Raps Grill and Bar - Morehead City, NC

Welcome to rapsgrillandbar.com

If you enjoy great tasting food in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere, visit Raps Grill and Bar on Arendell Street in downtown Morehead City. While you're here, be sure to check out our wide variety of menu items at the links above.

History of Raps Grill and Bar

In an age when most things are designed to fit a purpose, Raps is designed to fit anything. The beautiful building with its two foot thick walls is twenty five feet wide, one hundred twenty feet long and forty feet high. It was built to be used in an age of walk-in store fronts with apartments above, probably for the owner and his family.
The building which houses Raps was built in the late 1800's. A cornerstone was found in the basement while the crew was building Raps with the date of 1912. It's not clear whether this comes from an earlier addition to the building or from a former building next to Raps which burned to the ground forty years ago. The former building, now a parking lot, housed a movie theater of some renown.

The Raps building at one time was a bank and later became the The Broadway Cafe. When the Taylors purchased the property in 1988 to create Raps it was know as Jerry's Carolina Cafe. Jerry's was primarily a coffee shop where locals gathered to shoot billiards, and to play checkers, dominoes and backgammon. It was also the closet thing Morehead had to a political club, where local pals gathered to drink Jerry's strong morning coffee and turn minor events into lengthy discussion. The upper floor with its nine inch thick interior walls had not been occupied since the fifties when it acted as a boarding house and, perhaps served less socially acceptable purposes.

In 1988, George and Bob Taylor took the old building and removed everything inside down to the brick walls and dirt floor. Then, George, a local contractor, began creative reconstruction of a new restaurant designed to fit the space. The wood work, including the bar, was hand made and the decor was largely fashioned from hearts of pine taken from the original structure. The result is an open spacious setting built to seat diners in a comfortable and interesting environment, yet one that can be easily serviced by the wait-staff and kitchen.

In 1992, Raps was sold to Gehrmann Holland who added additional seating on the second level over the bar area. In 1994, the restaurant was purchased by Mike Chaanine who had owned and operated Mike's Restaurant on Front Street in Beaufort for twenty-five years.