Duffy Street runs a weekday happy hour at the bar and high-tops

Duffy Street Seafood Shack runs its happy hour on weekday late afternoons, and it is a bar-side deal: the high-tops and the bar rail, not the main dining room. Ask for the bar when you walk in, because being seated in the dining room usually means paying dining-room prices.

It works best as a pre-dinner stop rather than the meal itself. The shack sits off the boardwalk on the North Myrtle Beach end, so it fills with locals earlier than the strip does with visitors, and the window closes before the tourist dinner rush properly starts.

Steamed shrimp and cold beer are the point here. This is paper-and-plastic seafood at honest prices, not a waterfront view, and the kitchen is quicker in the late afternoon than it will be at seven.

Seating is first come and the window shifts with the season, so call before you make the drive. On a show night at Barefoot Landing it is one of the few nearby rooms that is not absorbing the overflow.