For thirty years, if you gave someone directions on Highway 17 South, you probably said "turn past Sea Merchants." That building at 1104 Highway 17 S is gone now, gutted and being rebuilt as White Heron, an upscale coastal seafood restaurant from the team behind Drift and Imperfecto Cantina. It is the most obvious sign of something residents already sense: the North Myrtle Beach food and event calendar you knew two summers ago is not the one you have this summer.
This is a look at what has opened, what is opening within weeks, and where the good Thursday nights are hiding. If you already live here, treat it as a running list. If you have out-of-town family arriving in August, this is your answer to the question they always ask on the drive in.
The Worley family is quietly rewriting Main Street
The most consequential change in North Myrtle Beach dining is not any single restaurant. It is who is doing the opening. On the northeast side of Main Street, the Worley family, longtime property owners in the Ocean Drive area, has shifted from landlord to operator. H.G. Worley Jr. is heading the redevelopment, and he framed the family's thinking simply: once you live and breathe a community for years, you know what works and what doesn't.
The first visible piece is OD Taco Co., a restaurant and beer garden that took over the former Fenway Grill space with a target opening of May 15, 2026. It serves tacos, burritos, and quesadillas made to order daily, with a beer garden and specialty cocktails once the liquor license clears. The family also bought and reopened the historic Ocean Drive Barber Shop.
The bigger move is what the plans call Shag City USA. Phase one replaces the former Duffy Street Seafood Shack building with a two-story restaurant, relocates the Melt ice cream shop, and folds in additional storefronts. The Worleys have described OD Taco Co. as a "springboard" into owner-operated family businesses on their properties, not a one-off. If they follow through, Main Street stops being a rotation of leased-out concepts and starts behaving like a curated block.
Openings to know, at a glance
| Restaurant | Where | Opening | Concept |
|---|---|---|---|
| White Heron | 1104 Hwy 17 S (former Sea Merchants) | May 2026, per its Facebook page | Upscale coastal seafood |
| OD Taco Co. | Main Street (former Fenway Grill) | Target May 15, 2026 | Tacos, burritos, beer garden |
| The Grove House | Cherry Grove | Now open | Coastal dining, northern Strand |
| 357 Brewers | Grande Dunes area | Spring 2026 | Waterfront brewery, Intracoastal stage |
That is four openings inside a roughly 20-minute drive, three of them anchored in North Myrtle Beach proper. For a town where a common complaint used to be that a week-long vacation ran out of dinner options by Wednesday, that math has changed.
Cherry Grove finally gets an addition, not a replacement
Cherry Grove diners have leaned on the same short list for years. The Shack. Snooky's Oceanfront Restaurant. Duffy Street Seafood Shack. Those places earn their spot on the list, which is exactly why nothing new sticks up there. It is hard to break into a neighborhood where the regulars already know their seat.
The Grove House opened this year at the northern end of the Strand and did the difficult thing of adding to that lineup rather than trying to replace anyone on it. For residents in Cherry Grove and near Windy Hill, that means the drive south for a sit-down dinner is optional for the first time in a while. It is worth watching whether The Grove House builds a regular clientele the way its neighbors have, because that is the test of whether the northern end can support more than a fixed roster.
The Thursday-night rhythm most guests miss
Ask a visitor what happens on Main Street on a Thursday in August and they will probably shrug. Ask a local and they will point you to The Horseshoe.
The Music on Main concert series runs Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at The Horseshoe at Main Street and Ocean Boulevard. The August 2026 dates are the 6th, 13th, 20th, and 27th, then September picks up again on the 3rd and runs through the 24th. It is free, it is outside, and it is scaled for people who want to walk over from their house, not people who bought a ticket six weeks ago.
Pair that with the North Myrtle Beach Farmers Market on Fridays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and you have the framework for a two-day resident rhythm that visitors rarely tap into. Concert Thursday, market Friday, beach Saturday. If you have been meaning to make a weekly habit of one of these, the August calendar is the easiest on-ramp of the year.
From Irish Italian International to NMB Live!
For 21 years, the Irish Italian International Festival was the fall marker in North Myrtle Beach. This year, the City replaced it with NMB Live!, described as a reimagining of Main Street as a destination for live entertainment, local flavor, and family fun, with more than 150 vendors, live music, live performances, and live art in a single day.
A festival name change is easy to shrug off. The interesting question is what the switch signals. Irish Italian was a heritage festival. NMB Live! is not. It is a broader, format-driven event, and it lines up with the same shift the Worley redevelopment implies: North Myrtle Beach is treating Main Street less like a seasonal draw and more like a year-round entertainment corridor with a summer peak.
For residents, the practical piece is that the September calendar now has a much larger single-day event than the one you may remember from 2019.
Reading the pattern
Line the changes up next to each other and a picture forms:
- A seafood operator with two proven Myrtle Beach concepts crossing into North Myrtle Beach at the old Sea Merchants site.
- A local family that owns key Main Street parcels stepping into direct operation.
- A new Cherry Grove restaurant adding to a lineup instead of churning through it.
- A 21-year heritage festival replaced with a larger, format-driven event.
- A Thursday concert series and Friday farmers market that reward showing up every week.
None of those are dramatic on their own. Together they describe a town where operators who know what they are doing, in the phrasing of one local guide, are looking at North Myrtle Beach and seeing demand for quality sit-down dining and everyday programming that had not been met. The old joke that dinner options run out by Wednesday of a week-long stay is getting harder to say with a straight face.
A short August plan
If you want a specific weekend to test the new rhythm, try this. Thursday, walk to The Horseshoe by 6:30 for Music on Main. Friday morning, hit the North Myrtle Beach Farmers Market between 10 and 12 before it thins out. Friday evening, drive Highway 17 South and look at the White Heron construction on the way to dinner somewhere you already trust, then compare notes when it opens. Saturday, run north to Cherry Grove and give The Grove House a real try, ideally at a time when The Shack has a wait long enough that you would have picked something else anyway.
That plan uses only places that exist right now. The point of the exercise is not the individual meal. It is noticing how many more slots the local calendar has than it did last August.
Ready to make a move on the Strand?
Whether you are already at home in Ocean Drive or Cherry Grove and thinking about your next place, or you are watching this stretch of coast from farther away, Kirk Stalvey is Conway-born and works the Grand Strand every week. If any of the new openings on Main Street or Highway 17 changed how you think about where to plant next, book an appointment and let's talk through what is on the market now.
