Two great restaurants, one trusted family. Carolina Seafood Buffet and the Jolly Roger Restaurant in Kill Devil Hills have been Outer Banks favorites for more than two decades, thanks to the vision and hard work of Carol Ann Angelos, with help from her family.
Carol Ann is the dynamo behind these two restaurants. Petite and pretty with bright eyes and a big smile, Carol Ann is one of the Outer Banks’ hardest-working restaurateurs and an astute business woman. After founding and operating beauty schools in the D.C. area, Carol Ann began experiencing back pain and wanted to start a new career as a restaurateur. All her life she’d been going on vacation to Long Beach Island, New Jersey, and she was looking for a restaurant to buy there. But her direction changed in 1983 when she first visited the Outer Banks. “When I came across that bridge to the Outer Banks, I told my mother I had a strange feeling,” says Carol Ann. “I felt like it was home. I fell in love with the Outer Banks immediately.”
Within a few months Carol Ann had bought her first restaurant in Kill Devil Hills with money she made from selling her first beauty school. She opened the Jolly Roger in January and has been open for breakfast, lunch and dinner almost every day for 26 years. Stop by this summer and check out Pirate Central on the Outer Banks!
The next year, Carol Ann opened another restaurant, Carolina Seafood, which started out as a traditional seafood restaurant. In 1988 she reinvented Carolina Seafood as Carolina Seafood Buffet, “Where Fried Has Died,” and it was an instant hit.
Twenty-five years later, some fried items are back on the menu, but that’s only a small portion of the nearly 100 items on the buffet. Garlic crabs are the specialty of the house – steamed, prepped for easy picking and cooked in a slightly salty, garlicky recipe.
The buffet includes all kinds of seafood, including fresh fish loins, broiled, steamed and fried seafood, crab cakes and fish cakes and many kinds of crab legs, as well as prime rib, chicken, oysters, softshells, she-crab soup and delicious homemade sides, a full salad bar and desserts. À la carte items are available.
Carol Ann’s son and daughter-in-law now run Carolina Seafood Buffet, which is clean and casual and fun, with lively Key West-style music and crayons for drawing on the tablecloths. Kids pay only their age plus 95 cents. There are drawings for surprise giveaways every hour! And new this summer - $1.99 Whole Maine Lobster from 3:30-4:30pm (with purchase of adult buffet).
Carolina Seafood Buffet is open between Palm Sunday and Thanksgiving; call for hours. Also pay a visit to the Jolly Roger, which is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner 365 days a year, to experience both of the dining treasures run by this great family.
Carolina Seafood Buffet, MP 6.5 Beach Road, Kill Devil Hills, 252-441-6851 |
