The best surf & yoga hotels · Outer Banks
The Sanderling
The Sanderling sits on fourteen acres in Duck where the Atlantic and Currituck Sound are two hundred yards apart — which means the property has an ocean side and a sound side, and the rooms face one or the other. The $15 million redesign Ward + Gray completed in 2025 replaced forty years of orange with sea-glass greens and ocean blues, four-poster beds carved with sanderlings — the seabird the hotel is named for — and scorched bamboo barstools at a bar tiled in custom mermaid-scale. Vivian Howard — James Beard-nominated, PBS-documented, the chef most associated with North Carolina's culinary identity — opened Theodosia on the Sound side the same season. The restaurant is named for Theodosia Burr, daughter of Aaron Burr, believed lost at sea off the Outer Banks in the early 19th century. The menu is salt marshes and fishing boats: flounder toast with crab rice, duck in blueberry barbecue, grouper in Frogmore broth. Yoga runs on the Observation Deck at sunrise. The surf is across the road.
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The hotel
Yoga
The design
The rooms had orange for forty years. Ward + Gray replaced it with sea-glass green and ocean blue. The sanderling bedposts are carved.
The redesign runs from the lobby through all 123 rooms — layered textures, refined furnishings, each room balconied toward either the Atlantic or the Sound. The Theodosia dining room, also by Ward + Gray, was conceived as Theodosia Burr's modern coastal residence: every evening a dinner party, custom scorched bamboo barstools, mermaid-scale tile made specifically for the space.
The design
The rooms had orange for forty years. Ward + Gray replaced it with sea-glass green and ocean blue. The sanderling bedposts are carved.
The redesign runs from the lobby through all 123 rooms — layered textures, refined furnishings, each room balconied toward either the Atlantic or the Sound. The Theodosia dining room, also by Ward + Gray, was conceived as Theodosia Burr's modern coastal residence: every evening a dinner party, custom scorched bamboo barstools, mermaid-scale tile made specifically for the space.
The food
Vivian Howard named the restaurant after a woman lost at sea off the Outer Banks. The menu tastes like she knew the place.
Theodosia is Howard's first coastal concept — flounder toast with crab rice and basil beurre blanc, slow-baked grouper in Frogmore broth, duck glazed in blueberry barbecue, lemon pie with a Ritz cracker crust. Seasonal, open when the Outer Banks is running, gone with the tide. The Lifesaving Station, the resort's original 1899 building, handles breakfast and lunch.
The food
Vivian Howard named the restaurant after a woman lost at sea off the Outer Banks. The menu tastes like she knew the place.
Theodosia is Howard's first coastal concept — flounder toast with crab rice and basil beurre blanc, slow-baked grouper in Frogmore broth, duck glazed in blueberry barbecue, lemon pie with a Ritz cracker crust. Seasonal, open when the Outer Banks is running, gone with the tide. The Lifesaving Station, the resort's original 1899 building, handles breakfast and lunch.
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