First, Ocracoke Island’s restaurants were hit by a hurricane. Then came the coronavirus.

At the elbow of North Carolina’s Pamlico Sound in the Outer Banks, Ocracoke is one of the East Coast’s most isolated places, reachable only by ferry or airlift.

But it is also one of its most popular tourist destinations. There are New Jersey families who have traveled to this island every year for generations, longer than some of the island’s newer residents have lived here.

It is a place of uncommon food bounty, with excellent local beer and tea, a weird proliferation of smoothie shops, and closely held culinary traditions, from Outer Banks-style chowder to Ocracoke fig cake. And especially, there is the seafood: crabs and red drum gathered in the sound, pungent bluefish and Spanish mackerel from the inlet, or flounder and sheepshead and black drum often caught through the 500-year-old tradition of pound netting.

But this year, the island and its restaurants are poised between two catastrophes: Hurricane Dorian and the pending threat of the coronavirus.

When Dorian came to North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Sept. 6, 2019, Nat Schramel was barricaded inside his family’s Ocracoke Island restaurant, the Flying Melon Cafe.

“In two minutes, I watched it go from no water to more water than I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “There was this dramatic surge. And then I watched this slow, gradual rise getting closer and closer. I was counting the boards on the wheelchair ramp, watching each half an inch.”

The Flying Melon was lucky, as it turned out: The waters subsided after coming within 5 inches of the restaurant’s raised floor. But not everyone was as fortunate. No lives were taken, and the island’s fishing boats survived. But a third of the buildings on Ocracoke were inundated by the floods. Beehives went under, and oyster farms lost their equipment to the sea.

“Many people’s family homes 1/4 ufb01lled with generations of memories were reduced to piles of splintered wood and twisted metal that became known as ‘Mount Trashmore,' located at the public beach access,” wrote Katy Mitchell, owner of local cafe Magic Bean Coffee Bazaar, in a message to The Pilot. “We held each other tightly and cried, and then we worked. We did what needed to be done. We would overcome hell and high water.”

The island filled with contractors or neighbors with power saws; trucks hauled more than 6,000 tons of debris off the island.

But almost as soon as local businesses started to come out from under the hurricane, the Outer Banks was again closed this spring by the threat of the coronavirus pandemic, leaving residents safe from the virus but without tourist income for two more months, in a year when many residents were already stretched thin with debt after Dorian.

The tourists came back May 16, the day Ocracoke reopened to outsiders.

“I went down to the beach the way I had for a few months, and there were three cars on the beach,” Schramel said. “By the time I hopped out of the water, it was cars for miles.”

Mitchell had mixed feelings on the subject. She’d worried she’d lose her business after exhausting her savings account repairing a cafe that had taken on 6 inches of water during Dorian. But so far, the island has been spared a confirmed case of the virus. And she is worried tourists will bring it with them, to an island without many health care resources.

“It’s summer, so come on down to our favorite coronavirus vacation spot and quarantine (I don’t think that word means what they think it means),” she wrote, with no small amount of irony.

Many businesses are still closed. But hotels and rentals that have managed to reopen are now mostly booked, some with visitors who reserved their rooms a year in advance.

On an island where hundreds lost their cars to Dorian, many locals chug past on the same little golf carts that tourists rent to get around. Construction equipment clogs the streets of a tiny town with few streets on offer. A little sign posted to a tree near the harbor offers encouragement: “Ocracoke>Dorian. We got this!”

Restaurants, including Mitchell’s and Schramel’s, have had to figure out how to keep their businesses alive while also keeping themselves safe from people who arrive from up and down the coast.

Here’s a brief portrait of what Ocracoke food and drink looks like now.

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Fine seafood on the lawn: The Flying Melon

181 Back Road, 252-928-2533

When the island shuts down to outsiders, so do many of the fishermen who no longer have a place to sell their fish, said The Flying Melon’s front of house manager, Nat Schramel.

This made it hard for a restaurant devoted to local seafood to do business, and so The Flying Melon shut down as well until May. But shutting down access to the island for nearly two months for coronavirus was also helpful, Schramel said: It gave home and business owners time to fix up their buildings.

“In some ways the coronavirus has benefited me personally,” said Schramel, who’s been living in the restaurant while elevating his house. “I still have my furniture inside the dining rooms.”

The restaurant’s distinctive green-walled dining room is still closed, out of caution. Mike and Paula Schramel, owners of the restaurant, are now sending their fine local seafood out to the lawn instead. That includes an elegant, rich, Ocracoke-style chowder unsullied by tomato or cream and redolent of local clams; house-smoked bluefish served over crostini; and a pecan-crusted red drum dolloped with a lemon beurre blanc sauce.

But masks are required while ordering. All dining happens on picnic tables, and there are fewer seats for diners, which means the restaurant isn’t taking in nearly as much revenue.

“It’s a resilient community,” Schramel said. “And we’re going do what makes our employees safest. We spoke with some who said they quit their jobs elsewhere because of safety. They’re happy with how we did it.”

Also: Looking to procure your fresh seafood to cook at home instead? Do what the locals do and stop by the Ocracoke Seafood Company (416 Irvin Garrish Hwy.), known locally as the “fish house,” collectively run by the watermen of Ocracoke. Or get oysters in unholy variety at the newly reopened Ocracoke Oyster Company (621 Irvin Garrish Hwy.), also home to what they believe to be the world’s first fig-smoked barbecue.

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The tacos: Eduardo’s Taco Stand

10 Lawton Lane, 252-928-0234, eduardosocracoke.com

Eduardo’s is the kind of taco spot that could exist only here on the Outer Banks. Rebuilt after Dorian a bit down the street from its old location, the little green taco stand is a blending of the traditions Eduardo Chavez grew up with in Mexico, and the seafood obsessions of Ocracoke.

And so, sure, there are carne asada and pollo tacos with cilantro and onions (and “gringo” ground beef tacos in hard shells, if that’s who you are.) But the most interesting food items at the taco stand are Chavez’s unique nods to the local culture.

A taco made with cheese and an abundance of blue crab fished from local waters was like a classic crab melt without the distraction of bread, topped also with avocado and pico de gallo and some optional salsa verde. A fried shrimp taco, meanwhile, is filled with plump North Carolina shrimp seasoned a way a Southerner would recognize, augmented with mango pineapple salsa. Both are delicious, and both are found, perhaps, only here.

Meanwhile, scallop tacos and burritos come not with the wee mini-scallops of many Mexican restaurants, but rather the meaty behemoths favored by a fishing town.

Through both the glass of the food window and the muffle of masks during the pandemic, it may be hard to get your order understood. Speak your choice loudly, and with pride.

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The beer: 1718 Brewing

1129 Irvin Garrish Highway, 252-928-2337, facebook.com/1718BrewingOcracoke

The best beer you’re likely to drink while on Ocracoke is the stuff brewed on the island, at 1718 Brewing, named after the year when Blackbeard met his fate. Especially, this means a tropical and hazy New England IPA called Perfect Afterthought, a lightly spiced and rich Mexican chocolate stout, and a magic trick of a coffee kolsch: light and crisp and clear, but brimming with the flavor of cold-brewed coffee.

Its owner, Garick Kalna, also helped design The Flying Melon — people on Ocracoke tend to wear a lot of hats — and the two-floor brewery used to be the home of what was perhaps the island’s most lauded restaurant, the Cafe Atlantic. 1718 also serves a menu of casual fare.

But at 1718, too, you’ll likely be drinking on the vast expanse of the patio, after ordering through clear plastic designed to protect its employees. Table space indoors is minimal.

Also: If you don’t drink 1718 1/4 u2032s beer at the brewery, you can likely have a pint on the porch at Zillie’s Island Pantry (538 Back Road), a little wine and beer bottle shop a bit off the main drag.

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The hangout: Howard’s Pub

1175 Irvin Garrish Highway, 252-928-4441, howardspub.com

In Ocracoke, if someone says they’re going to “the pub,” they pretty much always mean Howard’s.

An earlier version of the sprawling pub became the first spot that beer could be drunk on the island in 1979, home to a raucous crowd of shrimpers who, legend has it, almost got the place shut down over a drunken brawl.

The pub is now a family-friendly institution that survived 6 inches of floodwater last year. But you won’t see the tidelines. The sprawling two-floor pub is instead filled with vanity license plates and hung with a profusion of flags.

The menu sports local craft beer, chili-topped Carolina-style burgers, a deeply silly banana-pineapple-rum concoction aptly named the Ocracoma, and a selection of local oysters our bartender steered us away from for now: The crop had not yet recovered from the storm, he said, and he was tired of getting plates sent back.

The bar top and stools were open to drinkers, and the mood on the subject of social distancing was pretty loose — a guilty pleasure that felt like both a rare privilege and possible foolishness. Those less interested in sharing air, and the pub’s convivial atmosphere, can avail themselves of the upstairs deck.

Also: Some of the old Ocracoke hangs have not yet been able to reopen, from Dajio to the Jolly Roger. But SmacNally’s (180 Irvin Garrish Highway) will let you drink your beer with crab cakes or scallop po’boys right on the water next to the boat harbor. Note, however, that this is another spot where drinkers were packed pretty close together on our visit.

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Fig cakes at Sweet Tooth and the Fig Tree Deli

1015 Irvin Garrish Hwy., 252-928-3481

Because Ocracoke has a beach, there must be fudge, and this bakery and candy shop obliges in heartening variety, from vanilla to chocolate pecan. Truffles abound, and so do candies and many versions of pastry.

But the Fig Tree also offers a singular delicacy that was most likely invented about 60 years ago by Ocracoker Margaret Garrish: a Southern spiced cake with the added richness and fullness of fig preserves in the batter. Figs are a hallmark of Ocracoke, with at least nine varieties of fig growing on the island, and an annual fig festival with a fig-cake bake-off.

But that fig festival will be virtual this year, owing to the pandemic. And Darlene Styron’s traditional pecan-studded fig cakes, with house-made preserves, were hard to come by until June 23, when she was finally able to open again after months fixing up the Fig Tree after the hurricane. Honey from her beehives, decimated by Dorian, will not be back this year; instead, the bees are busy pollinating the neighbors’ gardens.

And in the meantime, said Styron, her biggest fight is persuading people to wear masks in her sweet shop.

“Obviously that’s the worry: What visitors bring,” she said. “Every day we battle with people about wearing masks. They say, ‘I don’t have to, I don’t want to.’ Well, in here, they do.”

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Local tea and coffee at the Magic Bean Coffee Bazaar

35 School Road, 252-588-2440, magicbeanocracoke.com

The Magic Bean Coffee Bazaar is like a little carnival out in its yard: mismatched tables and chairs, bees buzzing in the bushes, and a big hammock spread between two gnarled trees.

The smoothies are fresh and organic, and the coffee comes from Synchronicity in Greensboro, North Carolina. The locally blended Live Oak teas — including an excellent black tea made with local fig and cherry — are made by Kate McNally, who plays in a band called the Woman Presidents with Katy Mitchell, Magic Bean’s owner.

For Mitchell, Dorian was a tragedy buoyed by generosity, with help not only from her neighbors but patrons and longtime lovers of the island who sent food and medical supplies. She turned her own three-room Airbnb into rooms for local residents who had lost their homes.

But in addition to the renovations since Dorian, Mitchell had to add two ordering windows to the side of her cafe so customers could order from outside. The cafe’s interior remains closed. Only one group at a time is allowed on the patio to order, and they’re required to wear masks.

But even as she’s grateful to be able to serve customers on the patio, Mitchell knows she still has work to do.

“I had 6 inches of water inside my shop. I was able to save most of my equipment, losing two fridges and a freezer,” she wrote. “The 1/4 ufb02oors had to be replaced, the walls, my furniture. I am still working on saving enough to repair and replace things.”

Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-1762, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com

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