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Up the Creek

click any of the photos below to start the slideshow

Fishing and feasting in Murrells Inlet 80 miles north of Charleston

Photographs by
Peter Frank Edwards
With its glowing sign and always-full parking lot, Lee’s Inlet Kitchen has been in the same family since 1948.
Although it’s one of the smallest restaurants in Murrells Inlet, the Inlet Crab House & Raw Bar is still a favorite for fried softshell crabs and Bloody Marys.
The creeks around Murrells Inlet are prime territory for all manner of seafood.
Vietnamese immigrant An Mathis Springs has been harvesting blue crabs from these waters for more than three decades.
At Lee’s Inlet Apothecary & Gifts, you can sit on a stool at the soda fountain and order a malt or a homemade chicken salad sandwich.
to dinner, or walking it off; if there’s any doubt after seeing the local menus and fish sculptures, there are frequent signs proclaiming Murrells Inlet as the South Carolina Seafood Capital.
Surfer and artist Gaston “Buddy” Locklear was raised in Murrells Inlet and shows his work at Ebb & Flow, a co-op gallery where nearly two dozen local artists exhibit their work.
The sign for the Crab Cake Lady store, which sells An Mathis Springs’ cakes and is owned and operated by members of her extended family.
Not only fisherman ply the waters around the town—kayakers are also a common sight, paddling through the meandering creeks.
Comforting side dishes like butter beans and hush puppies round out the old-fashioned seafood dinners at Lee’s Inlet Kitchen.
When fish is ordered at Harrelson’s Seafood, fresh fillets are pulled from the seafood counter, cut into weighty hunks, and fried or blackened just right.
Murrells Inlet has a half-mile-long public boardwalk along the creek in front of several of the town’s busiest restaurants, and in the afternoons and evenings the walk fills with people on their way to dinner, or walking it off;
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