American Eats: South Carolina. River City Cafe

Myrtle Beach is everybody’s favorite beach town that isn’t your closest beach town. For whatever reason, everybody decides when they want to go to the beach, they want to go to Myrtle.

River City Cafe is one of the local area Myrtle Beach chains that popped up to serve the tourists and customers who make their way to and around Myrtle Beach. And they introduced me to one of the more delicious things you will think of.

Pimento Cheese is a Southern delicacy. Called “the caviar of the south”, it is a simple dish, made of shredded cheese, mayonnaise, and pimentos. If you have never had pimento cheese, you need to try some. Immediately. Do not wait. Go. Do it now.

I usually ate pimento cheese as most people usually did: on crackers. It was not until I visited the River City in Murrell’s Inlet however that I tried it on a hamburger. And that Palmetto Burger was a life-changing experience.

When you eat a normal cheeseburger, often the cheese is a melted goop of processed cheese that melts and doesn’t always increase the value of the burger that it is on. The inclusion of Pimento Cheese made the mouthfeel of the entire experience radically different. It brought a heft, a mouthfeel to the burger that drastically improved the taste of the burger. I would have never thought of this had I not popped into River City and found this on the menu.

I’m sure that River City is not the only joint that has such a burger on its menu, so be sure to look for one of these on the menu on your inevitable next trip to Myrtle Beach.