Carolina Forest Finally Has Somewhere To Walk After Dinner
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
"Wings are in my blood." That's how Chris Evans, co-owner of South Coast Beer Project, explained the menu when his team broke ground on Carolina Forest's first brewery. It's a small line about chicken wings, but it points at something bigger that happened to this neighborhood over the past few months: for the first time, growth here didn't mean another building you drive to, park at, and leave from. It meant a place connected to another place, on foot.
For more than a decade, "new" in Carolina Forest followed the same script. A parcel on International Drive would get graded, a drive-through lane would get poured, and a national chain would open its doors. That's how the area got its second McDonald's, and it's how a Bojangles and a BP station later filled in the corner across the street, according to reporting in the Myrtle Beach-area paper Myhorrynews at the time. Each stop was its own island. You drove in for one thing, you drove out, and if you wanted a second stop you got back behind the wheel to reach it.
This year broke that pattern, and the break happened at a very specific address.
South Coast Beer Project opened in late May 2026 at 5020 Carolina Forest Blvd, and it's the first brewery Carolina Forest has ever had. The building itself is a departure for its owners, Chris Evans and Susan Heryadi of Coastal Concepts Hospitality, who also run three Grumpy Monk locations and Hop N' Wich in Conway. This is the first time their team built a restaurant from the ground up instead of moving into an existing space, and the scale shows it: roughly 9,000 square feet of interior seating for 150 to 175 guests, plus an outdoor beer garden built to hold up to 250 more.
The beer itself comes from Brock Kurtzman, a name craft beer regulars in this area already know from his time at New South Brewing and Southern Hops Brewing Company. His lineup leans into Carolinas identity on purpose: a blonde ale, a raspberry wheat, an American brown called Board Meeting, and a mocha white stout named Queen Anne's Revenge after Blackbeard's ship. The kitchen sticks to Detroit-style pizza and wings, plus sandwiches and salads, all made in house. Hours run 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, which puts it firmly in weeknight-dinner territory rather than late-night-only.
None of that would be a departure on its own. Plenty of Grand Strand towns have a new brewery. What makes this one different is what sits 1,000 feet away.
South Coast Beer Project was built directly beside The Sneaky Beagle, a restaurant already owned by the same team, and the two buildings are now connected by a paved, lighted sidewalk that runs alongside a shared retention pond. You can walk from one restaurant's table to the other's bar without touching a parking lot in between.
Along that path, the developers built out an outdoor common space with:
That combination turns a single dinner decision into an evening. A family can eat pizza and wings at South Coast, walk the pond path while the kids burn off energy, and land at The Sneaky Beagle for a second round without ever getting back in the car. That is not a small logistical detail in a neighborhood where almost every other outing, from the grocery store to the elementary school pickup line, requires driving.
South Coast and The Sneaky Beagle are not the only signal that Carolina Forest's dining scene is consolidating instead of just multiplying. A few minutes away, two very different restaurants have opened on the same short stretch of River Oaks Drive.
SeaBasil, at 4036 River Oaks Drive, has built one of the strongest early reputations of any Grand Strand opening this year, according to a review roundup from Play Golf Myrtle Beach. The menu blends Thai staples, Pad See-Ew, red curry shrimp, hibachi platters, with fresh coastal seafood inside a sleek black-interior dining room that reads more upscale than its strip-mall address suggests. It earned a perfect 100 health score on Yelp, and reviewers have gone as far as calling out a server by name, "Tommy Terrific," in their write-ups.
Down the road at 4210 River Oaks Drive, O.A.K Prime Kitchen and Bar has quietly been doing the same kind of work with a Southern fine-dining menu built around grilled octopus, smoked oysters, and steaks. It's not a 2026 opening, but it has become one of the anchors locals now mention in the same breath as the newer spots, which says something about how the corridor's identity has shifted from fast-casual pass-through to an actual destination worth parking for once and staying a while.
Neither of these is connected by a lit walking path the way South Coast and The Sneaky Beagle are. But the fact that a Thai-coastal concept and a long-running Southern steakhouse both landed on the same stretch of River Oaks Drive suggests the corridor itself, not just one developer's plan, is becoming the draw.
The momentum hasn't stopped. Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q, the Alabama-born barbecue chain known for slow-smoked brisket and its Cheese Biscuits, filed for a commercial permit in Carolina Forest near Tanger Outlets, at Rodeo Drive and U.S. 501, earlier this year. As of this writing, no firm opening date has been announced, which is typical for a project still working through permitting. It won't be walkable to the South Coast or River Oaks clusters, sitting closer to the outlet mall corridor instead, but it adds another data point to the same trend: national and regional operators are betting that Carolina Forest residents will support full-service dining without driving toward the beach to find it.
The easy version of this story is "Carolina Forest got some new restaurants." The more useful version is that the shape of growth changed. For years, a new business here meant one more isolated stop competing for the same five-minute drive from your subdivision. What opened this year at 5020 Carolina Forest Blvd is different in kind, not just in menu. It's the first project built specifically so that one visit turns into two, on foot, across a pond, without a second parking lot.
If you've been driving toward Broadway at the Beach or the Market Common every time you wanted an evening out that felt like an occasion instead of a pickup order, this summer gave you a much shorter version of that same idea, minutes from home instead of twenty.
Carolina Forest keeps growing fast, and the businesses filling in behind it keep changing what a weeknight here can look like. If you're already living the Carolina Forest life and want to know what else is shifting in your corner of the Grand Strand, from new construction to the neighborhoods nearby, Nick Paolozzi tracks these changes as part of daily coverage of life along the coast. Reach out anytime you want a local's read on what's actually happening in your area, no obligation required.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
Whether you’re buying your first home, selling a property, or exploring Myrtle Beach living, we’re here to make the process seamless. With local expertise and a people-first approach, we’ll guide you every step of the way.