Hidden Myrtle Beach restaurant serves enticing meals to diners as students get hands-on learning

Tucked away inside the International Culinary Institute in Myrtle Beach is one of the highest-quality, yet surprisingly affordable dining establishments in the entire region.

And it’s a restaurant run by students of the local technical college.

The restaurant is possibly the ultimate hidden gem of fine dining in the Grand Strand. It offers elevated American cuisine, from flat breads to beef carpaccio to cheese for dessert. And the atmosphere is reminiscent of a oceanfront hotel restaurant, with floor-to-ceiling windows. The first thing diners see when walking is a 15-foot-tall wine rack.

Not only is the restaurant itself largely out-of-sight — there are no signs advertising it on the outside of the Culinary Institute’s buildings. Even the Culinary Institute itself is shrouded by the gardens, parks and youth sports fields that surround it in the Market Common. Driving down Farrow Parkway, the nearest main thoroughfare, you’d never know the Culinary Institute, or its restaurant, even existed.

Nevertheless, the restaurant has a cult following. One diner on a recent Monday said she’d planned her trip weeks in advance. And, even if the institute is hidden from the outside world, the Market Common neighborhood where it lives is full of fans.

“If the restaurant classes ... don’t have customers, then the class is not worth much,” International Culinary Institute executive director Joseph Bonaparte said. “I feel really great that the community supports us because otherwise it’s like, ‘Well, we might as well just do away with those classes and rewrite them.’”

Serving locals and helping students

The restaurant is operated by Culinary Institute students in their second-and-final year of the program. Bonaparte said it gives them more hands-on experience before they head into the busy kitchens of the Grand Strand and beyond.

If it weren’t for the Culinary Institute’s restaurant, students would “have to wait till they get out there” to get experience.

“But here, at least they get an exposure prior to getting out there and getting crushed in the middle of a season,” Bonaparte said. Considering employee retention is one of the biggest struggles for restaurants, early exposure to the industry is crucial, he added.

The spotless eatery offers a menu that changes throughout the year. That’s part of the education for students, giving them a chance to learn different styles of cooking and learn to prepare them quickly. The menu features a lot of local ingredients, from cheese made by the school to arugula grown in its gardens to butter beans from Indigo Farms in Little River.

• In the summer, students head to a local farm each week, harvest ingredients themselves and then head back to school to plan out a full menu for a four-course lunch on Wednesday and Thursday each week.

• In the fall, the students run a “Bistro lunch,” with largely the same menu each day, but there are 15 food items for diners to pick from. This season, the menu consists of three flatbreads, two salads, an appetizer, five entrees and four desserts. Diners can pick up to three courses.
  
  

• In the spring, the restaurant offers dinner two nights a week with a set five- or seven-course menu, but the new challenge for students is the theme of the food changes each week to something new.

Student Dante Passeri said the Culinary Institute’s restaurant is a great jumping off point into the industry because there are real stakes, real people who will be eating the food that is prepared.

“It’s not the same as those lab classes where if you do something wrong, it’s OK, because you just know for next time to not do it wrong,” Passeri said. “Whereas in the American Bistro class environment, if you do something wrong, you need to restart because whatever you’re making is going to paying customers, so it’s an eye opener into the industry.”

The experience is an essential starting point for students, Bonaparte said, because after graduation they are frequently recruited by some of the biggest restaurants in the Grand Strand, taking these novice chefs from the classroom to the kitchen of an eatery with a capacity for 300 people.

“It’s kind of like a sink or swim deal because it just gets crazy down here in the summer,” he said. “You gotta have a little thick skin.”

Class of 2022 alumna Lauren Scott said not only did the school help prepare her for her current job in the food service industry as a chef for the Dunes Club, but also the quality of the restaurant, in her opinion, is the best in the region.

“The fine dining elements are really lacking here in Myrtle Beach, and the restaurant in that school to me is the best restaurant, Myrtle Beach,” Scott said. “And it’s so, like, under the radar.”

The Culinary Institute’s restaurant serves as a soft-landing of sorts. With room for just a few dozen diners, there is time and space for mistakes. And in this kitchen, everything decision can become a teaching moment, even for mistakes as small as delivering a plate to the wrong seat at a table.

“We want to get better at what we do and provide a better service to the students, a better education, more comprehensive education, have our restaurant serve better food and better service, the bakery — everything — the deal is always trying to get better,” Bonaparte said. “I feel like we have a duty to fulfill, to do the best we can do to really try to help elevate the reputation” of the region.

How to dine at the International Culinary Institute

Advance planning is generally required. The only way to ensure a table is to make a reservation and pre-pay online.

There is a small chance of snagging a table for walk-ins, but don’t bet on it.

The cost is $25 per person for table and counter seating (the latter provides a direct view of the kitchen, a great way to watch and learn how the food is made). There is also a specialty chef’s table lunch for parties of six to eight. Located in a private room next to the kitchen, it’s $35 a person and gives diners the chance to learn more about the school and their food.

Make sure you book a few weeks out. As of Sept. 22, the soonest reservation available of any kind was Oct. 4. Reservations start at 11:30 a.m. and run through 1 p.m.

If the restaurant is so hidden, where can it be found?

The International Culinary Institute is located at 920 Crabtree Lane in Myrtle Beach. It’s on the south side of the Market Common soccer and baseball fields and just west of the Robert Reed Recreation Center.

From Farrow Parkway, drivers can turn onto Howard Avenue and head south and then take a right to head east onto Pampas Drive. The International Culinary Institute will be on the right and has ample parking on the north side of the building.

The restaurant itself, the Fowler Dining Room, can easily be found inside the building, which is connected by one primary hallway.

The dining room is impossible to miss, but for those who do, there are always people walking around at lunchtime who can direct you. There are also usually a few students or faculty standing outside the building who can offer help, as well.

One more thing: Don’t forget to stop by the bakery on the way out. It’s next to the dining room and has desserts ranging from cheesecake to “brookies” (brownie-cookies).