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Feature article
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The end of summer never tasted so good
By Fred Sauceman
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| This off season Santa Claus visits North Myrtle Beach |
Paying for my chicken amandine, rice, fried mushrooms and creamed spinach with eggs at the K&W Cafeteria on the south end of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, I asked the cashier:
“What are you hearing about the steaks next door?”
“Oh, Angelo comes in here for breakfast sometimes,” she said. “He starts marinating those steaks early in the morning. I asked him what he marinated them in, and he said he’d have to kill me if he told me.”
The cashier claimed they were her favorite steaks anywhere on the Grand Strand. Without her recommendation and without reading the endorsements on Roadfood.com, I likely would have gone for seafood at Angelo’s, since it’s near the beach. Or I probably would have selected Italian fare, to stay with the restaurant’s ethnic theme.
But I chose no scampi, no chicken cacciatore. I listened to the K&W lady. And it paid off. I committed myself to ribeye. And I’m not sorry.
There’s a sizable Italian community in Myrtle Beach, enough for the Sons of Italy to put on a festival each year in Chapin Park, with brown bags of zeppole and sputtering grills of sausages, peppers and onions.
Angelo’s even offers an all-you-can-eat Italian buffet. As good as the meatballs, pizza and pasta looked, I never regretted that steak order. Angelo’s 14-ounce ribeye required no seasoning at all. It came to the table on a sizzling cast-iron platter, and the noise continued for a good five minutes. There was no trace of its existence in another five.
We had gone to Myrtle Beach to sandwich in a few vacation days before the onslaught of fall, and we landed a room not 50 yards from our favorite restaurant there, The Sea Captain’s House. I wrote about it in detail four years ago. Since then a few things have changed. The owners have added a ceiling fan-stirred bar area with space for live music at the back. The parking lot next door yielded to a swimming pool. And the hush puppies that come with every meal are melon-baller round.
Despite the alterations, The Sea Captain’s House is as close to the Myrtle Beach of half a century ago as you’ll find. Mayonnaise-bound, caper-studded, celery-crunchy shrimp salad is still served. And for breakfast, homemade crab cakes take the place of English muffins in a Hollandaise-topped Eggs Benedict.
If your beach travel is over for the summer, file these ideas away for next season.
South Carolinians are fond of chili-dressed hamburgers, and we found satisfying and inexpensive ones at Hamburger Joe’s.
Sara J’s in Garden City offers a good selection of lightly fried seafood, including a softshell crab appetizer. The restaurant’s seafood casserole is baked dressing a la deviled crab, and buried in it are chunks of shrimp, crab and scallops. It’s all sealed in with a layer of cheese.
Always in search of a good German restaurant, we had tried Bodo’s, near the site of the now destroyed Pavilion, and were smitten with the Schnitzel choices and the champagne salad dressing. On this visit, we opted for Horst Gasthaus in North Myrtle Beach.
I declined the opportunity to hear the accordion player attempt “Rocky Top,” once he discovered we were from Tennessee, and I opted instead for a very pleasant rendition of “The Tennessee Waltz.”
A man at the next table was a dead ringer for Santa Claus who, it turns out, is a military retiree living in San Antonio, Texas.
We were amazed at the bulk and the reasonable prices of the veal Schnitzel dishes — the Wiener Schnitzel and the Jägerschnitzel were half-platter size. We ended up having potatoes three ways — vinegared in salad, home-fried and real mashed.
And we never let a trip to Myrtle Beach go by without a pass through the Piggly Wiggly. This time we came home with a case of Piggly Wiggly water, a tray of muscadines and four bags of Uncle Bud’s Deep Fried Peanuts from Chattanooga — the kind you eat shell and all.
--------GoTriCities--------
Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South — from Bright Hope to Frog Level,” is senior writer and executive assistant to the president for public affairs at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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