Hilton Head Island Restaurants

We saw this restaurant when the tour stopped at Fort Mitchel, but we have not eaten there. It should have a good view of the sunset over the ICW.

SUNDAY BRUNCH
11:00-2:00 pm

DINNER
March - November Seven Days, 5:00 - 10:00 pm

December - February Seven Days, 5:00 - 9:30 pm

Their website says:

What is now one of Hilton Head Island's favorite "fine dining" restaurants, serving steak, seafood and Lowcountry favorites, started out in a humbler fashion.

April 3, 1973 was .. to the day the island's newest restaurant, the Old Fort Pub, opened for business.

"We had one requirement that most restaurants on the island didn't have," said Islander Andy Twisdale, the restaurant's first manager. "The staff had to know how to drive tractors." It seems that in inclement weather, the parking lot turned into a bog and patrons' cars had to be towed out to the road...

Fort Mitchel, actually a shore battery, was "re-discovered" when the restaurant site was being determined. “Everybody knew it was there,” remembered Howard Farmer, a long-time island resident, “but no one paid it much attention. It was completely covered with vines and weeds.”...

From the very beginning, the restaurant had a certain panache. The idea, to make a "historical building," was quite successful. First-time visitors still ask if the building is somehow associated with the fort. To create strong ties to its neighbor, Ballatine had Islander Tim Doughtie design a miniature museum, featuring a collection Charles Fraser's photos of the period and newly discovered photos of Union troops on Hilton Head. The display still delights visitors.

On opening day, Andy Twisdale's mother, Janice, and Miss Annie Mae Holmes were in the kitchen, cooking okra gumbo and cornbread. "We always tried to have authentic, Lowcountry food on the menu, Twisdale recalled. The authenticity definitely came from Miss Annie Mae, as she preferred to be called, who dated her ancestry on Hilton Head to the War Between the States. She also had other preferences, Twisdale said. For one thing, no one could ever swear in her kitchen. For another, she did not work on Sundays. "She was a real character," Twisdale said, "and one beautiful person."

...Twisdale said because of its location, well away from more popular tourist destinations on Hilton Head, and its stunning sunset views across Skull Creek, the Old Fort Pub became a favorite of "locals," a kind of secret place to escape. Big oyster roasts and fish boils held outside were very popular.

" We had all sorts of crazy ‘events.' to attract customers. Once we had a ‘snowball fight.' We used marshmallows. But we only did that once. We discovered when the marshmallows got mixed in the cocktails, they made a very gooey mess on the floor," Twisdale said. "It was all great fun."

The Old Fort Pub remained a "local" restaurant for years. That was one of the reasons The Lowrey Group decided to buy it in 1993. After a few months of refurbishing, the Old Fort Pub again opened its doors to islanders on, most appropriately, July 4th. And the rest, as they say, is history.

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