Put ramekins on a baking sheet. Bake for 25-35 minutes, until puffed and golden. Remove from oven, and let stand for 5 minutes. With a flexible spatula, remove strata to
[caption id="attachment_149335" align="alignright" width="300"] Randy and Nancy Swanson.[/caption] Boro Low Country Kitchen occupies prime waterfront space in this small fishing town that serves as a gateway to the Crystal Coast.
[caption id="attachment_149335" align="alignright" width="300"] Randy and Nancy Swanson.[/caption] Boro Low Country Kitchen occupies prime waterfront space in this small fishing town that serves as a gateway to the Crystal Coast.
Randy and Nancy Swanson. photograph by Charles Harris
Boro Low Country Kitchen occupies prime waterfront space in this small fishing town that serves as a gateway to the Crystal Coast. About 150 yards from the restaurant’s dock is the cachunk-cachunk of beach traffic driving over the bridge to Cedar Point. Boro’s walk-up window slides open like a fast-food drive-through. But don’t expect a burger and fries: This joint’s specialty is seafood boiled with corn, sausage, and potatoes in a secret concoction of spices — no Old Bay allowed — and served steaming hot on aluminum platters.
“The Low Country boil was a real Hail Mary,” says Randy Swanson, who opened the restaurant in 2019. “It wasn’t really being done around here. Fortunately, it’s really taken off.”
Standing at the window near an old statue of a jolly pirate, you’ll order from a folded paper menu: Should you get lobster, snow crab, shrimp, and mussels? Or maybe blue crab and clams? Whatever you decide, a cold beer will likely come in handy. Then, take your tray and beer back to one of the long, high-top tables on the deck, grab a shell cracker, and savor the taste of the sea.
To commemorate our 90th anniversary, we’ve compiled a time line that highlights the stories, contributors, and themes that have shaped this magazine — and your view of the Old North State — using nine decades of our own words.
From its northernmost point in Corolla to its southern terminus on Cedar Island, this scenic byway — bound between sound and sea — links the islands and communities of the Outer Banks.
Us? An icon? Well, after 90 years and more than 2,000 issues celebrating North Carolina from mountains to coast, we hope you’ll agree that we’ve earned the title.
After nearly a century — or just a couple of years — these seafood restaurants have become coastal icons, the places we know, love, and return to again and again.
