Annual Events

Throughout the year, a variety of events take place on Pleasure Island, including the Island of Lights parade and flotilla during the Christmas season, the Seafood, Blues and Jazz Festival, weekly fireworks on Thursday nights during the tourist season, Beach Music Festival, Chowder Cook Off, free summer concerts, and last, but not least, the New Year’s Celebration with fireworks and the famous ball drop from the end of a fire department ladder truck. It isn’t Times Square, but what the heck, it’s home.

Surely all this activity will generate an appetite, and for that Pleasure Island has the cure. In Kure Beach there’s the venerable Big Daddy’s, a fried, broiled and grilled seafood emporium, Freddie’s Oceanside Grill, an Italian restaurant with emphasis on seafood, Jack Mackerel’s Island Grill featuring seafood with a Caribbean emphasis, and the Old Pier House Restaurant serving reasonably priced seafood just a stone’s throw from the ocean. All four restaurants are within a block of each other.

In Carolina Beach, check out Michael’s Seafood Restaurant, popular with the locals; Seaside Grille at the Courtyard by Marriott overlooking their beautiful pool and the ocean; the Deck House, a seafood restaurant in an old church with a multitude of daily specials; Tuscan Grill, seafood with a Mediterranean flavor; and the Ocean Grill & Tiki Bar, overlooking the ocean with a bar out on what’s left of a pier following a hurricane. On the east side of the Boardwalk, just across the dune from the ocean, is Olde Saltys, an old saloon and restaurant serving surprisingly good seafood. If you’re hungry, Carolina Beach has the food.