better at Harris Teeter. There will be produce stands open along 158 before you hit OBX. We like the one in Grandy and another one on the same side of the road a couple of miles after Grandy. I don't recall the name but they usually have seafood too.

In case it matters, you can't buy beer or wine in the grocery stores before noon on Sunday.

I like a lot of the restaurants listed on this thread. Might add:

Capt Frank's on the Biz Road for hot dogs.
Fishbones in Duck
Flying Fish Cafe (MP 10 Biz Road Kill Devil Hills) I like this place a lot and usually mention it although I think I'm the only one. Lots of locals.

I like Sooey's BBQ although we usually bring BBQ from Pierce's in Williamsburg for our first night's meal (If you're interested, it's right off of I64 at the Great Wolf Lodge exit).

By the way -- the strawberries are great down there right now, and local. They're pretty expensive along Rt 158, but worth it!

Thanks! I think dd could eat strawberries until she turned into one, so she will be very happy!

Fishbones & Capt Frank's are on my list. I'll add Flying Fish.

Our only issue w/picking up things along the way is that our car is always completely crammed w/stuff. When we went to Hilton Head we would stop before going to our rental and have to pile groceries on my & the kids laps (and this time we're bringing the dog!). Not bad when you are only a mile from the rental, but I don't think we'll want to drive any distance like that!!

Snowrooster -- A little warning about the dog. Watch where he walks! There are sand burrs in even the most innocent looking places, and they hurt like crazy if you get them in your foot. So don't let him wander around the dunes or off the path or the yard of your house unless it really looks ok.

I've never heard of a sand bur - what do they look like?

Any other thoughts on restaurants let me know. I have compiled a list but I have too many places on it and need to narrow down!

See if this link will bring to a photo...
http://tinyurl.com/6yda2k

The problem is that they're too little to see and they are the same color as the sand.


Did I already recommend the North Banks Restaurant? If not, I really liked it. They're "mixed grill" was great, as was their steamed shrimp. Very small, could be impossibly crowded in the summer. Also smoking in there. Oh well.
http://www.corollaguide.com/northban...restaurant.htm

snowrooster
We just returned from OBX last Saturday, spent a week in Corolla and also did a day trip down to the ferry point on Hatteras Island.

You asked about places that serve buckets of seafood. Although pricey, there is a takeout place in Corolla called Steamers.
http://www.steamersshellfishtogo.com/thecompany.html
All kinds of seafood and accompaniments to go or you can eat on the bayside deck. Their clam chowder was great.

Also, we similarly had our golden retriever with us. You must also watch out for ticks--very, very plentiful right now and many properties do not mow, leaving the ticks' favorite thing in many yards--high grass. I picked a tick of our pooch's ear before it attached and DH also had one attached to one of his leg hairs. Got that one in time, too. And I believe based on one of the last posts pooch also had a sand burr imbedded in his side, we found that and had to pull it out as well.

Taking the dog was a great time but also as time consuming as having kids along!

For food, we also enjoyed an alfresco dinner at the Sunset Grille in Duck, looked like one of the largest places in the town, they also have live entertainment some nights, fairly decent and extensive menu.

We found the traffic on Route 12 from the 158 turnoff through Duck, Pine Island and into Corolla to be slow not really because of a lot of traffic but the speed is limited in a lot of those areas to 35mph, through the towns is about 25 mph and then perhaps about 45 mph on the other stretch. We drove that whole coastal area of the OBX and we felt the towns of Duck and Corolla seemed the nicest place to stay. If you want a really laid back experience on the National Seashore, then you would head down to Hatteras Island, but otherwise, I think you will be very happy in Duck. We are already thinking about making plans again for Corolla next year. You'll have a great time. It's a nice vacation area.

Oh, and we visited both the Food Lion (there is also one in Corolla) and Harris Teeter (in between Duck and Corolla) and the Harris Teeter market was by far nicer and had a much better selection than the Food Lion.

I did really like the selection of "Take and Bake" breads at the bakery department of both stores. The Food Lion had a fantastic multi-grain baguette that bakes in about 10-15 minutes and was very good.