Four Myrtle Beach Restaurant Areas That Make Dinner Easy After Golf

Myrtle Beach has plenty of standalone restaurants worth seeking out. That can be another post.

This one is about the nights when nobody wants to research twelve menus, compare drive times and coordinate a reservation while still sitting in the golf-course parking lot.

Barefoot Landing, Broadway at the Beach, the Murrells Inlet MarshWalk and Market Common are touristy. Some more than others. They’re also useful.

Each puts several restaurants within walking distance of one another. If the first place has a two-hour wait, the group can check the next one without getting back in the car. That matters during spring and summer, when a dinner plan can fall apart quickly.

None of these areas guarantees the best meal of the trip. They provide options, drinks and somewhere to walk around while you wait for a table. After a long day of golf, that may be enough.

Barefoot Landing

Best for: Groups staying in North Myrtle Beach or at Barefoot Resort
Overall feel: Waterfront shopping and restaurants
Useful after playing: Barefoot, Tidewater, Grande Dunes, Arcadian Shores or the northern courses

Barefoot Landing sits along the Intracoastal Waterway, directly across from Barefoot Resort.

It’s a shopping and entertainment complex, and it feels like one. There are souvenir stores, families, live entertainment and plenty of people who didn’t just spend five hours looking for a golf swing.

If you haven’t visited in a while and remember it being a little dumpy, it’s worth another look. A major redevelopment added better waterfront gathering spaces and the Dockside Village area. It’s still touristy, but it’s much nicer than it used to be.

The advantage for a golf group is range. You can get seafood, burgers, tacos, Italian food, brewery fare or a more expensive dinner without leaving the property.

Crooked Hammock Brewery is an easy choice for beer and casual food. The large outdoor area works well when the group isn’t in a hurry.

Flying Fish Public Market & Grill and Greg Norman Australian Grille are better fits when the group wants a full sit-down dinner by the waterway.

Taco Mundo works for tacos, drinks and an outdoor table, while Bully’s Pub is more direct: cold drinks, bar food and televisions.

There are also familiar vacation-area options such as LuLu’s, River City Cafe, House of Blues and LandShark.

The variety is the point. If one restaurant is slammed, there are enough alternatives to keep the night moving.

For properties inside Barefoot Resort, most of the Landing should be within roughly five to ten minutes. That makes it one of the easiest places to go after playing Norman, Love, Fazio or Dye.

View the Barefoot Landing restaurant directory

Broadway at the Beach

Best for: Groups staying in central Myrtle Beach
Overall feel: The busiest and most openly touristy option
Useful after playing: Myrtlewood, Grande Dunes, Pine Lakes, River Oaks, World Tour or Myrtle Beach National

Broadway at the Beach is not subtle.

It covers hundreds of acres around a lake, with restaurants, bars, shops, rides and enough signs competing for attention that the group may forget which parking lot it used.

This is the most touristy area on the list. It’s also the one with the broadest selection.

Broadway is useful when the group can’t agree on what it wants or when the original dinner plan has failed. There are more than enough restaurants to find another table, although peak-season waits can still spread across the entire complex.

The Grumpy Monk is a good starting point for craft beer, burgers, sushi and bar food. It’s casual and broad enough for a group with different ideas about dinner.

Voodoo Brewing Company and Yee-Haw Brewing Co. give beer-focused groups alternatives, while Carolina Ale House is built for a straightforward sports-bar night.

For something less centered on beer, there’s King Kong Sushi, Yamato Steakhouse, Landry’s Seafood and the newer Big Fish.

Broadway also has the full vacation-destination lineup: Hard Rock Cafe, Margaritaville, Paula Deen’s Family Kitchen, Señor Frog’s, Wahlburgers, Joe’s Crab Shack and Dave & Buster’s.

You may already have a strong opinion about some of those places. That’s fine. The reason to use Broadway isn’t that every restaurant is a must-visit. It’s that a group can find food, drinks and something to do without coordinating several locations.

Broadway makes the most sense for a central Myrtle Beach stay. It’s close to Myrtlewood and Pine Lakes, with Grande Dunes, River Oaks and World Tour still within a reasonable drive.

Parking is spread across a large property. Before leaving the car, take note of the nearest major building or entrance. Broadway looks different after dinner than it did when you arrived.

View the Broadway at the Beach dining directory

The Murrells Inlet MarshWalk

Best for: Groups staying in Murrells Inlet, Surfside, Garden City or Pawleys Island
Overall feel: Waterfront restaurants, bars and live music
Useful after playing: TPC Myrtle Beach, Blackmoor, Wachesaw East, Caledonia, True Blue or the Pawleys courses

The MarshWalk is touristy, but it feels different from Barefoot and Broadway.

It isn’t a shopping center built around restaurants. It’s a half-mile boardwalk along a working salt marsh, with boats, docks and a line of waterfront bars and restaurants.

There’s very little shopping to work around. You go there to eat, drink, listen to music and walk along the water.

The MarshWalk’s current restaurant group includes Bovine’s, Wahoo’s Fish House, Drunken Jack’s, Creek Ratz, Dead Dog Saloon, The Claw House, Wicked Tuna and Inlet Shipwreck.

The Claw House is my stop for crab nachos and an IPA. That combination works particularly well after golf and doesn’t need much further analysis.

Creek Ratz and Dead Dog Saloon are casual waterfront choices, usually with live music in the mix.

Wicked Tuna is the more polished option for seafood, sushi and a proper dinner, while Bovine’s adds steaks and wood-fired food to a district understandably heavy on seafood.

Drunken Jack’s is one of the longstanding Murrells Inlet names and another option for a traditional seafood dinner.

Waits can get long during summer, especially around sunset and on weekends. The MarshWalk’s compact layout helps. If the first restaurant is backed up, the group can walk the boardwalk and check another.

Parking is the more difficult part. Arrive earlier than you think you need to during peak season. Once the lots fill, the search can take longer than the drive from the house.

For the TPC-area rentals, the MarshWalk is generally about 10 to 15 minutes away. From Pawleys Island, plan on roughly 20 minutes, depending on the property.

View the MarshWalk dining guide

The Market Common

Best for: Groups staying near the airport, Surfside or south-central Myrtle Beach
Overall feel: A walkable town-center development
Useful after playing: Prestwick, Arrowhead, Whispering Pines, Myrtle Beach National, Tupelo Bay or TPC

Market Common is probably the fourth area you were trying to remember.

It’s touristy in a cleaner, quieter way. There are shops and national restaurant names, but the streets, apartments, parks and public spaces make it feel more like a planned neighborhood than an attraction built around a lake.

It’s also the easiest of these four places for a lower-key dinner.

Gordon Biersch covers beer and brewery-style food. King Street Grille is the sports-bar option, while 810 Billiards & Bowling can carry the night beyond dinner if the group still wants to do something.

Tupelo Honey handles Southern food and cocktails. CO Sushi and P.F. Chang’s provide Asian options, while Travinia and Gio’s Pizzeria Napoletana cover Italian food at different levels of commitment.

Dirty Don’s Oyster Bar & Grill is there for seafood, and Nacho Hippo is the casual taco-and-drinks choice.

Market Common is close to Myrtle Beach International Airport, making it useful for an arrival-night meal when the group’s flights land within a few hours of one another. It also works well from Ocean Lakes, Surfside and the southern side of central Myrtle Beach.

Prestwick is close. Arrowhead, Whispering Pines, Tupelo Bay and the Myrtle Beach National courses all fit reasonably well from this area.

Parking is generally easier than at the MarshWalk, although the most convenient street spaces disappear during busy dinner hours. Garages and larger lots give the group more room to recover.

View the Market Common dining directory

Which Restaurant Area Fits the Trip?

If you’re staying at Barefoot or playing the northern courses, Barefoot Landing is the easiest answer. It has enough restaurants and bars to handle most groups without another long drive.

For a central stay, Broadway at the Beach has the most options. It’s also the loudest and busiest of the four.

For seafood, waterfront drinks and more atmosphere, the MarshWalk is the best choice. It feels more connected to the place than the shopping-center developments, even when it’s crowded.

For a quieter and more organized night, Market Common is probably the easiest. It has enough variety without requiring the group to work through a major attraction.

Have More Than One Dinner Plan

During a busy Myrtle Beach weekend, a group of four may get seated quickly. A group of eight walking in at 7:30 may hear something very different.

Reservations help when restaurants accept them. Calling ahead helps when they don’t. Neither guarantees that the table will be ready immediately.

That’s the value of these four areas.

You aren’t depending on one restaurant surrounded by a full parking lot. If the wait is too long, there are other menus within walking distance and places to get a drink while the group decides what to do.

They’re touristy.

They’re also solid options after a long day, when the best restaurant may be the one that can seat everybody before 10.