Back in February, I posted an article detailing our great local burger joint find while on a Birding excursion near San Antonio, NM:
Today’s story is another “Birds and Burgers” adventure. This one is much closer to home.
Hollywood is a growing rural community in the South Carolina Lowcountry “just down the road” from where I grew up.
For decades it was just an intersection of two state highways about 20 miles South of Charleston and surrounded by similar communities with names like Adam’s Run, Megget, Ravenel, and Rantowles, that we would drive through on the way to Edisto Island.
Nothing much changed over the years except maybe the grocery store chain that serves the area. Nowadays, it’s the Piggly Wiggly.
With the invasion of retired “Yankees”, however, Hollywood, like so many other small outlying communities, is growing as Charleston becomes increasingly crowded and congested.
While it is still a relatively small rural community, new housing developments and all the necessary infrastructure to support the influx continue to be added.
As readers may recall from the first Birds and Burgers story, Susan and I have a couple of things we really enjoy doing: Birding and finding great out-of-the-way local eating establishments wherever we go.
With all this “urbanization” going on, finding another hidden gem (reluctantly at first, as you’ll see) was especially exciting - The Fillin’ Station Diner. This family-owned local restaurant has made its home in Hollywood since 2012.
Earlier in the week, we made our way to Botany Bay Wildlife Management Area on Edisto Island to photograph and record some of the unique birds native to the area.
Botany Bay is a popular destination for its “Boneyard Beach”, a stretch along the Atlantic that is full of dead or dying trees that have succumbed to beach erosion over many decades.
Botany Bay offers much more than just Boneyard Beach, which we have been to many times. So we decided to explore the tidal creek and marsh areas away from the beach for a broader variety of species.
Even though we were limited by a late start on the first day there, we were able to get a couple of good sightings.
One was an American Oystercatcher, which I had probably seen as I was growing up in this area, but didn’t know what it was (and at that time in my life, I didn’t care).
As the name implies, the American Oystercatcher uses its long, large beak to pry open shellfish, particularly oysters.
Our next find was a mistaken identity at first.
Because it was hard to see all the colors and markings clearly, Susan had ID’d this bird as a Least Bittern, which neither of us had seen before. After posting it on the Birding in South Carolina FB page, however, it was accurately identified as a Green Heron. With very similar profiles, it was an easy mistake.
One of the benefits of Birding is seeing other local wildlife.
“What on Earth is that?”, I asked as we rounded a bend in the dirt road. This creature with a long tail and black mask across its face was in the middle of the road shucking an ear of corn.
The overall body color was gray, so I knew it wasn’t a raccoon. It was smaller than a fox and it didn’t look like any squirrel I had seen, so I was genuinely puzzled at first.
Susan was reading about the various wildlife on the preserve and pointed to a photo. “It’s a Fox Squirrel”, she said.
As we watched, he grabbed the shucked cob with his teeth and scampered up the nearest pine tree to eat his lunch.
Even though I had grown up in this area, I had never seen a Fox Squirrel. His black mask and longer less bushy tail completely threw me off.
Day two started much earlier, so we were able to spot many more species: Great White Egrets (fairly common on the coast), a Snowy Egret, a Tri-colored Heron, a Red-bellied Woodpecker, and Eastern Bluebirds (also very common to this area). Brown Pelicans also abound and I love to watch these amazing birds in flight.
The cool breeze and low humidity (rare in the Lowcountry during the Summer) made it a perfect day.
We first noticed The Fillin’ Station Diner when passing through Hollywood earlier in the week to check out Caw Caw Interpretive Center, another Coastal Carolina Birding hotspot located on the land of an old rice plantation off Highway 17 between Rantowles and Jerico.
We arrived too late to explore the whole area but it will definitely be on our list when we go back in August. Leaving Caw Caw around 5 pm, our plan was to go to another local dining favorite, the Ace Basin Fish Camp, in Jacksonboro, about 12 miles down the road.
Thankfully, I checked their hours beforehand and discovered they were closed that day. So that left a choice.
Susan said, “Why don’t we go back to that place we saw in Hollywood? It must be good because there were a lot of cars out front.”
“Well”, I said, “It kinda’ looked like a hole-in-the-wall place. I’m not sure we would fit in, not being locals. Let’s go try that other place you saw on maps, Station 17 Local Grill out on the highway” (referring to U.S. 17 South - the main route between Charleston and Savannah). That looks like a pretty good place.”
And it was.
It was a perfect blend of Lowcountry cuisine and trendy architecture to attract both locals and passing tourists.
So, this is where we ended up for supper that day. It had great Lowcountry-style dishes. The Gumbo - slow-cooked okra, onion, tomato sauce, shrimp, and andouille sausage, served over jasmine rice was exactly how I remember my Mom fixing it when we were growing up.
Susan continued our ‘conversation’ -
“Cork, you grew up here. You can lapse into the local dialect easily. We’re not some Yankee tourists passing through. And anyway, why would a restaurant turn down business or make their guests feel uncomfortable?”
“I don’t know”, I said. “I mean, we almost missed it when we passed by. Like it is purposely obscure. Who knows, it could be a Juke Joint (not uncommon in the Lowcountry) for all I know. I bet they don’t even have a website”.
Boy was I wrong.
The Fillin’ Station Diner is a simple non-descript rectangular cinder block building that had been a filling station at some point in the past. There is one medium-sized rectangular sign out by the road.
That’s it. Easy to pass without another thought. And, that would be a big mistake.
Unlike Buckhorn Tavern in San Antonio, New Mexico, the sign did not tout the award-winning “Burgers to try before you die”, so it didn’t immediately grab my attention, though I did notice all the cars out front.
“OK”, I said. “I will look them up to see what reviews, if any, they have. Maybe we can try them for lunch on our last day here.”
I was shocked by the hundreds of reviews averaging a 4.8 on Google, Trip Advisor, Yelp, and other sites. When I looked at the menu on their website, I realized that this is exactly the kind of place we love to discover.
I was eating some “humble pie” by this time.
So, the day before we left for home, we headed back to Hollywood.
As you can imagine, with a name like The Fillin’ Station Diner, the burgers have car-themed names such as Stingray, Challenger, Bel Air, GTO, Big Block, Small Block, & Rat Rod.
And while their burgers may not be on the GQ Magazine list of “burgers to try before you die” (only because GQ didn’t know about them, in my opinion), several have won both regional and national awards.
I ordered the Stingray:
Hand-patted Angus beef, with red onion, bacon jam, pimento cheese, pickled fried green tomato, and mayonnaise, served on a toasted potato bun.
Susan decided on the Bel Air:
Hand-patted Angus beef, bacon jam, sauteed mushrooms, Swiss cheese, and onion straws, served on a toasted potato bun.
Deserts are made fresh each day so, of course, we had to try a couple. I ordered a slice of the Chocolate Espresso Cake and Susan got the Caramel Pecan (pronounced ‘Pee-can’ down heyah in the Lowcountry) Cheesecake.
So yes, after all my hemmin’ and hawin’ over whether we should take a chance with The Fillin’ Station Diner, it was one of our best finds ever.
Want the Best Burger in the Lowcountry? You need to go to Hollywood, SC to the Fillin’ Station Diner - Charleston Daily, August 18, 2018
If you are ever in the Charleston area and want to stay away from all the trendy, expensive, tourist-trap type restaurants there, put The Fillin’ Station Diner in your GPS and take the short 30-minute drive down Savannah Highway to Hollywood for a treat you won’t soon forget.
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Obviously, this Hollywood is not to be confused with the one in California.
You're speaking my language. My family loves to explore new places. We're hikers (within reason - no 8 mile hikes) and my daughter loves bird watching. My wife and son love the exhilaration of the hike and tend to push hard while my daughter and I take twice as long because we're looking at the birds and the plants and taking pictures. At any rate, we try to check out the local favorite dives any time we travel. We've discovered a lot of really great places and wonderful people.