“You could cook with it, but it was nasty for coffee or tea. “All we had was well water,” Melsopp recalls. “We put in pepper and onions so they have flavor, and not a lot of filler like some other places.”Īlthough the two women have made few changes, they are both grateful for one big change since the restaurant opened: employees no longer have to haul water for the restaurant. “Our crab cakes are the best,” Melsopp says. The gravy is brown and spicy,” Melsopp says), the blueberry-walnut French Toast, and of course, for the crab cakes, served both on a sandwich slathered with tartar sauce, and as a Crab Cake Benedict. It’s not creamy like you get with shrimp and grits at some places. Puffy biscuits are just one of the dishes that keeps people coming back.ĭiners come for the shrimp and gravy (“our shrimp and gravy is made from an original recipe. The café is named for the sea biscuit shell, which looks somewhat like a sand dollar, “but all puffed up, like one of our biscuits,” says Szymanski. “It helps us keep our charm,” Szymanski says, and Melsopp agrees, citing a popular restaurant in Charleston that built an addition, then slowly went out of business because they were unable to manage the extra space and the extra diners. Between the dining room and a screened porch, the restaurant seats about 60, but both owners say they pride themselves on serving quickly, and, on busy weekend days, they serve about 300 breakfasts a day. The lack of change includes the acceptance of cash only, but that doesn’t stop the hungry crowd. The restaurant tends to keep the same people working, including the waitress, Laurie, who came to Sea Biscuit because she had young children and wanted the flexibility of waitressing, and who is still there nine years later Mary “who’s a friendly greeter and knows a lot of people,” according to Szymanski and the chefs, including Chris, “who just makes the prettiest omelets,” she says. Since taking over, they have made only tweaks to the menu, “nothing crazy…people from 20 years ago would say it’s almost exactly the same,” Melsopp says. They say the fact that they both knew the restaurant so well helped the previous owners decide to turn it over to them. Melsopp had joined the staff three years earlier than Szymanski, left for a while and later returned to stay. Eventually, she wound up at Sea Biscuit as a waitress and worked her way up to manager. She left culinary school back home in Minneapolis in the 1970s when she decided she didn’t like working in the kitchen. Szymanski had been with the restaurant since 1997. According to Melsopp and Szymanski, the original couple was ready to hand over the reins after working together since the café opened in 1986. The menu has changed little since the two women took over the business in 2008 from the previous owners. That kind of fierce loyalty to the restaurant and its food isn’t unusual, says Wendi Szymanski, the café’s other owner. “She had the corned beef hash and a gravy biscuit,” recalls Lori Melsopp, one of the café’s two owners. She wanted two things besides seeing her daughter: to dip her toes in the ocean again, and to have breakfast at the Sea Biscuit. Not too long ago, someone picked up a Crab Cake Benedict because a dying friend wanted it for a last meal.Įarlier this fall, a woman in an Isle of Palms nursing home asked her daughter to visit from Tennessee. On at least two occasions, breakfast at the café has been on someone’s bucket list. When people say they want their last meal to be a breakfast from the Sea Biscuit Café, it’s not hyperbole. The café has been open for 28 years and, other than adding a new mermaid wall hanging or two, the little blue and white café with the screened porch has kept itself relevant by offering the same tasty breakfasts and lunches that become part of family memories. The Sea Biscuit Café on the Isle of Palms has managed to stop time.īy HELEN MITTERNIGHT » Photos by ASHLEY WALKER Forget ungainly high rises and the blemishes of ugly development.
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