Bowen’s Island, aka My Favorite Place on Earth

I know this is a rather bold statement to make, but if you’ve been there, you know. It’s not about the ambiance or the culinary pizzazz, but the simple life. The art of doing nothing but drinking a beer, eating some seafood, and watching the sunset on the marsh. I decided to post my Trazzler piece here because I think it’s important to do the creative writing every now and then instead of fact-finding (and it is still pending review).

Driving down the road past a new development, you start to feel hesitant about this restaurant. You pass the sign for “End County Maintenance,” where the pavement becomes gravel and sand. There are a few houses on your right and through the marsh you can see a sunken wooden ship that looks as if it has been there for years. A clearing is at the end, holding many cars on its oyster shell parking lot.

Owner Robert Barber welcomes you and asks what you want. I choose the shrimp dinner and go take a seat on the dock house, handful of saltine crackers in hand. The restaurant is now a skeleton of what it once was, the victim of a devastating fire. Before this disaster, it had closed rooms and screened in porches with walls covered by pieces of Americana.

Now all that remains is the kitchen, dock house, and deck house, but that is all it needs. Your food arrives on a paper plate with heaping portions of freshly caught seafood next to fries and hushpuppies. If you order oysters, they will arrive on your table in a giant shovel and you are given a knife and trash can for shucking.

The building itself may be rebuilt, but the food is the real star here. Talk to the locals who have been coming here for thirty years. You will also come across people who saw the sign and just wandered down here. But one thing is certain: once you are a Bowen’s Island customer, you are a customer for life.

The photos posted above are from a photojournalism project and are not the same ones used with the article, but I think they are better: the pot that boils tasty oysters, the entrance to the restaurant, an abandoned chair on the oyster bed.