Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Inc. will open its third South Carolina restaurant in Myrtle Beach, located at 1218 N. Retail Court, located in front of Sears at Coastal Grand Mall, on Monday, June 30, at 11 a.m. Red Robin serves high-quality gourmet burgers, appetizers, entrees, salads and beverages in a kid- and family-friendly atmosphere. As part of its grand opening celebrations, the Myrtle Beach Red Robin® restaurant will host a Burgers With A Heart® fundraiser to benefit the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).

Through Burgers With a Heart®, Red Robin will donate 50 cents from every gourmet burger sold to NCMEC during grand-opening week from June 30 to July 6. NCMEC is a non-profit organization whose mission is to help prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation; help find missing children; and assist victims of child abduction and sexual exploitation, their families, and the professionals who serve them. The money raised will help bring prevention education to children nationwide.

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From PR Newswire:

Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament last week announced that North America's most popular dinner attraction will offer its first nationwide "Kids Free" ticket promotion to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

The special promotion, which includes Medieval Times’ Myrtle Beach location and encompasses the company's nine North American Castles, will help guests save up to $40 per ticket for children 12 and under. The "kids free" promotion is available for any performance from May 23 through July 6, 2008.

Each "free kid" must be accompanied by one full-paying adult. Performance times and tickets are available at the company's re-launched Web site, http://www.medievaltimes.com, or by calling 1-888-WE-JOUST (888-935-6878).

The promotion is part of the company's year-long 25th anniversary celebration and timed to coincide with the launch of Medieval Times' first new live production in five years, which is debuting across their castles through the spring and summer months.

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Pizza joints come and go, but I feel it’s my civic duty to inform you on the front end – especially when a great Neapolitan-style pie maker looks like it has plenty of staying power.

The restaurant in question is Capriccio, located in the Bi-Lo shopping center at U.S. 17 Bypass & 38th Ave. N. Owner Michael Macchia and his son, Michael Macchia, Jr., bring a New York-style flair to their pizza and pasta dishes that have already had our family back for seconds, thirds …

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Myrtle Beach now boasts three Starbucks locations along Ocean Boulevard – all providing the high-quality “Starbucks Experience” you’d expect to find at any of their stores, but each offering its own little wrinkle that makes it a go-to java destination.

Now in its fifth year of operation and the first Starbucks to come to Myrtle Beach, the shop at Breakers Resort (Ocean Blvd. at 21st Ave. N.) boasts a central location to get your coffee or latte, then walk across the street for an early-morning stroll along the beach. Uptown, the store at Long Bay Resort (7200 N. Ocean Blvd.) offers easy beach access and features an outdoor patio in front, perfect for using the free wireless Internet connection while you soak up afternoon rays.

The latest addition comes a shade downtown, at Bay View Resort (504 N. Ocean Blvd.). Here, you can get your joe to go – or stick around, catch a seat at the high bar along the 5th Avenue North side, and enjoy the ocean view from the inside (pictured). Right now, this is the only Starbucks location along the entire Grand Strand that offers such a convenience.

And when you leave Ocean Boulevard, there are several other Grand Strand locations where you can get your Starbucks fix, including:

• Kroger at Carolina Forest (3735 Renee Drive, Myrtle Beach)
• Piggly Wiggly at Carolina Forest (right across the street)
• Target (1150 Seaboard St., Myrtle Beach)
• 547 Hwy. 17 N., North Myrtle Beach (across from Gator Hole Plaza)
• Broadway at the Beach
• Coastal Grand Mall
• Piggly Wiggly at The Market Common (former Myrtle Beach Air Force Base)
• Piggly Wiggly Murrells Inlet (4430 Hwy. 17 Bypass)
• Litchfield Beach & Golf Resort

Jeremy Potterfield, executive chef for Webster’s Lowcountry Grill at Litchfield Beach & Golf Resort in Pawleys Island, is the featured culinary artist in the March edition of Links Magazine’s “Chefs of South Carolina.”

As Links Magazine explains, “Potterfield brings more than 20 years of food and beverage experience to Litchfield Beach & Golf Resort … He honed his skills in some of the Waccamaw Neck’s finest restaurants, and his cuisine embodies the Lowcountry, fusing the freshest local ingredients with flavors from around the world.”

Read on, and you’re rewarded with the recipe behind one of Potterfield’s signature dishes: oyster pie. The ingredients look like they’ll make you take a few extra minutes on the treadmill the next day, but hey – if you’re gonna get a true taste of Lowcountry cuisine, you may as well do it in style, right?

Let’s see how fast Kobayashi can scarf down one of these bad boys.

It’s called the “Super Sub” – 16 inches of deli-style decadence, including a generous combination of ham, provolone, capicola, salami and proscuittini; garnished with “the works” (lettuce, tomato, onion, oregano, oil & vinegar and salt & pepper); and loaded onto a crusty Italian semolina bread loaf. And for $8.99, you’ve got a meal for one to four people, depending on your or your friends’ appetite.

(Point of reference from yours truly, the 200-pound sandwich hound: I usually get it when I’m very hungry, and manage to get about two-thirds of the way through before wrapping up the remainder, storing it in the fridge and polishing that off in Round Two a few hours later).

The “Super Sub” is one of 18 monster offerings at Subs and Suds, located on Postal Way in Carolina Forest just down the road from the post office. For owners Dean and Robin Wooley, the inspiration was simple: opening Subs and Suds was a chance for the former New Jersey residents to bring a slice of their roots for their new Grand Strand customers to enjoy.

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Black Thai

Grand Strand diners are lucky to have several outstanding Thai restaurants they can visit, and one of the best I’ve visited lately is Black Thai, which is owned by Nan Black.

The food of course is the best reason to visit, but the ambiance is another motivating factor. The furniture is casually upscale, but the welcoming warmth (the friendly waitress helps a lot in this regard) is cozy. The décor features bamboo, carved wood and gilt-crusted elephants.

Black Thai is downtown on Main Street, which is bad for Nan because traffic, especially pedestrian traffic, isn’t what it used to be in the good old Pavilion days. There isn’t a lot of parking available, but nonetheless at 6 p.m. on a Saturday night we were able to park right in front of the door.

The dishes we tried were delicious and plated with pizzazz. First we shared Thai Dumplings (Kanom Jeeb) which are soft wonton “purses” filled with ground chicken, pork and shrimp. They came with soy sauce, sweet Thai chili sauce and a sweet/spicy sauce for dipping.

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Heirloom Recipes At The Heart of A Family Restaurant
By Becky Billingsley

Myrtle Beach is lucky the Toniolo family picked our area for the second location of their Italian restaurant called Stefano’s Cucina Rustica. They’ve owned the first location of the same name in Florence for 19 years.

The owners are Steve and Anna Toniolo, and their 23-year-old son, Steve, is the general manager of the new eatery, which is in Carolina Forest. Steve is a recent college grad with a business degree.

Stefano’s has a warm décor rich with colors of a Tuscan sunset: umber, sienna, misty green. Low metal ceiling fans and lights have a terra cotta hue, and arches that peek into the kitchen lend an old-world air. Classic Italian music plays, and it was the first time I heard “Volare” in Italian.

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