now I know what calabash means...

It's something you can taste, but apparently you can't define "Calabash style." I thought it meant "seafood deep fried in a light batter, somewhere between regular fried shrimp and tempura". Nope. Best I can tell it means "really fresh fried seafood in massive proportions". So of course we had to take the hour detour from Bald Head Island to swing past Calabash. Calabash is home to around 700 people and 20 seafood restaurants, a ratio maintained by a steady influx of seafood lovers from Myrtle Beach.

Our first stop was Captain Nance's, right on the Calabash river. The shrimp boats (including Captain Nance's boat) come right to the dock and sell jumbo shrimp for $5 a pound. The interior wasn't much to speak of, though it did have a river/marsh view across half the restaurant. They had a lunch special for $5.95, a choice of two fried seafoods + fries and slaw. I went for the deviled crab and the fried shrimp, and my lovely dining companion chose the crab legs.

Sadly, the meal was a little disappointing across the board. The crab legs were clearly not fresh, their shells so pliant they couldn't be cracked. The deviled crab was tasty enough, but I couldn't taste the crab in the breading, or even find any threads of crab meat. The shrimp were fine, but that was the disappointment -- after driving all that way, I expected fried shrimp that were superior to anything I could find in landlocked ol' Raleigh.

The real surprise was the key lime pie. Sadly it took about 10 minutes to get it, as our friendly but developmentally challenged waitress flirted with the cashier. But when it came (and she gave it to us for free, I think out of fear of the extra math required) it was worth the wait. Stacked high with meringue (why do restaurants skip the meringue?), a strong taste of lime rather than the usual lemon-lime-sprite flavor, home made graham cracker crust... quite literally the best I've ever had.

After some kitchy shopping we felt we couldn't leave town with such dashed dreams, and we tried Beck's, one of the two original seafood restaurants of the town. We told the waitress we only needed to try their fried shrimp and their key lime pie, for comparison's sake. She nodded and asked where we'd been, and when we told her, she said we wouldn't be disappointed. Oh, wow, those were amazing fried shrimp. So hot we could barely eat them, so juicy from just the briefest flash in the pot, and a crispy coating with variably large and small breadcrumbs that worked perfectly to give them both a full coating and a nice crunch. Their cocktail sauce had just the right heat from horseradish, and was clearly made that day. The pie was a forgettable cheesecake-in-a-pie-crust type, but I didn't care. I should have left Nance's as soon as I reached the table and saw that they used commercial cocktail sauce -- that's like going to a barbeque joint and finding KC Masterpiece on the table.

Turns out that the owner of Becks is married to the grandson of Capt Nance, so they're all family. Thus, when I pointed out the naked superiority of their shrimp, our waitress wasn't willing to comment any further than a wink, and "We know."

Absolutely worth the trip.