Bodo’s German Restaurant will close after 38 years on 8th Ave. North. Will it relocate?
Helen Binninger’s recipes from her native Germany have been served at Bodo’s German Restaurant and European Pub since it opened on 8th Avenue North in Myrtle Beach in 1984.
Those recipes will be put on the back burner on April 30 when the business closes.
Will it reopen in a new location? That remains to be seen.
Two of her seven children, Patti and Bodo Jr., have been operating the family business for the past 20 years but will step away from work for a few months before determining if they will seek another home for Bodo’s. Patti said a future business would likely be on a smaller scale.
“After a good long run like that, I think we kind of owe it to ourselves to take a little bit of a break and take a little bit of time to remind us why we’ve been doing it so long,” said Bodo Jr., who plans to vacation in Germany this summer. “I don’t want to just jump back into something just for the reason of jumping right into something.
“Maybe take some time off to recharge the batteries and do a little bit of traveling, then come back and address it in October, and maybe address some opportunities that might be available.”
Bodo said the city of Myrtle Beach, which is his current landlord, has encouraged him to seek another location.
“I’d like to think that Bodo’s has meant a lot to a lot of people,” he said. “One of the reasons some people come to Myrtle Beach at all when they could go to any beach town is because of places like Bodo’s, unique ethnic places. This town has a lot of good places like that. I don’t think there are many that have been around the amount of time we have, but there are some nice little mom-and-pops still around.”
Until it closes, Bodo’s will be open 5-9 p.m. Monday, and Thursday-Saturday, and is BYOB.
A forced shutdown
Closing Bodo’s is not the Binningers’ decision.
They leased the building for decades but have been renting on short-term agreements since the coronavirus pandemic began, Bodo said.
Unbeknownst to the Binningers, the building’s owner sold it to the city of Myrtle Beach last year as part of the city’s purchase of 10 properties for $15 million for a promised downtown redevelopment project. Bodo said he learned his building was part of the sale on Facebook.
He said the family had possible opportunities to purchase the building over the years from some of the handful of different landlords it had, but “always had a pretty good, comfortable relationship with the landlords.”
The menu features pumpernickel bread, potato pancakes, soups, a wurst sampler, portobello mushroom dishes, chicken schnitzel, and veal, pork, beef and sausages all prepared in a number of German styles. There are several sides including spetzle, German dumplings, red cabbage and champagne kraut, and desserts include strudel, ice cream, Black Forest cake and German chocolate cake.
“It would be nice to be able to continue to provide my mother’s wonderful recipes because they are certainly the reason people have been coming to Bodo’s for many years,” Bodo said.
The history of Bodo’s
Bodo Sr. and Helen had seven children, including three who were born before they emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1956.
Bodo Sr. and his daughter Bobbsy opened Bodo’s, but Bodo Sr. died just six months later, at the age of 54, in Germany after falling ill while on vacation with Helen.
So Bodo Jr. and Helen moved to Myrtle Beach from Atlanta so she could be the principal cook at the restaurant, which was then primarily run by her older sons Hans and Axel.
Helen essentially retired in 2001, when Bodo Jr. and Patti took over the operation, and Bodo Jr. became the primary cook, which he remains.
“Everybody in my family kind of has contributed in one form or fashion over the 38 years that we’ve been here,” Bodo said. “It’s been kind of like three different phases.”
Believing his business would be successful before it even opened, Bodo Sr. initially signed a 30-year lease for the building.
“That was a long-term goal of my dad’s,” Bodo said. “I only know a handful of restaurants that have been around as long as we have.”
The Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, which closed in 1993, helped establish Bodo’s as a year-round business “because everybody in the Air Force was familiar with German food,” Bodo said.
As businesses closed or left the downtown area around Bodo’s in the 1990s and early 2000s, the restaurant turned to live entertainment and light-night service to supplement business in the offseason.
“We’d become really busy from 2 o’clock in the morning with the bar scene, being the only German restaurant that played Pink Floyd,” Bodo said. “Even my mom used to come out of the kitchen and say, ‘Turn off that German music and put on some Pink Floyd or something.’”
Tuesday nights featured singers/songwriters with the band Sideways Derby, and Thursday nights featured a band of Coastal Carolina students called Brett Hush. “There was a buzz in town about Bodo’s on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Bodo said.
The restaurant still has a homey couch and TV that plays classic rock concerts and videos in the bar area, and an old-school foosball table.
A rebirth?
The Binningers are keeping the business phone number and encouraging people to follow the Facebook page to monitor the future of Bodo’s and keep lines of communication open.
It has been increasingly busier in recent weeks as people learn it’s closing. Customers have been buying items off the restaurant’s walls and T-shirts as mementos, and Patti has also been accommodating dozens of requests to mail T-shirts.
“That’s been kind of a good feeling, people letting you know how much we’ve meant to them over the years,” Bodo said. “Sometimes you don’t get rich in the restaurant business, but when people share those kinds of things with you, that makes it worthwhile, you know.”
This story was originally published April 19, 2022 at 8:43 AM.
