As Lake Oconee Life reported, the building on Greensboro Road used to be Bone Island Grillhouse, a single kitchen under a single roof. This year it reopened as two restaurants sharing one lakefront address. Walk in the front door and you're at Italian Chophouse, white tablecloths and a wine list built around prime steaks and handmade pasta. Walk around to the water side and you're at Lakefront Pavilion, an open-air deck built for boat traffic and lake days that don't require a reservation.
For a Great Waters resident who keeps a boat at the marina, that split matters more than it sounds. It changes the math on how many nights a week you can eat dinner without getting in a car.
What Used to Be There
The Greensboro Road spot operated for years under the Bone Island name. This year the building took on a second identity built into its footprint. The new operation is run by Gary Sofen, who also owns Lake Oconee Bistro in the historic Magnolia House building in Eatonton. The pairing makes sense on paper: one operator, two different menus, one dock.
Two Restaurants Under One Roof
Inside, Italian Chophouse serves prime steaks and chops, fresh seafood, and classic Italian dishes with a wine list built to match. According to the restaurant's own hours listing, it's open Thursday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed Monday through Wednesday. The dining room sits at 920 Greensboro Rd in Eatonton, and reservations run through (706) 705-7005.
Outside, Lakefront Pavilion runs on a different clock. It serves casual bites and drinks Thursday through Monday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with the option to arrive by boat or by car. It's the kind of stop built for a swimsuit and wet hair rather than a reservation, a place to pull up, order something off the deck, and get back on the water.
Both venues opened this year at the same address, which means a single trip across the lake now offers a choice between a sit-down dinner and a dockside lunch, depending on which day you show up and which door you walk through.
What Was Already Inside the Gates
Great Waters residents haven't been without options. The community's clubhouse holds two restaurants of its own. The Overlook sits above the golf course with lake views, a raw bar with oysters and poached lobster tail, and a wine program that's drawn recognition in Wine Spectator's restaurant awards. But it only serves dinner three nights a week, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, from 5 to 9 p.m.
The other option, Waterview Pub, sits at the turn of the Great Waters course and runs a longer schedule, open most days from roughly 8:30 in the morning to 6 in the evening. It's built for a quick bite between holes or a beer at the bar, not a night out. Between the two, a resident who wants dinner without leaving the gates has exactly three nights a week to work with.
The Other Boat-Up Option
Great Waters isn't the first place on the lake where residents have been able to tie up and eat. Gaby's by the Lake, at the Ritz-Carlton Reynolds Lake Oconee, has long welcomed guests directly at its dock, one of the few restaurants on Lake Oconee built specifically for boat arrivals rather than car traffic. It's a different kind of stop, poolside and family-oriented rather than steakhouse-formal, but it's been part of the boating rotation for years and remains one of the more reliable dock-to-table options on the water.
The Actual Change This Fall
Put the pieces together and the shift becomes clear. Before this year, a Great Waters boater who wanted dinner without a car had three nights at the Overlook, a casual lunch window at Waterview Pub, and a longer boat ride to Gaby's. Now there's a fourth stop on the map, sitting in the same zip code as Great Waters itself, open four nights a week for a full dinner and five days a week for something lighter off the same dock.
That doesn't replace what's inside the gates. The Overlook's raw bar and wine list still have no real substitute on this stretch of the lake, and Waterview Pub is still the easiest lunch after eighteen holes. What's changed is the range. A resident checking the calendar for a Sunday dinner used to come up empty inside the gates and had fewer places to look outside them. Now Sunday has an answer, and it doesn't require leaving the water.
The Great Waters marina is private, so getting a boat in the water in the first place already puts a resident within reach of a wider stretch of the lake than a typical drive would. What the Greensboro Road building adds isn't access. It's a new answer to what to do with that access on a Sunday night when the clubhouse kitchen is closed.
Both new venues are still settling into their first full season, so hours are worth confirming directly before a Tuesday crossing turns into a locked door. But the shape of it is already visible. The building that used to hold one restaurant now holds two, and a Great Waters dinner rotation that used to run on three fixed nights now has room to stretch further into the week, all without a single mile on a car.
For homeowners in Great Waters thinking about what a season on this stretch of the lake actually looks like, from the marina to the menu, Charity Joiner + Company knows this water as well as the homes on it. Request a Red-Carpet Consultation to talk through what's changing here this fall, on the course and on the dock.