For the last ten years, 303 University Drive has been home to The Backyard, another Eccell/Mojo concept, but the legacy of this Northgate business goes back decades before. From around 1930 to 1979 it was an apartment building (I believe six units) without air conditioning, central heating, or even telephone service, very affordable in that era but eventually run-down as the woman who managed it had run it for 40+ years and was ready to retire.1
The historic date and land use is backed up by city documents, old directories, and older aerials. One of the old directories refers it as "Varsity Apartments" (though this was not related to another Varsity Apartments on Southgate or "Varsity II" Apartments), so this is still ambiguous.
None of the follow-up businesses did very well. There was briefly Sebastian's in 1982, then Bogie's in 1983 before it closed in June 19842 and in 1985, The Flying Tomato opened, which did promotions like free Frisbees (often branded with sister restaurant Garcia's3, which seemed to be the same chain, only with a different name, with both bearing the "Pizza In A Pan" subtitle). It was the direct follow-up to Bogie's which was vacant at the time. Not long after Flying Tomato opened, CSPD arrested the night crew for drinking too late4 and there was a letter to the editor that called them out on that.
Flying Tomato closed in April 1991 and Two Pesos opened in its place in May. Two Pesos was basically a Taco Cabana knockoff (which by that point had arrived in College Station) and by all accounts was cheap and tasty (I believe it was 24 hours like Taco Cabana, as well). Unfortunately, Two Pesos had copied Taco Cabana a little too closely to the point that a case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which affirmed that Two Pesos copied Taco Cabana's format too closely, and ultimately Two Pesos sold its restaurants to Taco Cabana. Some of them, like College Station's closed outright.
In 1994, it became what it would be known as for nearly the next 19 years: Fitzwilly's. Unfortunately, Fitz's, despite having good, cheap food (wings and burgers) fell out of favor with the Northgate crowd. Even when it wasn't crowded, service was slow (and also, food portions shrunk in the last year it was open).
The Backyard is the name of the replacement (opened August 2013, Fitzwilly's closed in May of that year), which has a far darker interior than Fitzwilly's, more expensive food, and other changes I didn't particularly like, and due to aforementioned color restrictions, the new owners just painted it the same dark beige tone we've seen everywhere else. I didn't take a picture of the back area of the restaurant--while Fitzwilly's had a few tables and some delightfully dated blinking incandescent lights, the newer facility's back area was significantly rebuilt. The Backyard doesn't seem to serve much food these days, it initially had burgers and tacos, then adding more sandwiches, but as of this writing its exclusively alcohol with some shellfish. (For a while, they had a "co-branded" location with the recently-deceased La Bodega).
1. These are from old TexAgs posts that I've since lost track of, since I'm basing this after an older post that's from 2013.
2. Briefly mentioned when The Country Kitchen reopened.
3. No relation to Garcia's there off Harvey Road.
4. The clipper was wrong, they weren't drinking on the roof, they were at a booth on the upper level, and it was the police officer who climbed onto the roof to spy on them.
UPDATE 01-15-2026: Major streamlining and rewrite done after years of patchwork updates. Added [Costa Dallis] and [College Station].
