The Tell in Carolina Forest's 2026 Openings
Walk out of The Sneaky Beagle after dinner and you can now follow a 1,000-foot lit, paved path to a brewery next door. That path, and the fact that someone spent real money to light it, is the most useful piece of information about Carolina Forest right now. It says the operators building here in 2026 are not chasing weekend visitors. They are building for the people who live within a five-minute drive and want somewhere to go on a Tuesday.
That is the frame worth holding onto as you read the rest of this. Broadway at the Beach and the old Myrtle Beach Mall got the loudest 2026 openings on the Grand Strand. Carolina Forest got the ones designed to keep working after Labor Day.
Two openings this year sit on Highway 17 and are enormous. One opening sits on Carolina Forest Boulevard and is sized for the neighborhood. Put them side by side and the intent behind each one becomes obvious.
| Opened in 2026 | Location | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Guy Fieri's Downtown Flavortown | Myrtle Beach Mall | 50,000 sq ft |
| Ole Smoky Distillery & Yee-Haw Brewing | Broadway at the Beach | 40,000 sq ft |
| South Coast Beer Project | 5020 Carolina Forest Blvd. | 9,000 sq ft indoor plus 20,000 sq ft outdoor |
A 50,000-square-foot restaurant with duckpin bowling and 100 arcade games is built to catch tourists who arrived that morning. A 9,000-square-foot brewery with a playground and an 18-foot outdoor movie screen is built for parents who live two miles away and want to leave in twenty minutes if a six-year-old melts down. Both are legitimate bets. They are just bets on different customers.
South Coast Beer Project is Carolina Forest's first brewery, and residents have been asking for one for years. It opened June 1, 2026 from Chris Evans and Susan "Harry" Heryadi of Coastal Concepts Hospitality, the same team behind The Sneaky Beagle and The Grumpy Monk. The head brewer is Brock Kurtzman, whose name locals will recognize from stints at New South Brewing and Southern Hops Brewing Company.
The food is Detroit-style pizza and wings, made in-house. Evans, who grew up in Buffalo, has not been shy about the wings piece.
"Wings are in my blood."
The house beer list leans into Carolinas identity:
Hours run 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. The outdoor space includes a turf lawn, pond views, bounce houses, and that 18-foot movie screen. The 1,000-foot lit path to The Sneaky Beagle means you can drink at one and eat at the other without moving your car, which is exactly the kind of detail an operator only builds if they expect the same people to come back twice a week.
The brewery is the loudest 2026 story in Carolina Forest, but it is not the only one. Along the River Oaks Drive side, several openings have arrived without a press cycle.
SeaBasil, at 4036 River Oaks Drive #9, opened this year serving Thai staples alongside coastal seafood. Pad See-Ew, red curry shrimp, hibachi platters. The dining room is a sleek black interior that reads more elevated than the strip-mall address suggests. Reviews on Yelp and TripAdvisor have been unusually strong for a first-year restaurant.
O.A.K. Prime Kitchen and Bar has been the biggest surprise of the year. The Carolina Forest steakhouse recently earned Michelin recognition, which is not a distinction any restaurant in the 29579 zip code has held before. If you have out-of-town guests coming through, this is now the answer to "where should we go for a nice dinner near the house."
Scrambled Kitchen + Coffee opened as a modern brunch spot with specialty coffees and creative morning plates. River Oaks Pizzeria is doing hand-tossed pies and casual Italian. Fullbelly BBQ slotted in on the smokehouse side with ribs, pulled pork, and homestyle sides. None of these individually would draw a headline. Together they are the reason the neighborhood suddenly has options at 7 a.m., noon, and 9 p.m. that did not exist eighteen months ago.
The next opening to watch is Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q, which is coming to Rodeo Drive at U.S. 501 near Tanger Outlets. The Alabama-born chain applied for its commercial permit in January 2026 and will bring slow-smoked pulled pork, Texas-style brisket, St. Louis ribs, and its Cheese Biscuits to a corridor that has been dominated by fast-casual chains for years. This will be the closest Jim 'N Nick's location to the Grand Strand once it opens. The nearest one right now is in North Charleston.
The commercial side is not the only piece of Carolina Forest that changed this year. The Horry County Parks and Recreation side did too, and it followed the same pattern of investing in what year-round residents actually use.
The old wood playground at the Carolina Forest Recreation Center, at 2254 Carolina Forest Blvd., was more than fifteen years old and had rotted structurally to the point that the county pulled it down. The replacement is a $1.5 million aquatic-themed play area designed for ages 0 through 12, sited closer to the main building. The funding came through impact fees and life-cycle replacement dollars the County Council had already set aside for park improvements, per reporting from WPDE.
A few standing items at the same address are worth knowing if you have not been by in a while:
For anyone who has forgotten it exists, the Horry County Bike & Run Park is still tucked along the Intracoastal near River Oaks Drive. Seven miles of mountain biking and hiking trails across 70 acres, with the only real elevation change anywhere in the county. Open 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, free. If you have kids on bikes and have never taken them, that is the assignment for the next cool Saturday.
Read the openings as a set and a pattern shows up. On Highway 17, the biggest 2026 debuts are built at destination scale, aimed at visitors, and priced to make the numbers work off tourist volume. Inside Carolina Forest, the same year produced a first-time brewery with a playground in the yard, a Thai spot in a strip mall punching well above its address, a Michelin-recognized steakhouse, a brunch café, two casual family restaurants, and a $1.5 million public playground five hundred feet from all of it.
Operators do not open playgrounds and Michelin-caliber kitchens in the same square mile because they think tourists are going to drive twenty minutes inland from the beach. They open them because the residential base off Carolina Forest Boulevard and Highway 501 has finally gotten big enough, and stayed year-round enough, to support the kind of density of options that Mount Pleasant or Summerville figured out a decade ago. If you bought here five years ago on the theory that the amenities would eventually follow the rooftops, 2026 is the year that thesis stopped being a theory.
For a fuller look at what makes this pocket of Horry County tick, our Carolina Forest neighborhood page walks through the sub-communities inside the 9,000-acre footprint. And if a friend keeps asking whether Carolina Forest is still "just new construction," send them this post and then send them to South Coast on a Thursday around 6.
Thinking about a move within Carolina Forest, or curious what your current home would list for in a year that has this many new anchors within a five-minute drive? Jan and Dan at Coastal Beach Homes live and work this market every week and are happy to talk through what the last few quarters have actually meant for values on your street. Start Your Coastal Home Search when you are ready.
When you hire Jan and Dan, you get a team of professional real estate agent diligently working together on your behalf. They are knowledgeable and experienced professionals you can trust to best represent your interests in our unique market.
JAN AND DAN SITTER | COASTAL BEACH HOMES
ADDRESS
9628 N KINGS HWY
MYRTLE BEACH SC 29572