A Weekend in Wilmington: The South’s Best-Kept Coastal Secret

The first thing my wife, Jill, and I did in Wilmington was try to decide what city it resembled.We had checked in to Arrive Wilmington, a former convent built in the 1950s and since dressed up with courtyard fire pits, lots of wainscoting, gold-accented end tables and the kind of lowcountry style that belies its former life. We then set off on foot for dinner, heading down Second Street through a neighborhood of broad porches, brick sidewalks and antebellum houses outlined in scrolls of gingerbread trim. It’s no wonder that a top activity here is the architectural walking tour. “Feels like the Garden District in New Orleans,” I said.

“Or south of Broad Street in Charleston,” Jill added. Maybe Savannah too, and a bit of the antebellum-meets-Victorian of St. Augustine. There were iron gates ringing front yards and columns standing tall on front porches. Steps led up to grand entrances with chandeliers twinkling inside. Live oaks lifted their limbs over the streets. We reached Olivero, a restaurant in a former neighborhood grocery, and I knew before we sat down that I was going to like it—there was just something about the energy in the place, the feeling of a big night that’s just beginning. We sat at the L-shaped bar facing into the kitchen with a direct line of sight to the wood-burning asador. The couple sitting at the corner told us about all the things we needed to order. Dates were stuffed with ’nduja sausage and then grilled, tasting no longer sweet but earthy and meaty, the first dish of many that would define the best meal we ate in Wilmington. It was a good start to a weekend I’d gone into thinking this city had something to prove. For years, Wilmington, tucked into North Carolina’s southeastern corner, sat in a culinary shadow created by the grand restaurants of Charleston and the quaint bistros in Savannah. Inits inaugural coverage of the American South, the Michelin Guide didn’t include a single Wilmington restaurant. I came to see whether Wilmington was a city worthy of a weekend away, defined by what’s served on the plate at each meal.

Southern Comfort

The next morning, we headed a few doors down from the hotel and joined a line that unfurled down the block outside Hidden Grounds, a coffee shop smaller than my spare bedroom closet. I ordered the Cold Fashioned, a drink made with cold brew and bitters—a combination that’s a wake-up alarm clock without a snooze button.With all that cold-brew energy, I drove to Green eld Park and found the pickleball courts splayed out under the shade of the oaks. A free Saturday clinic had just ended, leaving behind a congregation of regulars and beginners who were not ready to go home. Within minutes, I was waved into a game. I partnered with a woman who’d relocated from West Virginia, and I asked her why she came here. “I wanted the South, but it had to have the ocean,” she said. I met a whole lot of other folks who were eager to talk about the affordable prices and friendly people I’d find in Wilmington. Afterward, sweaty and hungry, I went to Zora’s Market and Kitchen on Castle Street. Dean Neff and Lydia Clopton, the husband-and-wife team behind Seabird, took over the longtime neighborhood seafood market in late 2024. It’s still largely nothing more than a cash register and a display of seafood on ice, so I ordered the shrimp basket with hushpuppies and a side of cheese grits and took my lunch outside.

A bright vinegary sauce cooled down the spice-battered shrimp while the covered porch cooled down the outside picnic tables. That evening, Jill and I walked to Manna, a Wilmington restaurant I had heard about before arriving. William “Billy” Mellon opened his doors in 2010, and Manna spent years as the city’s lone AAA Four Diamond restaurant. Executive Chef Carson Jewell later returned to his hometown to work at Manna after cooking in kitchens associated with Ashley Christensen and Vivian Howard, bringing with him a sturdy Southern culinary education. Manna looks like a restaurant where a diamond ring might be smuggled into a dessert at any moment. Original contemporary art covers the walls. Low light settles over leather armchairs. The tables feel far enough apart that you might safely discuss family finances in conversations.The dishes buck formality: oysters with mignonette sauce and onion sorbet; a salad of herbs, bacon and soft-boiled egg; sausage with creamy peas. In the kitchen, technique and precision combine with charm and nostalgia, and the menu harks to recipes you might discover in an old tin box on top of Meemaw’s fridge.

Carolina Calling

The next morning, we drove toward Carolina Beach and stopped at The Southerly, a family-owned cafe. A couple of hundred biscuits are baked each morning and filled with sausage, egg, country ham, butter or jelly. When everything’s sold out, they close up shop—usually around mid morning. This welcome business model for us early risers affords us time to debate a third biscuit while there’s still some goods—and room—left. The Southerly is just about a mile from Carolina Beach, where squat houses lifted onto pilings border the Atlantic, bracing for rising tides. A mist hung over the ocean, blurring the horizon into steely blues. At the northern end of the beach, a pier has been sheared in half by the ocean, construction tape doing its best to stop tourists from testing the crooked-toothed pilings below. I crept out toward where the wooden planks just fell away. “Let’s get a drink,” Jill suggested, knowing how to keep me from continuing right up to the edge.

At the base of the still-healthy part of the pier, we found a tiki bar where the just-before-noon crowd had politely left two barstools. We ordered margaritas blended with fresh-squeezed fruit and split a hot dog covered in slaw and pineapple pico de gallo: salt, vinegar, sweetness. Below us, the waves seemed to lap to the beat of classic rock. That night we had dinner at Seabird, the restaurant that made Michelin’s omission even harder to understand. Neff built the menu around North Carolina seafood, and the place has that unmistakable lowcountry cool. The clams came first, settled in a coconut broth spiked with ginger and lemongrass. I ordered the Eastern cioppino, crowded with tilefish, shrimp, scallops and andouille, an inventory list of what’s fresh right now, a saffron broth below. “Best meal of the weekend,” I said.“It’s Olivero,” Jill countered. Honestly? The race was tight.

We ended our weekend at Bespoke, a downtown cocktail bar that doubles as a coffeehouse by day. There’s a big curving wooden bar that runs along the front wall, and the case of pastries that sits there in the morning disappears by the time they’re back to slinging cocktails in the afternoon. Robby Dow, a North Carolina native who previously ran the drinks program at a big-deal Brooklyn bar, took it over recently and created an Italian-leaning cocktail menu with vintage amari and cocktails on tap. He poured me a negroni, a perfect balance of sweet and tart, this one stirred with a Cinzano vermouth hitting notes of black cherry and vanilla.We sat in the dark wood-paneled bar, the weekend nearly over, and did what my wife and I sometimes do when a place has begun to win us over: We opened real estate apps and scrolled through nearby listings. High ceilings, double porches, prices aligned with old Miami a generation ago. We got hung up on a canary yellow three-bedroom a couple of blocks from Olivero, built in 1900 and sitting at $550,000, two rocking chairs waiting for us on the front porch. We had arrived wondering whether Wilmington could measure up to the South’s old coastal standbys and whether Michelin had missed something. Wilmington isn’t as overflowing with boutiques as Charleston, as theatrically strange as Savannah or as party-ready as New Orleans. But it’s approachable, affordable and intriguing—an unanticipated surprise partially hidden under the live oaks and in the fast-moving tide of the Cape Fear River. Perhaps it’s in our favor that Wilmington isn’t in the limelight. We can still dream of retiring up the grand steps to one of those antebellum homes then heading out for an early dinner. Olivero or Seabird? We’d have plenty of weekends to decide.

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