Salt Water Grill

We decided to check this place out because we didn’t feel like driving an hour to the main drag. It turned out to be a good choice. We ordered the mahi sandwich, bacon wrapped shrimp BLT, and the crab cake sandwich. Nothing special about the crab cake but the shrimp BLT was great! And the mahi was cooked perfectly. They make all of there dressings in house so we tried the blue cheese and it was very good as well. I would definitely recommend if you find yourself in the area.

My husband and I had an amazing meal here tonight. I got the shrimp and grits and he got the Mahi Mahi — hands down the best meal we’ve had so far in the outer banks. The staff was very friendly and the mixed drinks were great — a bit pricey for our liking, but still good.

If you’re in the strip mall near Food Lion, stop by Salt Water Grill. This place is very unsuspecting. It looks like it would be eligible for Restaurant Takeover but don’t walk past it. They have AMAZING food. I went with a group of eleven and we were accommodated very nicely. We met the sous chef, Jack, who came out and greeted us. Our servers gave us the inside scoop on a local ice creamery down the road.
Here are the top faves:
Crab stuffed lobster
Shrimp and grits
Steamed mussels

Great family place but not crazy about the outdoor seating… Parking lot at the Foodlion is your view.
Food was okay. Best dish was the Yellowfin special, but needed more sauce. The shrimp and grits were excellent. Keylime pie was well done, said to be made on site. The Devils food cake was dry. Brooke, our server was excellent! The piña margarita special was good but over priced at $ 13!

If you read the reviews, the theme is «good, but not great». And that holds true. A few things were great, a few things were so-​so, and everything else was good.
Service: 5 stars
Our waiter was great. He was lively, opinionated, and was Johnny-​on-​the-​spot for getting us what we needed. Kitchen was fast and efficient. The hostess was not great, but no points off because I can only imagine how tough it is to get summer staff in Carolla to do the bottom-​end job like that.
Ambience: 4 stars
Tries to appear fancier than the casual dining that it is. The seaside beach theme works, but the furniture is functional. There is butcher paper on top of eight-​top formica surfaced tables. So, despite what others have said, this place is suitable for medium sized groups and families. Aircon and lighting noticeably swung toward too much/​little — but more something I noticed than hurt the experience.
Food. 4
Mostly okay, some great, some less than good. Great: The homemade potato chips they serve as a free appetizer were great. And the shrimp n’ cheesy grits with andouille sausage was truly the best I ever had. The seafood pasta was less than great because the cook had a very heavy hand with thyme. The fried green tomatoes were dressed with a canned pickled beans — which means anything they touched tasted like that. Everything else was good and was finished, but did not elicit yum-​yum noises from anyone: burgers, pesto chicken, fish/​chips, and Caesar salad. Did not have desert as Big Buck icecream was only across the street.
Beverages: 3 stars
Limited wine list that was a bit too stretched out. For example, if you wanted a Chardonnay — you can get bottom of the range wine. There was no mid-​range Chardonnay. The list then jumped to top of the range Cakebread and then an expensive rare wine that didn’t make sense for the butcher-​papered place. The house cocktails were made-​it-​up-​myself combinations by someone who clearly likes them sweet-​n-​fruity. Limited beer selection.
Value: 4 stars
About right. It’s appropriately priced on the high-​end of the range because it is a seafood restaurant. But the place did not strike me as expensive.
Bottom line: not bad, but life’s too short to go someplace that isn’t great and there are a few in Carolla that are great.

I was torn between two and three stars here. I called for reservations and they only had 5:30 and 7:30 available… however when we arrived at 5:30 the place was almost empty. We were very confused with that. Our appetizer, fried green tomatoes were very bland and certainly not worth the $ 11. Very limited kids menu so my son shared a steak with his dad. It was big enough for the two of them and very good. Fries and broccoli on the side were also delicious. I had the summer peach salad with shrimp and it was perfect! Shrimp was perfectly seasoned, peaches were sweet, candied pecans, feta cheese and balsamic dressing=amazing salad. If it wasn’t for that salad the rating would have been lower. Worth the trip just for that salad.

This nice little place up in Corolla has fresh seafood, good specials and good service. I had the mixed fry… it was good but the portion was too small. Nothing else was too exceptional, but again, it was a good meal and the prices were decent.

We wanted to drive up the north end of the Outer Banks on this trip, to Duck and Corolla. We picked out Crafty Cow for lunch but after 20 minutes of trying to locate it (not easy to find), we learned it was closed for the season. It is in a kind of mall, so we walked around and found Salt Water Grill.
Your dining choices are at risk, later in the season. We learned that Salt Water Grill was closing the next day also. I don’t really think it influenced our experience, though since all we wanted was a burger. I rarely notice décor, but the place is unnecessarily dark. It is just not what you associate with a beach place. It is not inviting.
We had an OK burger. It was a preformed patty, probably ¹⁄₃ lb. It had a lot of char-​grill flavor and was salted well. I had cheese, lettuce and tomato. The sweet potato fries were normal, Ms T always likes them. The slaw was naked. It may have had some oil on it. This was strange.
Three stars is generous for our experience, but I know we did not really test the menu very well and in season, for a dinner it is probably fine. The burger just seemed institutional.

All the other reviews were pretty accurate; this place was good, not great. We had reservations for 6 people and were seated promptly. Service was friendly and prompt.
For appetizers we had calamari, crab dip, and a white clam pizza. The crab dip was good, especially the homemade chips. The clam pizza was also good. The calamari was rubbery and both sauces it came with weren’t good. I would not recommend the calamari.
Two of us had the yellow tail tuna special which was good. Could have had a better sear but overall was good. Two had a pasta seafood which had the same bad marinara sauce as the calamari. Thumbs down. One had fried shrimp which was fine. The last had the lobster roll which was fine.
Finally the whole dinner felt rushed. If we had not stopped the waiter, he would have taken our initial drink order, our appetizer order, and our dinner order all at once. We were in and out in 35 minutes. I felt like the only goal was to turn our table.
Overall it’s a fine place to grab an average dinner. There’s nothing particularly memorable about it and I won’t go out of my way to go back.