Nags Head Beach Trip

Last week we went on a beautiful vacation to the Outer Banks, Nags Head NC. We stayed at La Tortuga, a Village Realty managed home near MP 14. While I would highly recommend the management company (who was extremely responsive to AC problems and cable problems), I wouldn't recommend the house for everyone. La Tortuga (I learned it meant the turtle in Spanish) was a nice and large home but had an extremely unusable kitchen and also was next to public beach access. If you are a light sleeper, the 2 AM visitors via the public beach access could wake you up. Also, if at any time you expect to have more than 2 people in the kitchen - think again. The kitchen barely can contain 2 people let alone 2 people actually cooking. Other than that, the house was wonderful. Even though it was oceanfront, we found out how nice an ocean front pool was when the sand was almost too hot to walk on and with all the little ones (2 mo, 1 yo, 2 yo, 3 yo, 8yo) at the house.

Because of the kitchen constraints, we ate a lot of meals out as Heather wrote about. I am going to categorize the meals the whole family had into three categories, best of the beach, good, and served its purpose...


Best of the beach:
Black Pelican (tried eat in only - tuna bites were excellent)
Mama Kwans (had both takeout and eat in - fish tacos were great even as takeout)
Basnight's Lone Cedar Cafe (had both takeout and eat in - crab cakes, buffalo popcorn shrimp, tuna, and soft shelled crabs were top notch)
Austin's seafood market (Great take out and market. The only bad thing was the crab cakes had ham in them)
American Pie for ice cream (chocolate and butter pecan were hits)
Duck Donuts (made to order donuts? IMO better than Krispy Kreme)
Front Porch Cafe for coffee

Good:
Awful Arthur's (take out - oysters didn't stay crisp with takeout but flounder was A+)
Adrianna's Restaurant in Manteo (Great fresh food, not kid friendly)
Blue Point in Duck (Great Food, Not kid friendly, small menu)
Takeo Japanese for Sushi (take out and eat in - good but not anything to write home about)

Served its purpose (not going out of way to get there)
Kill Devil's for frozen custard (Goodberry's has set much higher expectations for us)
American Pie for pizza/subs (they should stick to ice cream ;-) )
Capt'n Franks (expensive oscar mayer hot dogs)
Owen's (Despite raves about their crabcakes, everyone at our table thought they were horrible)
Big Al's Soda Shop in Manteo (burgers, sandwiches, like you would expect...)
Dune's (breakfast buffet not very exciting)