The Sea Cow Eatery (Edisto Beach, SC)

In my opinion, any beach eatery worth eating at should be laid back and a little funky and have simple but delicious fare.

After all, no one packs heels to go to on a beach vacation.

When Landon and I had our day date at Edisto Island (yay for lots of babysitters!), we worked up on appetite by kayaking first. When it came time to leave the new dolphin friends we'd made on our kayak trip, we wanted to eat a place where no one would care that we still had salt water in our hair and a bit of sand on our flip flops. 

The two of us hopped on our bikes and headed down Jungle Road into Edisto's business district. (Note: I use the term "business district" loosely, as it is composed of three restaurants--one of which is take-out only--and three shops. A Bi-Lo and a snow cone stand round out the offerings.)

The mode of transportation that all of the cool kids are using these days.

And here we have 85% of the offerings in the Edisto Island business district.

We'd seen signs for the oddly named Sea Cow Eatery earlier in the week, and after checking the menu out on our phones, we decided to give it a try.

There were tables on the screened porch, but we were hot and sweaty from hauling our kayaks around, so we opted for a table inside the air conditioning. As an aside, I'd like to go on record publicly and say that whoever invented A/C should be knighted (I know this means nothing in America, but it's the thought that counts, right?). Knighted or given a free pass to Barnes and Noble for the rest of his or her life. In my book, they are equal amounts of awesome.

After we'd seated ourselves, our waitress, Mart Mart, took our drink orders. Landon and I both went for the sweet tea because 1) we live in South Carolina and 2) I felt like splurging for a real drink (not the cheap-o water I usually get) since we were on our day date. The first glasses of tea weren't sweet enough, so we added Splenda to it. (Yuck, yuck, and more yuck. I do not like grainy sugary tea.) The second and third glasses were from the bottom of the tea barrel, and it was delicious.

Secret sweet tea tip: the longer the tea sits after you've added the sugar, the sweeter (and better) it gets. Second day tea is way better than just made tea. It's like potato salad that way.

The tea game was a little off at Sea Cow Eatery, but I can forgive that. Really good sweet tea is surprisingly hard to make since you have to add the sugar to super concentrated tea before you add water to thin it out.

While we wanted for Mart Mart to take our orders, we checked out the interior. It was super funky with black and white tiles, Christmas lights, and pictures of the Sea Cow mascot (a green and white spotted cow with a snorkeling mask on) visiting places all over the world. I loved the Sea Cow's pictures when s/he was at the Acropolis, the Giza pyramids, and onboard a cruise ship.

We didn't have too much trouble deciding what we wanted to eat for lunch. Landon decided on the special du jour, the chicken quesadilla. ("What's the soup du jour?" "It's the soup of the day." "Sounds delicious. I'll have that." Oh, Dumb and Dumber, you never get old.) His meal was awesome, and it came with this delicious sour cream-salsa mixture to dip the quesadilla triangles in.

I went for the super boring standard of chicken tenders. Usually, I'm way more adventurous, but I guess I was just ready for some comfort food after the kayaking excitement. The chicken fingers were tasty, but they were just chicken fingers.

The fries that we both got were double delicious. They were super crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside and seasoned perfectly. YUM.

I wished we'd saved room for dessert as there was an entire case filled with homemade pies. Alas, we'd stuffed ourselves with our tea and fries and entrees, so dessert will have to occur on our return trip.

The Sea Cow Eatery serves up inexpensive, tasty comfort food at breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's located at 145 Jungle Road on Edisto Beach.