If you’re looking for the best dining room view in the Charleston area and you’re looking in Downtown or Mt. Pleasant, you’re not going to find it. In fact, if you do want to find it, you may very well need a map.
Bowens Island Restaurant, an establishment that features plastic furniture and doesn’t accept credit cards, is located right along the Sol Legare Creek, about a half a mile down a dirt road right in between James Island and Folly Beach.
Once you do manage to find the restaurant, you are immediately struck by the overwhelmingly casual atmosphere. There are no real menus to be found, just a handwritten piece of paper taped to the glass of the building where you place your order. The options aren’t plentiful, but there is enough variety to please most seafood lovers. There are local favorites like shrimp and grits and
Frogmore stew, as well as standards like fried shrimp and crab cakes. There is a section for seasonal items, including their specialty, oysters, which were unfortunately out of season during our visit. After ordering, you seat yourself at one of the plastic tables surrounded by lawn chairs that are spread inside the
dock house and wait for your name to be called. Surprisingly, even though we were there around 7 p.m. on a Saturday, the “dining room” wasn’t particularly crowded. Still, service was fairly slow, but, fortunately, the view alone provides more than enough distraction while you wait. From
our table, we were able to look directly out over the creek and watch the
sun begin to set. Short of literally eating on the beach, I can’t possibly imagine a better setting to enjoy a plate of fresh seafood.
It had been a while since I had ordered any fried seafood at a restaurant, so I was eager to dive into my seafood platter ($13.75) which came with fried fish, shrimp, a crab cake, French fries, hush puppies, and approximately a thimble full of coleslaw (my apologies, your cholesterol may have jumped about 15 points just from reading that last sentence). I’ll start out with the positives. The hush puppies were fantastic. They were enormous and cooked to golden brown perfection. The fried shrimp were also wonderful. The outside batter was nice and crispy while the shrimp remained juicy and flavorful. On the down side, I found the crab cake to be dry and largely lacking any distinct crab flavor. I love jumbo lump crab cakes, which put the focus on the actual crab itself, but Bowens Island’s version seemed to have a much too high percentage of breading. I also found the batter on my fish fillet to be too thick, which overwhelmed any flavor the fish may have had. Praise or criticism aside, if you choose to order the seafood platter you can be fully assured that you will not go home hungry. Your body even may, as mine did, manifest physical signs of its disgust with the amount of fried food you’ve forced it to process (about 5 hours after our meal when I was trying to go to sleep I was hit with a particularly unpleasant stomach ache, but nothing that a few Tums couldn’t fix).
After your meal, you return to the counter where you placed your order to pay your bill. Nothing seems to be done with too much attention to detail here when it comes to change or tip; you’re left with instructions to throw a few dollars in the bucket “for that lovely young lady out there.”
It’s places like Bowens Island that make me cringe every time I drive down Meeting Street and see the massive line outside Hyman’s. It’s not even that Bowens Island’s food blew me away, it’s the fact that the food was comparable (and probably a little better) in taste and superior in quality to Hyman’s, but a little more affordable and with exceedingly better ambiance.
All-in-all, despite my stomach ache, I fully plan on dining at Bowens Island Restaurant again. The next time, however, I’m going to order something that won’t cause my body to hate me. I’m excited to try their Frogmore stew, which I’ve read nothing but positive opinions about, as well as their shrimp and grits. If you need more motivation to check it out, it is interesting to note that, before a fire destroyed the building, the restaurant’s original incarnation (at the same location) received recognition at the
2006 James Beard Awards as an American Classic. So, go ahead and make the trek, Bowens Island is a great location for a casual summer date or the perfect place to cap off a long day spent at Folly Beach.
Share this review with your friends:
Related posts:
The Fat Hen - Johns Island Restaurant Review
Huge Congratulations to Chef Robert Stehling of Hominy Grill, 2008 James Beard Award Winner for “Best Chef Southeast”
The Buccaneer Restaurant & Museum - Media Event Notes
If you’re looking for the best dining room view in the Charleston area and you’re looking in Downtown or Mt. Pleasant, you’re not going to find it. In fact, if you do want to find it, you may very well need a map. Bowens Island Restaurant, an establishment that features plastic furniture and doesn’t accept credit cards, is located right along the Sol Legare Creek, about a half a mile down a dirt road right in between James Island and Folly Beach.
I always enjoy going to Bowen’s Island. Winter is the best time because of the oysters and because there are no skeeters then.
As far as other waterfront views, I like Fleet Landing downtown. In Mt. Pleasant, there are the restaurants along Shem Creek. The Wreck is my favorite–and it has a similar flavor to Bowen’s Island.
I just went out to Rosebank Cafe at Bohicket Marina and enjoyed the food there and the view. Too bad that someone doesn’t take over the old Privateer that is now closed.