Dine & dance: New Grande Dunes area restaurant features live entertainment nightly
A pair of longtime Myrtle Beach area residents and business owners are joining forces to combine their areas of expertise into one establishment.
The new restaurant Dunes Bistro in the Grande Dunes Marketplace is run by co-managing partners Roger Davisson and Jeff Sisk, who combined have several decades of experience owning and operating restaurants, bars and nightclubs.
So naturally, Dunes Bistro combines food and entertainment in a quaint setting.
“I wanted to do a small restaurant with live entertainment,” Davisson said. “Live entertainment is what I like anyway. I want to keep live entertainment alive in Myrtle Beach, local stuff. I do bring in some stuff out of Charleston and Wilmington, some duos.”
Davisson is a former owner of several nightclubs and bars on the Grand Strand including 2001, Whiskey Beach, Beachwagon and the Celebrations Nightlife clubs in Broadway at the Beach, which included Malibu, Club Boca and Froggy Bottomz.
Sisk has owned five restaurants on the Strand over the past 20 years, including Martini’s in North Myrtle Beach and a pair of Sunrise Pancake Houses.
Chef Dewey Fowler is a military veteran and graduate of the Horry-Georgetown Technical College culinary school who previously worked at Rivertown Bistro in Conway.
Fowler describes the food as being “Southern style with a twist.”
Menu items include shrimp and grit cake, including a tasso ham cream sauce with multiple ingredients, kitchen-made blackberry barbecue sauce chicken, a daily fresh catch from Murrells Inlet, a bone-in pork chop, surf & turf nachos, salmon oscar, stuffed rigatoni topped with blackened filet tips, steaks, burgers, salads, a soup du jour, lobster bites consisting of claw and knuckle meat, and a crab dip- and beer cheese-crusted baked pretzel.
Being from Maryland, Sisk prides himself on the lump crab cake.
There are a couple vegan entrees, a kid menu and deserts including Lemoncello cake and double layer chocolate cake topped with Bailey’s Liquor.
Just a couple weeks after its opening, Dunes Bistro is operating with a limited lunch menu for another week or two.
“We don’t want to throw too much on us right away,” Sisk said. “This [lunch menu] is just something to open the doors so we don’t get overwhelmed. At lunchtime we don’t want to make people wait. It’s still baby steps like we did for dinner, but our dinners are phenomenal here.”
There is live entertainment nightly, generally from 5 or 6 to 9 p.m. on weekdays, from about 8-midnight Fridays and about 10-1 a.m. Saturdays. Live acoustic music generally in duos and trios is played most nights, with keyboardist Craig Beaumont from 5-9 on Fridays, Karaoke on Mondays and Jazz on Tuesdays.
Scheduled Saturday musicians include Brad Long, Gary Baker, Trent & Rory, Whisky Neat and the Rosarea Trio.
“The idea is to have people come in, sit down and be comfortable, enjoy the food and stay for a while,” Fowler said.
Dunes Bistro opens at 11 a.m. Monday through Friday and at 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, and the kitchen is open until 10 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday and midnight Thursday through Saturday.
It will open for breakfast beginning in January.
On tap at Dunes Bistro are eight beers, seven wines and a champagne, and there is also an extensive bottled wine list.
The owners expect to draw customers from Grande Dunes communities, which they have over the past couple weeks, as well as medical professionals from Grand Strand Regional Medical Center and the many medical offices off 82nd Parkway.
This story was originally published November 20, 2019 at 10:42 PM.
