River City Cafe — Restaurant in Surfside Beach

This has one of the best sandwiches in town! The Darlington 500. We literally crave it. We have been here many many times over the years. So why is this getting three stars instead of five? Two reasons: I really think that their sandwiches and other items should come with fries or sweet potato fries or something. Either that, or don’t ask the way that they ask. They say, “would you like some fries with that“ and if you haven’t read the menu correctly, you think they just come with, But over the years, I’ve learned that that is not the case. They should say, “would you like some fries with that, it costs extra.” Because I’ve seen tables next to me complain as well. It just doesn’t seem to be something that is communicated correctly. Maybe they don’t communicate it correctly so that people will not know and just automatically pay extra for the fries. It just seems weird the way it’s done. I’m not saying it doesn’t say that it’s not extra on the menu, I am saying that, For heavens sakes, fries don’t cost much, just have them come with each dish, and, don’t ask people if they want fries without saying “it’s an upcharge.” The last time we were there, we parked, and started to walk up to look at the Surfside pier. We were going to eat at River city, but we just stepped outside of the parking lot area for a second and instead of going straight into River city just leaned our head over and walked out a bit to see everything that was happening with the pier and if they had new shops etc. And somebody from River City came running out screaming at us, telling us that we couldn’t park there if we weren’t going to eat there. We told her we did have plans to eat there, but now we didn’t. So we went someplace else. It was really really rude. She could’ve been nicer. She was really screaming at us. And we were planning on eating there. We explained that to her. And she was still rude. No apologies. Bottom line: best sandwich in town is the Darlington 500, fun to sit outside, fun to have peanuts on the floor, etc., but the Service could be better in a couple of ways. (Informing the customer better, and not running out and yelling at the customer. You know, little...

We were here on 7/1/23 for lunch when we arrived at Myrtle Beach. We had a party of 14 including 5 children. Shane was our waiter and provided the worst service ever! He messed up our orders, shorted us drinks, sides and charged us for more than we ordered. My son’s chicken sandwich was pink inside and he said he would get it redone but not until after he threw a tantrum at the bar and threw down a bottle of liquor. Shane disappeared for long periods of time and we had to get another waitress to help us. When the chicken sandwich was brought back out there were no fries or coleslaw. Got the fries but never did get the coleslaw. He added $4+ to the order for the fries when they were supposed to come with the sandwich. We paid for our order and he pocketed the change, actually put it in his wallet. We had to ask for our change!!! He threw my son’s change at him and told him to have a nice day. 2 hours later (that’s how long this visit was) we asked for the manager, Cody, who said he was so sorry and asked if we would come back on Monday and try them again and let them make it right, on them. Monday I called and asked for Cody who agreed we could do a take out order instead since we had a long day. When I called back with the order he left me on hold for almost 20 minutes and said he was sorry he forgot about me. I started to give him the order over the phone and when I got to the 7th person he told me he couldn’t do any more because he could get in trouble. I told him I couldn’t feed only have my family forget it. In the end, they never did get us the make up order on Friday. The service sucked a big one and we will NEVER return!!! Shane needs a new job that doesn’t include working with people!!! Cody shouldn’t make offers he can’t keep!!!! Worst...

So we LOVE the River City Cafe in Socastee. So while down in Surfside yesterday we thought we would give this one a try since we just wanted to have a few drinks while overlooking the water.

Man were we disappointed. We took the elevator to the third floor. When we got up there, there was no one there to greet us at the hostess stand, so we made our way to the bar. It was not busy on this floor, only a few tables were seated. Not a soul at the bar...not even a bartender. We started to wonder if they were even doing bar service. We sat there and sat there and sat there for about 10 minutes before we asked a server if the bar was open. She responded yes and she'd be with us in a minute. In the meantime there was another server who was clearly either drunk or on drugs or both..Very loud and obnoxious, acting very strangely. It was quite uncomfortable to watch. We waited about another 10 minutes and the original waitress we asked came by, asked what we wanted to drink. We ordered two bloody mary's and she left again for about another 5-7 minutes before coming back to make our drinks. Once we got our drinks no one ever came back to check on us or ask us if we would like another drink.. Nothing. There were a total of 4 servers buzzing around the top floor and no one stopped.. We finally had to flag down the original server who made our drinks and ask for the check. That took probably another ten minutes.

Based off this experience alone, we will not be back to...