Black Pelican

Where do I start?!? I was with a group of 8 people looking for a good meal and casual atmosphere. Upon arriving we were seated in a corner where there were few tables around. While our party is naturally loud, we are not an offensive or belligerent group. We are parents who are successful and well educated looking to enjoy a kid free night out in the OBX. However we had a neighbor who told us that others believed we were being loud. We then quieted down as much as we could. This same neighbor began telling other restaurant patrons how «loud» we were which generated false complaints. Eventually the manager approached us asking us to leave while apologizing profusely for the complaints she received.
Bottom line: stay away from this place if you have a large party looking to have some fun. They don’t seem to handle their restaurant well in order to accommodate everyone. On a positive note, we walked away with our bellies full of appetizers and beer at no charge.

A great piece of history, along with great food and amazing ocean views. The menu has a broad selection of options ranging from steamers (clambakes) to burgers and gourmet pizzas. We shared a gourmet Greek pizza (vegetarian) and full pound of snow crab. Only «negative» is that I ordered a Moscow mule and it came in a plastic cup (I still drank it!)

The Black Pelican is a local restaurant that been around for as long as I’ve been coming to the Outer Banks and it has never disappointed me. This time I had the Tuna Tataké for an appetizer and Prime Rib for dinner. Both were excellent. Well almost. Our waiter Curtis caught my dinner I ordered as medium rare and noticed it had been prepared well done. I got medium rare.
Everybody from the staff were friendly and more than willing to ensure our dinning experience was unsurpassed.
You may have a short wait before you are seated but worth every minute.

The noise in this place is a bit overwhelming, the Mahi that I ordered was dry, and our server was exceptionally slow with every single thing. He was inattentive and neglected our table– I expected much better for the price of this food and the popularity of the restaurant. For a Wednesday evening, this service was sorely disappointing.

Amazing restaurant. Kind and attentive server. Great atmosphere. And the Duo Platter with Wahoo and Cobia was indescribably good. I hardly ever post on Unilocal,so writing a review on Black Pelican should speak volumes about how wonderful it was.

Several of us in the OBX for a few days of golf ate here two successive nights. The attraction — the crisp, tender calamari! Had to have been right up there with the best I’ve ever had. The Caesar salad and ½ lb. of shrimp were also good. Others had the steak (disappointed), you don’t get a steak in a seafood restaurant; stuffed flounder, very good; and fried shrimp dinner, also good.

Our experience here was so horrible, I definitely recommend NOT wasting your time here!
My family was a party of 15, and we were told on a Tuesday night that we would have a 40-​minute wait with two separate tables. That’s understandable, considering the size of our party. We ended up waiting an **HOUR AND A HALF** to be seated, no apology from any manager or any kind of consolation whatsoever for the ridiculous wait time. Again, this was on a low peak night, so there was absolutely no reason for the long wait.
There was a large party that came in *after* us, so we speculate that they got seated before us for some reason.
After we were FINALLY seated, we had only a *single* server that was supposed to help a 15 person party! Poor thing came out with a crazy heavy platter of glasses for all of us, and carried all of our platters of food herself. There was *Plenty* of wait staff there, some looked like they were bored and had nothing better to do. But no one offered to check in on us, the server didn’t refill my drink *once*, I had to ask someone else to do it because she rarely came to our table to check in on us.
My sister and I both ordered the Prime Rib, cooked medium. My steak was luke warm, but I was hungry after an hour and a half wait and just ate it.
My sister’s steak was *stone* cold. So she asked our server to send it back to the kitchen. The server brought out another steak (20 minutes later!!) that was cooked Well done. My sister didn’t bother eating it because we were all so frustrated and surprised at how crappy this place was.
Naturally, she told the server to remove the steak from our bill. After all of this, No manager to be seen anywhere, no apologies from the wait staff, no compensation of any kind to account for our horrendous experience.
By the time my family left, we had been there for 3 and a half hours. Believe me, we didn’t linger or take our time either.
Don’t waste your time or money on this place. Go somewhere else that values its customers and will give you a positive dining experience.

We enjoyed the black pelican. We had good service, the food was good. Desserts are outrageous huge. We had the coconut pie. Like I said huge and enough for two people.
It was too sweet for me and I love desserts but over the top on sweetness.
We ordered The steamers I forgot what exactly it was called. Good.
We were really looking for the over-​the-​top great steamer with clams muscles crabs shrimp.
I would give it a 3+ or four stars for that dish.
We used to get ours from Avon but doesn’t seem they’re there anymore we looked and looked couldn’t find that place. I guess it went out of business.

The food was outstanding. Great service.
Make sure you ask for a table by a window as there are many tables with no view of anything except walls with touristy stuff.

Great spot for food and drink. They have a nice bar but better yet is the sun porch. We had a few beers, they were ice cold. The pulled pork sandwich was great, buffalo fried shrimp were excellent. The spinach salad with ire roasted tomatoes was really weird.
Overall it was a great place, prices were reasonable and the service was good.

No flavor on any food. Prime rib was a complete joke and the waitress felt bad for even serving it to me. I got a filet on the house that was cooked perfectly, but had no seasonings of any sort and the sides were just very mediocre. The mahi mahi was ok but that didnt make for a nasty, dark, weathered interior that made for an unpleasant diner experience. Try some seasonings and cut about half your menu for goodness sake redecorate and you might get some more business. Two stars for correcting the order and serving a couple of ok dishes.

Man, food was really disappointing :(prime rib supposed to be medium and came out well done, mashed potatoes cold and hard, crab cake mediocre, part of order missing, crab dip had crap cheese on it, wife had cold rice, came in and wasn’t even busy so no excuses. took 48 minutes to recieve our food and server didn’t check in much. Never going back there. can believe I dropped 90 bucks for that.

Worst service ever! From the hostess to the wait staff no customer service what so ever. If the food was half good I could take the lack of service. Left before we even got served!

My husband, son and I came here for lunch while visiting the area for the weekend. The food was pretty great, affordable and the service was awesome.
I ordered the Hatteras clam chowder and clam strips basket. Also had a blue moon. The chowder was delicious and was filled with clam and potato. The clam strips were fresh and lightly battered. The star, though, was the horse radish sauce. It was AMAZING. My husband ordered the shrimp and grits. As other Unilocalers have said it was a little spicy, but my husband ate the entire plate and was really happy. He also had an Amber ale.
My son, age 2, had the rockfish and fries. Huge portion (3 large pieces of rockfish) and fries. Came on a frisbee, which was fun.
We split the key lime pie, which was more of a cheesecake but not advertised that way (heads up in case you order it). Our waiter was attentive and knew what he was talking about. We’d come back :)

So, maybe we went on a bad night because our experience was horrible compared to the hype that we had been reading on-​line. After arriving in Kill Devil Hills and checking in to our hotel, we asked the desk clerk for a recommendation for a good place to eat for a family of 5 and with an eye for local flavor. Both clerks immediately offered up the Black Pelican as fun, family-​friendly, and reasonably priced.
We arrived and from the outside, it looked a little tourist-​y, but that is really to be expected in a tourist town like Kitty Hawk, so that was not really a plus or minus for this trip. Once inside the hostesses were all friendly and took our name and let us know that the wait for a table would be 30 minutes (it was). One thing that, again, was off-​putting was that the waiting area was designed around the Gift Shop. And this wasn’t even merchandise specific to the restaurant. It was the kind of cheap crap that you would find at a tourist town gas station. Really rather lame.
Once we were seated, our waiter took nearly ten minutes to come over a greet us and collect our drink orders. And to top it off, he messed up two waters with Lemon by bringing the water only. Never saw the lemons… ever.
I ordered the calamari and Frogmore Boil. Neither was as advertised. The calamari was not crunchy and the batter lacked salt and pepper. The Frogmore Boil was advertised as having «chunks of andouille sausage» with red potatoes and shellfish. Mine lacked any actual andouille sausage, instead I was given what honestly appeared to be Hillshire Farms Smoked Sausage (in very small half-​discs) and small Idaho spuds instead of red potatoes. To add to the disappointment, my clams were undercooked, with one of them being mostly raw.
Overall, a very unsatisfying meal, especially considering the $ 100 price tag for a family of 5.
I would not recommend.
EronW

Really, really good food. Good service that started with the friendly hostess’s smile. Our waitress was very accommodating, even finding me some veggie dippers to go with our crab dip. In addition to the crab dip, I had salmon Oscar style (crab, asparagus and hollandaise) and my dining companion had the frog more bake (sausage, seafood and veggie medley). All of the food was well-​seasoned perfectly cooked.
We sat in the sunroom and enjoyed the beautiful view of the beach. This restaurant is worth visiting for that view alone (though keep in mind that the sun sets over the sound, so this is a view to enjoy during the day).
Literally the only thing keeping this from being a 5 star experience is the décor. It’s obvious that this restaurant hasn’t been removed in quite some time. And the décor… Looked sad. Like an unloved grandmother’s house.
Once this place is renovated, it will be close to perfect. It’s already one of the best restaurants in this part of the Outer Banks.

This establishment was cute with the older crowd filling it up. It must me nice to be able to venture out to enjoy the local eats outside of the tourist season.
I had the Tsunami Tuna which came with a nice sized slab of tuna, cabbage, and fried rice. I had the tuna done medium. It came out perfect. It had a nice flavor, not fishy, with plenty of spice. The rest of the plate could’ve been improved somehow but it wasn’t bad at all. Maybe spruce it up with a little decorations or a different layout on the plate.
The deserts and drinks sounded amazing but I wasn’t able to try any this round.

Torn between 2.5 stars to 3 stars… This is why.
Pros:
*Oven view seatings
*Spacious
*Great food specials
*Friendly staff
*A Souvenir store right in the restaurant
*Sample hand/​body salt in bathroom to use
*The wings I ordered with homemade sauce was very good with the right kind of heat.
Cons:
*Restaurant need major remodeling
*Bathroom stinks Like sewer or something and needs major update
*My Blue Plate special with fried catfish was fried a little too hard and batter was salty
*The grits that came with it was just weird, it was like dried up mashed potatoes
*The chair was uncomfortable to sit on. It was the straight up hardwood chairs that would make your hemorrhoid flare up!
*Did I mentioned the bathroom stinks!?!
I wouldn’t discount coming to this place but just don’t use the bathroom not to even to wash your hands and bring a whoopee cushion to sit on.

We visited this restaurant on our recent vacation to OBX. The food, service and ambience was amazing.
«Stuffed Jalapeño Peppers» and «Marinated Grilled Portobello Mushrooms» were awesome!
Caution: The jalapeño peppers are too hot to handle.

The locals don’t like this place, but we found it to be very nice inside, attentive staff, with a really good menu of diverse items.
Fried Green Tomatoes were very nicely done, and a big portion.
They had wahoo the day we were there, and if I see that on the menu, I order it automatically — my hands down favorite fish in the ocean — both to catch and to eat.
I don’t know if it was overdone or if they substituted shark on me, but that cost them a star, not to mention the portion size was disappointing. It’s a big fish, and they serve about a quarter of a filet. At least they didn’t leave any bones for me to find.
My wife’s fried clams were big and meaty — but again — small portion for the price charged.
It’s a great old building and a great location — outstanding dessert; we had roasted banana cream pie and I would give another half star for that if I could.