"I moved here in 2003 and one of the first places I came was Liberty's happy hours. When we opened Dead Dog Saloon in 2006, I 'lifted' Liberty's happy hour, and now we're bringing it back."
That's Peter Haentjens, co-owner of Big Fish, talking about the 21,000-square-foot seafood restaurant that opened at Broadway at the Beach on September 18. Most people walking past the new deck on Lake Broadway this week will see a fresh coat of paint and a raw bar. What they're actually looking at is a happy hour tradition that left the building in 2006 and just spent twenty years living somewhere else before moving back to its original address.
That's the part of this story worth knowing if you're the kind of Myrtle Beach resident who has a standing opinion about where to get a beer on a Tuesday.
The Space That Sat Empty Since 2020
Before Big Fish, the site at 1321 Celebrity Circle belonged to Liberty Tap Room & Grill, one of the original tenants when Broadway at the Beach opened in 1996. Liberty's built its identity on half-priced appetizers and a craft beer list that was genuinely hard to find anywhere else on the Grand Strand at the time. For a stretch of nearly a quarter century, it was the place regulars pointed to when someone asked where the locals actually drink at Broadway at the Beach, as opposed to the tourists.
The restaurant closed in 2020, and the space sat vacant for years while the rest of the complex kept turning over around it. That's the detail easy to miss in any "new restaurant opens" writeup: this wasn't a quick flip from one tenant to the next. It was a six-year gap on one of the most visible waterfront lots in the entire complex.
What Actually Moved In
Big Fish is not a modest replacement. At 21,000 square feet, with a 5,000-square-foot covered deck overlooking Lake Broadway, the new build includes a 26-seat oyster bar, a 70-seat bar backed by 22 TVs, and a stage for live music on the deck. The menu leans into Lowcountry boil-style steam pots, Maine lobster rolls, East Coast and South Carolina Lowcountry oysters shucked to order, and comfort standards like buttermilk fried chicken with biscuits alongside cheeseburgers and shareable plates. It opens daily at 11 a.m. for lunch, dinner, and late-night service at the bar, with happy hour running 4 to 6 p.m.
None of that alone would be a story worth a resident's five minutes. Restaurants open and close along the Grand Strand every season. What makes this one different is who's behind it and what he decided to bring with him.
The Happy Hour Took a Twenty-Year Detour
Here's the timeline, pieced together from what Haentjens and local reporting have said about the site:
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1996 | Liberty Tap Room & Grill opens as one of Broadway at the Beach's original tenants |
| 2003 | Peter Haentjens moves to the area and becomes a regular at Liberty's happy hours |
| 2006 | Haentjens co-founds Dead Dog Saloon and imports the Liberty's happy hour format there |
| 2020 | Liberty Tap Room & Grill closes; the Celebrity Circle site sits vacant |
| Sept. 18, 2026 | Big Fish opens on the original site, with Haentjens as co-owner, bringing the happy hour concept back to where it started |
Read that top to bottom and the story isn't "new restaurant." It's a specific hospitality idea, the format and feel of a Broadway at the Beach happy hour, leaving its original home for a different address in 2006 and finally returning to the exact spot it came from twenty years later. Haentjens didn't just open another seafood restaurant. He closed a loop he started as a customer in 2003.
That's the kind of continuity that doesn't show up in a press release, and it's the reason this opening is worth more attention from people who actually live here than the average "check out this new spot" roundup.
Why the Next Week Matters More Than It Looks
Big Fish opened September 18. The Myrtle Beach Bike Week Fall Rally runs September 25 through October 4, a ten-day stretch that brings a consumer show, local fairs, and a motorcycle show that pulls enthusiasts from across the country into the area. That means Big Fish has exactly one week of its opening run before the citywide crowd and traffic pattern shifts for the rally.
If you're weighing when to go check out the new deck without navigating rally traffic on the way there, this week is it. After September 25, parking, drive times, and general foot traffic across Myrtle Beach's main corridors change for the better part of two weeks. None of that is a reason to skip Bike Week. It's a reason to know that the calm window for a first visit to Big Fish is short, and it closes at the end of this week.
A few practical notes if you're planning that visit:
- Happy hour runs 4 to 6 p.m. daily, the same window Haentjens says he modeled on Liberty's original format
- The deck seats guests with a direct view of Lake Broadway and hosts live music, so it's a different experience than the enclosed bar
- Doors open at 11 a.m. for anyone trying to beat both the dinner rush and the rally crowds
What the Empty Years Actually Tell You
There's a version of this story that just says a big seafood restaurant opened where an old bar used to be. That version is accurate and forgettable. The more useful read is what those six vacant years between 2020 and 2026 say about how selective the redevelopment of Broadway at the Beach's waterfront lots has become. A property with that much visibility on Lake Broadway remained vacant for six years before Big Fish moved in.
Haentjens and his partners, who include other local restaurant veterans, built something roughly the scale of a small event venue rather than a bar-and-grill replacement. That's a different bet than simply reopening Liberty's under a new name. It's a bet that Broadway at the Beach's waterfront still supports something considerably bigger than what stood there before, thirty years after the complex first opened.
For anyone who has watched Broadway at the Beach evolve over the past two decades, that's the actual news here. Big Fish brings a larger-scale venue to a waterfront lot that remained vacant for six years.
Modern Fortress works with buyers and homeowners across the Grand Strand who care about this level of detail, the kind of local knowledge that separates a place worth settling into from a place that just looks good in photos. If you're weighing what part of Myrtle Beach or the surrounding coast fits how you actually want to live, Modern Fortress is a good place to start that conversation. Schedule Your Private Tour and we'll walk you through what's actually changing in the neighborhoods we know best.
