Roofing company in Murrells Inlet, SC

Murrells Inlet is getting a new restaurant at a historic site.

Neal and Pam’s in Surfside Beach, SC, announced they were opening a new restaurant in Murrells Inlet via Facebook at 3797 US Highway 17 Business, Murrells Inlet, SC 29576.

“Through this endeavor, we will remain community-driven, support charitable causes, local musicians, local artists, local purveyors, gamecockin, daydrinkin, karaokin and good timin,” the Facebook post read. “Most importantly, we will remain the social epicenter of Surfside and strive to become the same in Murrells Inlet.”

Neal’s Creekhouse is the name of the new location, and Neal and Pam’s owner, Zach Baker, said the eatery would open in late 2023 or early 2024.

“We just kind of been eyeing something in Murrells Inlet for a long time,” Baker said. “A lot of our customers live down in Pawleys and Murrells Inlet, and it’s just a little more accessible for them.”

The new eatery plans on having breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week and will be able to seat around 200, Baker said. He added that the restaurant will have the same menu as Neal and Pam’s, such as burgers and other items.

Neal’s Creekhouse’s new waterfront building is the previous home of American Steak & Oyster Bar, as well as another well-known, now-closed Murrells Inlet restaurant.

Flo’s Place was a New Orleans-themed eatery that served gumbo, crawfish and other bayou staples for about 40 years before closing in 2019.

“It’s not often that something on the water in Murrells Inlet comes available,” Baker added. “When we found out about it, we jumped at the chance.”

Ben Morse is the Retail and Leisure Reporter for The Sun News. Morse covers local business, Coastal Carolina University and high school sports. Morse previously worked as an intern for The Island Packet covering local government. Morse graduated from American University in 2023 with a Bachelor’s Degree in journalism and economics, and he is originally from Prospect, Kentucky.

MURRELLS INLET, S.C. (WMBF) - After nearly 40 years in Surfside Beach, Neal and Pam’s is bringing their brand south.

Owners said the new restaurant, Neal’s Creekhouse, will incorporate many of the things people love about Neal and Pam’s, into a new marshfront restaurant.

Neal’s Creekhouse will be located near the Murrells Inlet Marshwalk, off of Highway 17 Business, in the old American Steak and Oyster Bar building.

“I’m very excited and I wish them luck,” said one woman from Murrells Inlet.

Pam Stapleton, one of the previous owners of Neal and Pam’s said the name of the new restaurant is to honor her late husband Neal.

“He was quite a character in the area,” said Stapleton. “If you ever knew him, you wouldn’t forget him.”

Construction is currently underway and the building is transforming.

“A little water view. I think it’s going to be nice,” said a regular at Neal and Pam’s.

Current Neal and Pam Owner, Zach Baker said this location is a perfect spot.

“On this side of the highway in Murrells Inlet, on the water, I don’t know that there will ever be anything in our lifetime that comes available again,” said Baker.

Baker said they’ve been thinking about this expansion for years.

“When we found this place, we have such a good following in the Inlet already and even further south, down into Pawley’s Island. We thought this was the perfect location to continue our journey,” said Baker.

This journey is one that many people thought might never happen after a fire forced Neal and Pam’s to close for eight months last year.

“We got back open, we had a great summer and this came available and we jumped at the opportunity,” said Baker.

Neal’s Creekhouse will have more space and a bigger kitchen, allowing Baker’s team to be more creative with their menu.

Baker said they will also have music and of course karaoke.

“We always say food doesn’t have to be pretentious to be delicious, and it’s more fun to eat in a bar than drink in a restaurant,” said Baker. “So that’s the kind of vibe we’re going for here.”

Baker said they can’t wait to serve the community, but they have a lot of work to finish before they’re ready to set a grand opening date.

Copyright 2023 WMBF. All rights reserved.

MURRELLS INLET — Lee’s Inlet Kitchen celebrated two milestones this year.

The Murrells Inlet restaurant, family-owned and operated since 1948, just turned 75. It was also recognized by Southern Living Magazine as the “Best Seafood Restaurant in South Carolina 2023.”

Not bad for a tiny spot that once was a gas station.

The restaurant’s history traces back to Eford and Pearl Lee, who moved to Murrells Inlet in the mid-1940s from Cool Springs, a rural farming community on S.C. 319 about four miles southeast of Aynor.

The duo decided to get into the restaurant industry despite coming from a generation of farmers. They first managed Lokey’s Restaurant — now the Hot Fish Club — and then White’s Restaurant, which used to be next door to Lee’s Inlet Kitchen. Eford Lee was also employed by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers and had a hand in carving out the Intracoastal Waterway.

But the Lee family wanted a restaurant and business they could call their own and were able to get their hands on a building at a price unheard of these days. They purchased an old Murrells Inlet gas station on the steps of the Horry County Courthouse in Conway for $800 through a public auction. That building soon became Lee’s Inlet Kitchen.

Over the decades, the building withstood two major hurricanes, Hazel in 1954 and Hugo in 1989.

Eford and Pearl’s son Billy Lee took over running the restaurant in the 1970s. Billy’s daughter Kelly Lee Dorman and her husband Dexter have been operating it since the early 1980s.

“When my parents took over, it was basically the front part, and it had one dining room where there were probably 20 tables, and what is now the waitress station was actually the kitchen,” said Adrian Dorman, marketing director and fourth-generation member of the family.

Dorman said her father is business-minded and had the foresight that they simply could not use the kitchen anymore due to anticipated growth.

“They actually just tore the back half of the building off and built the kitchen we have now and added another 1,400 square feet to it,” Dorman said. “That was a big gamble too because they had no idea if it was going to be successful, but it was definitely the right move because they were able to get in there, try some new stuff and get some new recipes going in addition to the original ones.”

Some may wonder why the Lees did not open their restaurant on the Murrells Inlet waterfront, but Dorman said there are many reasons for that.

“First off, in 1948 the waterfront was just the fishing dock and there weren’t restaurants over there. People didn’t want to eat where the fish were brought in,” Dorman said. “That was just a crazy concept. My great-grandmother also said that they didn’t want to be on the waterfront. They wanted to be on the road where all of the traffic was and she did not want to get blown away from a hurricane.”

Dorman said the interior of the building has pretty much stayed the same since 1985, but they renovated the front of the restaurant about seven years ago by vaulting the ceiling over the bar and lobby and bringing inside the original Lee’s Inlet Kitchen sign that was in storage for years.

“It’s such a mainstay and a fixture,” Dorman said. “It’s so easily recognizable and we wanted to keep that essence of the time period it was built in.”

The menu has not changed much over 75 years, with the complimentary hushpuppies and the seafood platter remaining favorites of patrons.

In 1948, a seafood platter was $1.50 and a fried version these days will cost you $30.95, but one compliment the family always gets is the food has always been consistent.

The restaurant’s menu features seafood sourced from the Carolina shores, appetizers, steaks, chicken, salads, a kid’s menu and homemade desserts. Their flour, cornmeal and grills are milled by Adluh in Columbia and they hand-peel their Fantail Shrimp, up to 150 pounds daily.

Editor’s note: What Myrtle Beach people, places or things make you nostalgic? Tell us more about this story or other notable stories that our journalists should know about our community. Email us at online@thesunnews.com.

At first glance, one can be fooled into thinking that the goats have returned to Goat Island located behind Drunken Jack’s restaurant in Murrells Inlet.

But the goatly-shapes are fake - metal statues that are a symbolic gesture of what once was a popular site for locals and visitors to the MarshWalk.

The goats - often numbering between six and seven - have lived on the island from April through November since about 1982.

One of the big events for onlookers was the rounding up of the goats around Thanksgiving each year to move the goats to their winter home. It was during that time that restaurant owner Al Hitchcock and volunteers would make “fools” out of themselves, chasing the goats around the island and through the marsh, Hitchcock said.

He doesn’t know how people found out about the date and time of the roundup, but he suspects it was a restaurant employee who would leak the information. About 150 to 200 people would come to watch.

However, in October 2022, things changed drastically for the goats when they were removed ahead of Hurricane Ian.

During Hurricane Ian, the water was chest high on the MarshWalk, Hitchcock said. A photo on Hitchcock’s phone shows only a tiny part of the island with the rest surrounded by water. If volunteers hadn’t removed the animals ahead of the storm, “We would’ve lost the goats,” he said.

“They would’ve hung me, run me out of town or put me on social media,” Hitchcock said of the goats’ fans. “I didn’t want any of the three.”

In February, Hitchcock made the decision to not return the goats after the island suffered extreme erosion from the king tides and hurricanes over the years, limiting space for the goats to roam safely, Hitchcock said.

In addition, Hitchcock said that relocating the goats on and off the island was stressful for the animals. Since the goats are pets, he was concerned for their safety and well-being.

“Us chasing the goats is not safe for us or the goats,” Hitchcock said.

On a sunny, but chilly Thursday, the Murrells Inlet goats are roaming a large patch of land, eating grass and soaking up the sun.

It’s their winter-now permanent location at Osprey Marina in the Socastee area. Hitchcock said the owners of the marina have been wonderful over the years to allow the goats to live there.

After their permanent removal, the marina’s owners took on the responsibility of caring for the goats. They seem happy in their location, but Hitchcock said they were also happy to get to the island.

When it came time to load up the goats to bring them to the island, Hitchcock said the ones who had been there before would line up at the gate. That’s because they would dine on leftovers from the restaurant, including items from the salad bar such as carrots and lettuce ends and hushpuppies.

At one time the island also had about six to eight peacocks. However, a hurricane one year came and blew them away, killing three, Hitchcock said.

The rest were rounded up and brought back to the island, but they flew away again. They are now living behind a boat landing in Murrells Inlet. There are about a dozen peacocks there.

Hitchcock has numerous stories about the goats, including a time when a goat got loose and roamed Murrells Inlet for two months. Another goat got loose and crossed the roadway into a woman’s garden and ate some of her vegetables. “I had to buy that lady two cases of collard greens,” Hitchcock said.

The goats were placed on the island to help keep the grass and underbrush down, according to Drunken Jack’s website.

But the truth is that it was another kind of grass that prompted Hitchcock and another man to bring the animals to the island.

Hitchcock said the goats were a prevention solution after some men began growing marijuana plants on the island. He said Murrells Inlet was a small town in the early ‘80s, and no one wanted it there. The goats took care of the problem, eating the plants.

When asked if the goats were affected by the marijuana, Hitchcock wasn’t sure, replying, “I don’t know what a high goat looks like.”

Hitchcock understands that people miss the goats. He said there’s not a day that he doesn’t get asked, “Where are the goats?”

While the metal goats are just a stand in, Hitchcock wanted people to know that the goats were OK. So he placed a sign with a photo of the goats on the farm on the side of his restaurant that says, “We miss y’all too.”

This story was originally published December 9, 2023, 7:00 AM.

MURRELLS INLET, S.C. (WBTW) — A Murrells Inlet fisherman who was asked to drop a memorial bottle 50 miles off the coast in 2021 says it was recently found in France.

Shane Bashor, owner and operator of Side Kick Charters in Murrells Inlet, was working on his charter boat three years ago when a woman he didn’t know approached him. She asked if he could take the bottle far off the coast and drop it in the ocean to remember her daughter.

“The chances of something floating from here to France have got to be pretty astronomical I would think,” Bashor said.

Bashor said the woman had lost her daughter almost five years ago to a laced fentanyl drug overdose. He said she put a letter remembering her daughter in the bottle, as well as purple ribbons for overdose awareness.

He said he waited a few months before he went out far enough to drop the bottle at sea. Three years went by without really thinking about it, and then, he said he received a text.

“I don’t know if you remember me or not, but I gave you this bottle for my daughter three years ago when we were in Myrtle Beach, and I got an email back from these two ladies that found it,” Bashor said.

Bashor said he can’t believe the bottle ended up in France three years later. All it would have taken to break it was a cargo ship hitting and cracking it and sinking it to the ocean floor.

Bashor said he thinks the bottle being found has brought the woman some healing and closure.

“Although it’s sort of a sad story it still makes me happy, and it feels as if it’s got a happy conclusion or ending to it,” Bashor said.

He said the people who found the bottle will probably take a ribbon and drop it back in the sea. He added maybe this isn’t the conclusion. The woman’s memorial could live on for another round of travels.

“Maybe it’ll wind up in Jamaica or Cuba or who knows where it goes from France, but I don’t know maybe three, four, five years from now I’ll get another crazy text out of the blue saying you’ll never believe where the bottle and letters made it to now,” Bashor said.

He said the woman is now an author and founder of the Forgotten Victims of North Carolina, which works to help families who have lost loved ones to drug overdoses.

* * *

Adrianna Lawrence is a multimedia journalist at News13. Adrianna is originally from Virginia Beach, Virginia, and joined the News13 team in June 2023 after graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University in May 2023. Keep up with Adrianna on Instagram, Facebook, and X, formerly Twitter. You can also read more of her work, here.