One of the most idyllic places on the Isle of Palms is undoubtedly Breach Inlet. With its sunset vistas, dolphin sightings and crabbing opportunities, who doesn’t want to while away the hours there?
That’s just what Nell and Griffin Bunch were counting on when they opened their restaurant, the Inlet Inn, there in 1938. The couple also offered a few rooms for rent above the restaurant as well as rowboat rentals for $1 per day, but the primary focus of the family business was the restaurant. Naturally, the fare was seafood, and when their son Jack and his new bride Carmen took it over a couple of years later, Carmen’s deviled crabs were the talk of the town — literally.
Their granddaughter, Renee Allison-Riley, recalled her grandmother Carmen saying that people would drive over from downtown Charleston for her signature dish. “I remember her still making it when I was in my youth,” she added. Jack had met Carmen while the two were serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. She was a New Yorker and initially not entirely comfortable in her new digs on the island, a community of just 300 people at the time. But running the restaurant offered her the opportunity to learn about the island’s people and customs.
“In the late 1940s, my grandparents decided that they would close the family business,” Allison-Riley explained. “It was difficult for small businesses to weather the off-season. Summers were fine, but they made next to nothing in the winter.” Jack and Carmen sold the property and moved on to careers at the Charleston Naval Shipyard. A Texaco gas station occupied the site for years until 1997, when the Boathouse restaurant opened.
Carmen would eventually become an island icon — and not only for her famous deviled crabs. In 1985, she was elected as the Isle of Palms’ first female mayor, serving a 16-year term as the island’s only ever woman mayor.
By Mary Coy
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