Rooster's Bike & Coffee Shop

It's not closed and abandoned, but it did look that way.
With the old University Square post in desperate need of reorganization and having already spun off (the now former) IHOP in addition to the supermarket itself, I wanted to take a look at the restaurant on the northeast corner of the center, 317 College Avenue.

It was built a Bonanza Steakhouse as of 1974 (they ran a few ads) but only operated for a few years. Following it that it was a revolving door of restaurants: W.G. & Company Steaks & Seafood (1976-1977). It was briefly "The Texas Grubstake" (operated less than six months, if it actually did open) and briefly a location of Claim Jumper (one of the few Texas locations). From 1982 to 1985 it was "Hoffbrau Bar & Restaurant", of which I've attached an ad below.

From the 1984 GTE phonebook. If it was anything in the late 1980s I can't find it. The Cow Hop, a popular Northgate eatery moved here in 1993 and closed in April 1996. (The name was later purchased and reopened in Northgate later that year). A full article on Cow Hop doesn't exist yet but it's mentioned here). From 1996 to 2002 it was Cruz's Crazy Cajun, a Cajun restaurant (renamed to Alicia's at some point with Mexican food added). Thai Taste moved here in 2002 from 4405 College Main though by that time it was in decline and closed in 2005.

Another view of the current building.

In 2007 it reopened as Crazy Cajuns' (not to be confused with Cruz's Crazy Cajun), created by Hurricane Rita evacuees from Lake Charles, Louisiana (this was mentioned in a KBTX article that is no longer available). It moved from its walk-up location in Wellborn at 14841 FM 2154 (indeed, the sign on the building side still read "Wellborn, Texas" up until its closure). While I first went to the location in Wellborn (I don't know what's there now), which included only a large covered area with picnic tables (December 2006 is when I went), this eventually did end up being a favorite of mine, as I went in March 2011 to this location and had a blast, with lots of food for a good price. It was still spicy, and had been in this place since somewhere about 2008-2009. It went through a few changes in ownership, and steadily declined, notably in service first, then food, and health ratings, before finally closing for good in summer 2012. It shut down the same week as Hebert's did (sad time for Cajun food lovers).


While wandering around around the 2012-2013 holidays, I found the canopy had some older names exposed...Alicia's AND Thai Taste! BCS Bicycles & Repair moved into the space in early 2013 as that part of the shopping center was getting demolished. However, the space was still a restaurant at heart, so in January 2020 the bicycle shop became Rooster's Bike & Coffee Shop (not to be confused with the late Rooster's Country Dinner House). After the obvious hiccups from what happened in 2020, the bicycle shop successfully was able to "change gears".

All of the pictures were taken January 2024 by the author when it was still closed for the reason, hence the desolate appearance. Note that the University Square sign (as of this writing, seen on the University Square page with a permanent link here) is now just a skeleton.

Southwest Parkway East Shell

Evening shot by author, May 2021.
This was another post that I wanted to get to back in 2021-2022 but I decided to put off indefinitely because a good number of the posts I made in that time were gas station or convenience store posts and I didn't want yet another one. Including and between Christmas 2020 and Christmas 2021, there were 25 posts, 20% were on gas stations. Sure, some of them had restaurants inside, but it was just too much at one time. The gas station here, legally "Express Stop" at 450 Southwest Parkway East and built around 2000-2001 as a Texaco (converted to Shell in early 2003) has two sub-tenants. The one on the left (452 Southwest Parkway East) was, from 2004-2005, Cool Beans (legally "TC's Smoothies & More"), which left its sign up for a few years after it closed. From 2008 to 2011 it was Southwest Cleaners, and most recently, Salon Christiana which opened in 2012 but shut down due to COVID in March 2020 and never reopened. On the right side of the gas station was Casa Rodriguez Express from 2011 to 2014 and Master Donut since 2015). Before "Casa Rod" it was the fourth location of Mi Cocina (later Polly's Cocina). This was one of the "two additional locations in College Station" mentioned in this post.

One of the other reasons this never got posted was I had located on Flickr a picture of Cool Beans' facade. It was the side view and I even think it may have been in grayscale, but it got lost somewhere along the way, I think when new owner SmugMug purchased Flickr from Oath (Yahoo!) and cracked down on storage space. Here's the Street View for the site as of 2007. Less-blurry pictures are available but this one is the only one where you can make out the red-and-green Cool Beans facade.

Former Johnny Carino's

Not too many changes from the original restaurant.
Restaurants, restaurants, restaurants! As of this writing, more than half of the last dozen posts I created involve restaurants directly and on average, more than half of the posts in the entire blog. This is no exception. Today we'll do the former Johnny Carino's on Harvey Road, a long-missing part of the Harvey Road restaurant series.

Johnny Carino's opened its College Station location at 620 Harvey Road in 1999 (a bit of a weird placement, it's located down the street from even 701 Harvey). Part of the fast-growing chain under Fired Up Inc. and even gaining its sister concept Kona Ranch down the street, the restaurant was initially successful but the chain eventually crumbled (at some point it was rebranded to Carino's Italian--the name was reverted but I don't think the signage ever was).

After a long, slow decline of the chain (by the time the restaurant closed, only about 14 existed in Texas of around 40 nationally) with the restaurant chain changing names to Carino's Italian before reverting back (the Carino's Italian signage stayed), the restaurant closed in June 2022. As of this writing in April 2024, the chain is down to 30 locations nationally and just nine in Texas.

New York-based Anchor Bar, which claims to have been the birthplace for buffalo wings and started expanding in 2012, announced over year ago that they would move into the former Italian chain restaurant. Despite some exterior improvements (metal roof instead of terra cotta), it doesn't look like they'll open anytime soon (if ever? We'll let you know), with so many other restaurants long adopting wings as a main menu item (you know, like Wings 'N More), will it succeed? (All pictures taken by author, 2/21/2024).

This part of the restaurant was fully enclosed, but not anymore.

Carino's sign from the road. The lighting tubes inside glowed red and I think there was a green border as well. Editor's Note: In the time since we last met, a few updates have been done. Some of the bigger ones include Lone Star Pavilion, Southwest Crossing, and Post Oak Square.

Amico Nave Ristorante

This one and the other photos were taken by author, February '24.
I had to pull the details of this one from my FM 1179 page, but this one came up for a post as the restaurant announced closing with the last day being February 24, 2024. So, with that in mind, we'll take another look at it.

Amico Nave Ristorante at 203 East Villa Maria Road was built in the late 1970s as a restaurant called "Pizza Planet" (many years before Toy Story, of course) and this lasted from 1979 to 1984. Because of spotty records, it later served (briefly) as Kelly-Moore Paint Company (according to taxpayer records) and a restaurant called Buffalo Joe's as late as 1994, but has been a beauty salon from 1996 to the very early 2010s (Shapers Hair Productions, though might've gone under a different name in the late 1990s). In spring 2013, it reopened as Amico Nave from the same owners (Wade and Mary Beckman) of Shipwreck Grill across the street. In its early years Amico Nave did very well: in summer 2013, when restaurants usually have slow business, the parking lot was packed out nightly. But I suppose all things have to come to an end. Enjoy the photos and check out the post for Shipwreck Grill.

Uh-oh, hours changed! Who could have seen this coming?

While the concrete base is old, this is one of the few new light fixtures for Amico Nave.

The building is visibly older. Currently, plans are in the works to renovate the building to look more like a ship and move Shipwreck Grill into the space.

Truck Stop Cafe

The drawing of the crazed cook (it's all in the eyes) seems to be stock art, notice the copyright symbol. Around four years ago I embarked on an ambitious plan to do a series on Texas Avenue with a bunch of all-new content. I put the kibosh on that fairly early (nothing to do with COVID, just some poor choices of what I actually had. As far as COVID went, it was a productive year otherwise, over 40 entries were added, and while many were on Texas Avenue these were coincidental (it is very popular, you could spend at least an hour reading all 70+ posts—do it!).

Anyway, Truck Stop Cafe! This long-forgotten restaurant operated officially from 1970 (phone book scan from c. 1970) to 1973 as a 24/7 restaurant and what appears to be the first tenant in the spot of 2609 North Texas Avenue, and according to records, the building hasn't seen use as a restaurant (or commercial establishment, for that matter) since. However, a one-off crime report indicates Truck Stop Cafe was still open in 1976, and a phone book shows the restaurant was active since at least 1963.

Since then, although the building hasn't been used as a restaurant in years and has been modified since, the current tenant is Royal Priesthood Christian Fellowship, which it has been since at least the early 2010s.

IHOP on Northgate

The IHOP at College Avenue and University Drive kept up with recent logos in its nearly fifty years of operation but has come to an end.
The IHOP at College Main and University (104 College Avenue) has now closed, closing at the end of December 2023, as reported by KBTX who most likely looked at the old University Square post (as it appeared as of this writing, same as the past few years).

First opened in 1974, the IHOP (International House of Pancakes back in the day) has mostly operated 24 hours a day for many decades, and I'm not sure why exactly it closed...KBTX parrots the 2019 stuff I previously posted but can't do any reporting on their own. Regardless, I personally only went there once around 1999 and all I can say is even if IHOP wasn't the greatest restaurant around (it wasn't), it's a shame to lose yet another 24 hour restaurant. You know...Kettle closed a few years ago, Taco Cabana closed as did follow-up tenant Las Palapas...it's a shame that we can't have nice things anymore or get a sit-down meal at 3 am in the morning. (Hey, I worked night shift.)

The two other stores were opened in more recent years.

Workers were on site dismantling the restaurant.
All pictures were taken by the author, January 2024.

Goodbye, Mr. Hamburger

Picture by author, 12/23 Mr. Hamburger is dead once more. The lone pad site, once rumored to be developed as a Hooters, of the mid-to-late 2000s NorthPark Plaza strip center (I've attached an out of date PDF here, as seen on Carbon-izer), the restaurant at 3706 S. Texas Avenue opened as Bush's Chicken in August 2016 but closed by October 2017. The follow-up operation, Huntsville-based Mr. Hamburger, opened August 2018. Shortly after opening a pizza restaurant-within-a-restaurant ("Doh! Pizza Rolls"), Mr. Hamburger #2 closed on or around December 1, 2022 "temporarily" and was made permanent before the end of the month. Nearly a year later, Mr. Hamburger reopened in late September 2023 but closed in early December. (See Carbon-izer for the post this was based after).

Finally, I know it's been a fairly quiet year at Brazos Buildings & Businesses, and I know I still have a convenience store at Leonard to deal with soon per request...and the top five posts of the year in terms of views are all older posts.

Texan Restaurant was #1 followed by The Burger King Near Blinn, then Post Oak Mall Stores, 1982-1992 (really should get the 2002-2012 post up on of these days), Connecting Point Church / Former OfficeMax as #4 and at #5 Culpepper Plaza / Central Station (which needs an update). Speaking of updates, all sorts of other updates were done this year—one thing that happened is we now have a picture of the College Station H-E-B Pantry AS AN H-E-B PANTRY, and photos of any H-E-B Pantry as an H-E-B Pantry are hard to come by these days. There was the demise of the George Bush Drive and Marion Pugh McDonald's, the former JJ Mugg's/Rita's/Garcia's/Fuddruckers reopened as its sixth restaurant, iWon Korean BBQ & Hot Pot, and a number of other updates such as more accurate openings, banner changes (The feature of Fairfield Inn Bryan is no longer a Fairfield Inn), found images like the H E L L gas station and other stuff. Can't say that next year will be better but we can try.

Former Tokyo Steak House

1984 phone book

We're back with a post from the archives which had been mothballed at least for the last few years. From what my current resources have, this building was built in 1966 and the 1969 directory lists "Bank of A & M" (certainly unassociated with the university, as many businesses used the "A&M" name until the early 1990s). From 1977 to 1980, it was "The Last National Bank", which from what I can tell was a chain of bank-themed restaurants back in the 1970s and 1980s.

From 1980 to 1984, it was Tokyo Steak House, which moved from Townshire. Fast forwarding to 1998 (resources are sparse), this was Coldwell Banker (as it is today) but the head realtor was Richard Smith. Cherry Ruffino was associated with Coldwell Banker at an office off of Tarrow, at some point these merged and the Coldwell Banker at 411 Texas Avenue became Cherry Ruffino's.

K-Bob's Steakhouse

This is an ad from K-Bob's Steakhouse back from 1989. Yes, this restaurant building DID start as a chain. Paolo's Italian Kitchen, which has been here since September 2014 and August 2022, is officially dead*, and thus I figure it would be a good time to cover the story of 809 University Drive East. 809 University Drive East consists of one restaurant in the front (with a silver roof) and office suites behind it (copper roof), and while I can't get a good picture of Paolo's (it is, of course, sunken into the ground) you can catch a picture of Paolo's from our Abuelo's entry here.

The last time I ate at this restaurant was back sometime around the early/mid-2000s when it was T-Bone Jones. It was a good steakhouse while it lasted and it was a pick of my parents for date night. It closed in 2005 for a few reasons, the first reason was that when University Drive East was rebuilt in the late 1990s (six lanes out to the freeway), the construction required a retaining wall to be built, and as a result the restaurant was almost a full floor below the road level with limited visibility and access. The second reason was that with the early 2000s came a new slew of restaurants in the same corridor, with Cheddar's Casual Cafe, Rockfish Grill, Texas Roadhouse, and later the new location of Wings 'N More taking up residence, all with much better visibility and access. Lastly, and probably not an immediate factor of its decline (but compounded problems), but as the restaurant lost popularity, the dining room looked big and empty. There's a reason why restaurants, especially chain ones, try to separate out dining areas...

While 809 University Drive consists of a number of smaller office suites, the building in the front (and the only one with a silver-colored roof as opposed to copper) has been restaurants (suite 100A, though not always used). The most recent one is Paolo's Italian Kitchen, as previously mentioned. Previous tenants of the restaurant portion) included Rooster's Country Dinner House (2012-2013, failed in less than six months), Sodolak's Beefmasters (2010-2012, see our previous post that does briefly mention their attempt here), T-Bone Jones (1994-2005), Armando's Border Grill (1992-1993), Santa Fe Steakhouse (1990-1992), and K-Bob's Steakhouse (1986-1990).

You'll notice there is a gap after T-Bone Jones, it did sit empty for a few years.

I'm not going to list the tenants in the office complex, it's boring and that's probably not what you're here for. Still, it's worth mentioning for the number of other tenants that have used the 809 University Drive East address over the years.

* This made a lot more sense when I wrote this back in early September.

Chicken Oil Company

Chicken Oil Company is a ramshackle-looking business, this is the back view from the parking lot. The front view from College Avenue is harder to get. (Picture from author, 8/22).

Once again, we're on College Avenue, which unlike FM 1179 doesn't have a corresponding page where everything is covered so neatly, covering Chicken Oil Company, which is closed, at least temporarily, following a fire in April 2022. I could've done what Columbia Closings does, put together some pictures of the business, give a few words if he remembers it or not (and if the former, with fondness or not), but I wanted to try to give an overview of the property as I usually do.

The same sign, affixed with blue painters tape, was in multiple other places outside the restaurant. (Picture from author, 8/22).

While I've eaten Chicken Oil Company a few times, what can I say, good hamburgers and fries, the restaurant space started out in an existing gas station in the late 1970s and evolved to what it is today, dropping gas along the way and creating a cobbled-together building similar to Dixie Chicken, which had the same ownership.

The restaurant is decorated with old advertising signs, though these have not been well-maintained and have rusted away. (Picture from author, 8/22).

While the gas station dates back to an indeterminate time, a separate "party room" was part of another restaurant, the Triangle Drive-In. This link currently has a picture of the Triangle as it appeared in 1948 (if the link dies, search Project HOLD or its successors for "Triangle Drive-In; photos (Aug. 1948)" without quotes. Friend of the site "Bryan-College Station, Texas: Now and Then" explains some of the history here (archived link--Facebook not required).

From what it looks like, when the Triangle Drive-In expanded in 1957 to the Charcoal Room, the awnings to that building disappeared and another structure was built to the south. The 1940s building remained during all this time (though I'm not sure what it was later used as). By 1971, the original Triangle building was gone, as was the 1957 building. (Later, the space where the 1957 building was became the home of Tom's BBQ, and is now J. Cody's). I'm not sure what the "Charcoal Room" restaurant was used for in the interim.

Ironically, the "Charcoal Room" was not the one that burned down. I had to bump up the brightness a bit on this one. (Picture from author, 8/22).

As you might have noticed from the photo above, Chicken Oil has been closed since an afternoon fire on April 3rd, 2022. The insides of the building were photographed a few days after the fire (originally hosted on YouTube). You can see that the kitchen areas were trashed but the dining room, while suffering extensive smoke damage, looks salvageable. Despite that, five months later, the restaurant has remained shuttered with almost no work done, yet the owners have vowed to reopen.

UPDATE 02-23-2024: Still no work has been done and looks very much the same as it did in September 2022. Fixed the YouTube link to local hosting due to its removal.

Former Abuelo's Mexican Food Embassy

This restaurant is out of service, but hopefully not for long.
Ah, it's great to be back! I've been updating Carbon-izer's city directory for the city chock full of things that will probably never see a full post, and I've been updating the Facebook page weekly with retreads and occasional new updates of posts but it's been a while since we had an all-new page here.

As outlined last November, only businesses that have turnover are covered, making it a bit more like Columbia Closings in that regard.

"Abuelo's Mexican Food Embassy" opened its College Station location at 840 University Drive East in May 2006, and sometime in the early 2010s (2013-2016) became just "Abuelo's Mexican Restaurant". It shut down in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, with two others closed around this time, a location in Plano (3701 Dallas Parkway, open since 2001) and one that had been open since 2003 at Barton Creek Square (as an outlot, not in the actual mall itself). Do check out that link, it's one of the things I've been working on recently...and because I live in the Austin area now (it's true...) you'll probably see more along those lines.

Anyway, I can't say much about Abuelo's. I never did go there and the restaurant chain itself is alive and well, just not in the Austin or College Station areas anymore. I'm not sure about the Austin or Plano locations, but on University Drive East, the space is already signed for a new Italian restaurant, Casa Mangiare. Otherwise, enjoy the pictures! All of them were taken in May 2022 by the author.  

A bird flexes its wings on a sign for the curbside service. I'm not sure if these were put up shortly before its closure or pre-existed.

Despite signage up for the next restaurant, older "For Lease" and rent lockout signs still exist on the doors.

Inside, Abuelo's has been gutted, but a mural on the back still exists for now.
UPDATE 05-13-2023: Casa Mangiare opened in May 2023, almost a year after these pictures were taken. Also, for those curious, the Barton Creek Square reopened as Polvos, and the Plano location is now Sixty Vines. (Removed [defunct] from post).

Former Student Korner

The twilight somewhat reflects the mystery and fly-by-night nature of the tenants here. (Photo from September 2020).
Once again, this is somewhat built out of an older post that I began writing in October 2020. The building dates back to 1972, with the original main tenant being Spin-N-Market, with one location at 1802 Welch (as Welsh was called back then) and the other at 502 Harvey Road.

It was rebranded as Korner Pantry (this was store #21), a Houston-based convenience store in the early 1980s, but that convenience store disappeared by the mid-1980s (as per Houston newspapers) and instead became a generic convenience store known as Student Korner. (It may have even closed briefly, given the lack of a listing in a 1984 phone book).

It was open as of 2003 but at some point around 2005 quietly folded, even though the Student Korner sign by the road remained. In the early 2010s, it was "Determined Faith Christian Center", which gutted the space and added some curtains and carpet, but only remained a few years. In the year 2016 (closed by very early 2017), it was Cachet Liquor Store. You can see that despite lacking any formal signage, an "Open" and "ATM" signs are there, as well as what looks like reflections of fixtures inside.

In late 2020, I wanted to take a daytime photo with some interior shots but was thwarted somewhat by a new tenant there, BetaMed, focused on mobility-focused medical equipment. The store was stocked but not much had gone in the way of décor, with the flooring being bare concrete showing the scars of Student Korner's tiles and the glue from DFCC's carpet. However, as of January 2022, BetaMed already seems to have passed on from this world given how the name (it was never on the building itself, just the window) and the building seems empty.

Next to it, in the same building, Coco Loco has been operating since August 2004. I was told that the Coco Loco was some sort of hole-in-the-wall Greek restaurant prior to Coco Loco, but I can't find anything on it. However, it was "Bombay Restaurant" in the year 1994.

UPDATE 12-01-2022: As of late 2022, Brew Supply Haus has moved here from College Station Business Center.

The 700 University Drive East Club

One of the buildings here as it appeared in March 2020, showing the scars of both Blockbuster and Genghis Grill.
There's a few reasons why this site has been a bit slow to update as of late, partly it's a lack of photo availability, partly a lack of running out of places to cover, and partly it's a focus on new projects that take priority. The most recent entry, Saenz Tamales, was fairly spur-of-the-moment, and I had gotten my photos, then actually wrote up the entry. Otherwise, I have a bunch of mostly written-out descriptions that lack photos, and many of those just end up on my other website.

700 University Drive East is a bit of a complicated property, as it contains a strip mall and two stand-alone buildings, hence, the name of this post (and a play on words for a show contractually airing on Freeform, much to the executive's chagrin).

The first building here we'll take a look at is Golden Corral (store #540), which hasn't changed tenants since it opened in 1991 and...I'm ashamed to admit this, but at one time in the distant past, it was not only a favored family spot but one of my top five favorite restaurants in town. I don't know when we stopped going, probably sometime around or before 2005. The only big change that I can remember from Golden Corral growing up is the elimination of smoking inside the restaurant, so we could sit anywhere, not just the non-smoking section. In 2018 the restaurant closed for an interior renovation to a newer, more open prototype, and the exterior got an update as well.

Golden Corral as it appeared in 2014, looking east.
Across from the Golden Corral is the second building here, and a more interesting one. In 1992, Blockbuster Video, as it was known at the time, rolled into town, choosing 700B University Drive as its first location in town, located next to Golden Corral, and would continue to grow across the United States. As the company's fortunes declined in the late 2000s due to a variety of factors (streaming, recession, unable to support the massive store base that previous owner Viacom had built up), the store was rebranded as "Blockbuster Outlet Store" (whatever that meant, really) and closed around January 2010. Within months, it was announced that a location of Genghis Grill would be taking up residence in the spot, and it opened in late fall 2010, though it didn't take up all of the space, the remaining portion of Blockbuster was taken up by Tutti Frutti, a chain frozen yogurt restaurant the next year.

Looking into the closed Genghis Grill, 3/20.
Around December 2012, Tutti Frutti closed (it may have lasted into January or February of the following year) but something new was coming...in Houston, Big Daddy Z's began to make the rounds of Houston's many food trucks, focusing on Cajun cuisine. This would be the start of what was to replace Tutti Frutti in the future.

Following the closure of Tutti Frutti, the next restaurant, Mickey's Sliders, opened in summer 2013. This restaurant focused on the "gourmet slider" trend, much like how Stover Bros. Cafe was doing around the same time in Bryan. Mickey's Sliders surprisingly did a decent business, but the owner retired in fall 2017 and closed the store.

During all this time, Big Daddy Z's would move to College Station and soon restructure the menu to focus on cheesesteaks, with a new name...Blake's Steaks. Blake's Steaks settled into a new permanent home in December 2017 in the former Mickey's Sliders space and for the next two years, cheesesteaks and other related sandwiches (including some sandwiches that were created by customers in a contest) were served. In February 2020, Blake's Steaks closed to focus on a new venture, Zeitman's Grocery, in downtown Bryan (due to COVID-19, Zeitman's ended up opening almost two years later). Around the same time, Genghis Grill, which had been struggling due to inconsistent service and quality, also permanently shuttered. So by the time things started to go wrong for restaurants about a month later, the building was vacant, and that's when the first set of pictures were taken.

The building has since been renovated, sub-dividing Genghis Grill into two new spaces (the three spaces are about equally-sized), suite B of which became The Toasted Yolk Cafe, which opened in September 2021. A month later, Suite C (the former Tutti Frutti/Mickey's Sliders/Blake's Steaks) opened as Naq's Halal Food. As of this writing, Suite A is still vacant.

Another thing I wanted to note is that originally, this post was supposed to go up in conjunction with something I wrote for Carbon-izer, in which I stated that I was disappointed with Genghis Grill compared to a restaurant I ate at in Austin about six years prior to Genghis' opening.

Wing Stop and Marco's Pizza (June 2020).
Next to Blockbuster, in 1996, a Little Caesars was built. It never really gained traction and closed after a few years. Wing Stop would take up residence in the space (since 2001), but that was only half of the building, with the other half becoming Marco's Pizza, open in early 2020. I can't tell or remember what was there before that, but I want to say there was a small barbershop.

The main strip center isn't very active. (June 2020)
The rest of the strip center, 700 University Drive East was built in 1984 and is a pretty sleepy center that really hasn't seen a lot of activity and I don't personally remember many interesting stores or services being here. I did assemble a partial list of some of the tenants that came and went, but few lasted for many years and were forgotten soon after. (If you want to try to take a look at them, view the source for the page). One of the bigger tenants here was University Book Store (University Book Store Inc.) in suite 100 before all locations closed in very early 2006. That space would become Fast Eddie's Billiards for almost the next decade, and is currently a similar business named Four Downs Sports Bar.

Obviously, there have been some changes to the center since I took some of the pictures here back in 2020, with Toasted Yolk and Naq's Halal open and drawing crowds. One last look is going to be the "new" Golden Corral from the opposite side, also taken in March 2020. (All the photos in this post were taken by the author).

Note the Blake's Steaks food truck. (3/20)
Even if "new" posts to this site will be light in the future, I invite you to my other ventures including Carbon-izer, which updates monthly.

UPDATE 07-14-2023: Naq's Halal Foods closed around the end of December 2022 or very early January 2023. In May 2023, Siam Iyara opened in the spot. (Also removed YouTube shilling, as I'm afraid that's on hiatus...)
UPDATE 07-21-2023: TexAgs has reported Marco's Pizza is now closed.

Saenz Tamales

Extant Saenz Tamales sign.
It's the Christmas season here at Brazos Buildings & Businesses, and while it hasn't been a big tradition from my family, it's tamale time. What better way to mark the occasion with a walk-up shop known for tamales? Located at 1410 William Joel Bryan Parkway, the building today is a broken-down abandoned building.

The aforementioned sign is just off to the right out of view.
The building appears to have been built in the 1950s as Dairy Treat (also known as "Pat's Dairy Treat" in the late 1950s and "Bill's Dairy Treat" in the early 1970s). It wasn't the only Dairy Treat, there was "Buccaneer Dairy Treat" at 1400 S. College Avenue, but by the early 1970s, this was the only "Dairy Treat" in town, also known as "Bill's Dairy Treat". It was "Hargett's Family Smokehouse" in the early 1980s, and it's not known if anything else occupied the spot.

Saenz Tamales moved here in 1984 from 1418 Sandy Point Road (practically behind the later restaurant and also still has signage there), which still has a commercial building with a sign for Saenz Tamales along with a sign for Nesbitt's Orange soda and closed sometime in the early 2000s (when exactly, not sure). I remember a long time ago I went with my dad to get tamales here (back in the late 1990s), and they even had bumper stickers, a yellow one with red text reading "I ♥ Saenz Tamales", which was stuck on an outdoor trash can for years before sunlight and wear eventually ruined it. In its last days, this appears to have gone under the name of "Saenz Tamales & Bar-B-Q".

While the Saenz family still owns the land and building, it has been abandoned since its closure and is considered to be a "Dangerous Building" by the City of Bryan.

That whiteboard might not have been touched in well over a decade. Also note the "Wehrman's" sign, that's for another day.

"Unsafe Building" notices.

Located to the right side of the building, this appears to have been the interior dining room area.

Outside seating area. You can sort of see the original Saenz building from here.

Editor's Note: Check out "Defunct Madden Concepts", an older post recently refurbished as a full post. Just in case you missed it. Also the pictures in this post are by me, taken November 2021.

UPDATE 12-28-2021: Well, it turns out that I couldn't see the old Saenz Tamales building, because the building was actually demolished several years ago! Street View was very out of date.
UPDATE 01-13-2023: Sometime in 2022, the 1984 location of Saenz Tamales was also demolished. Nothing remains of it except the driveway outlets.

Downtown Bryan Shell

The restaurant section is the one on the left (picture by author, 9/21)
In what is possibly the newest (and last) Zip'N built (2010, replacing an older Zip'N Shell at 200 North Texas Avenue), this downtown gas station at 208 North Texas Avenue takes up three quarters of the block and is the main gas station/convenience store anchoring the downtown area (some older options take up the slack to the north and west).

At the northeast corner of the block (the original 208 N. Texas Avenue) was Shining Star Detail, which relocated. The rest of the lot (the part that Shell occupies) was a parking lot, presumably for the office building occupying the remainder of the block. Catty-corner to the Shell (at 24th Street) is a Shell Rapid Lube, likely associated with the gas station for years (it predates the new store, probably decades old).

Another look at a slightly different angle.
The tenant to the right of Zip'N appears to have always been empty, but to the left was originally a Krispy Krunchy Chicken very briefly in the mid-2010s, then the sign got modified when it became Bellon's Kung Pao Express (which operated for less than a year; it's supposed to look closer to this). Esmeralda's Taqueria has been here since late 2016.

Across the street is a Dairy Queen, which I photographed the exterior of but due to new site "rules", outlined in the Harmony Science Academy post, it can't make the cut, but perhaps you might see it on the City Directory pages of Carbon-izer soon. Zip'N qualifies because of the restaurant on site (and given that it has the same address, I assume it's connected to the store) has changed a few times.

UPDATE 04-16-2023: As of late April 2023, this gas station has converted to a Sunoco. The nearby lube station is now a Castrol.

Good Bull BBQ

You can see the remnants of where an awning once hung, last seen in the "Cocina" days. (Picture by author, 8/21)
When I did the post on the late Southgate Subway that closed after nearly 30 years, you could see the doors to Good Bull BBQ to the right of it. Unlike Subway, this spot (326 George Bush Drive, née 326 Jersey) has been a revolving door of restaurants over the years, but going back further hasn't always been restaurants.

The oldest record I can find is 1969 with the location being the Southside Barber Shop "under new management", with a legacy of hair cutting continuing into the early 1980s.

In 1978, it was the Mop Shop, and mentioned in the paper because someone had stolen their barber pole. It was here until the very early 1980s.

"How About Lurl's" was here in 1982-1983 according to tax records (a second location of a hair styling shop in Bryan). This is the last known hair cutting place at the spot before it transitioned to restaurant space.

In the spring of 1984, a new pizzeria called DoubleDave's Pizzaworks opened. A second location on Northgate soon followed. By the time DoubleDave's closed this particular location around 2000 (presumably relocating to Rock Prairie Road), DoubleDave's wasn't quite a small one-location operation anymore. DoubleDave's long stay at this storefront was the longest time that any single restaurant operated here and survived the 1990s name change to George Bush Drive.

Mi Cocina Restaurant (also known as Mi Cocina II, as their first restaurant was located in Bryan) opened in 2000 and was very popular for a time; by 2006 it had opened two additional locations in College Station. Unfortunately, at some point, it was sued by a similarly-named restaurant (which had no locations in College Station) and the restaurants became Polly's Cocina (except the original Bryan location, which went to different ownership). After the spring 2011 semester, the now-named Polly's Cocina Restaurant closed.

Coco Loco, which opened in summer 2011, I never actually went to, but I do remember my dad bringing home some leftover breakfast items including bacon and tortillas due to some work-related early morning meetings there, but in 2013 beef contaminated with the rare E. coli strain O157:H7 was undercooked and sent two young boys to the hospital. The restaurant was shut down by the health department for investigation and clean-up (and of course, the local news media followed it closely). During this saga, a health department official ate a taco at a televised press conference to demonstrate that the restaurant was safe to eat at, but that put off friends and families of the victims (especially as the family in question was facing a huge financial burden in hospital bills), and was forced to apologize. It would not have made much of a difference; the idea was to not throw Coco Loco under the bus, but it ended up closing in 2014.

La Botana moved in after Coco Loco's demise. This second location of a Bryan-based restaurant (still in operation as of this writing) opened in early 2015 but closed in 2017.

Good Bull BBQ opened in fall 2017 and closed in May 2021. Both TexAgs and Yelp attribute management issues to its closure. However, as of this writing, new management has reopened the restaurant.

Brazos CAD groups it with the same lot where Subway is, and therefore, like that building, I'll put that this building was built in the 1940s until new proof shows otherwise.

UPDATE 11-09-2021: The Good Bull BBQ revival ended up lasting just less than two months. Not too long after Good Bull BBQ reopened, their walk-in cooler failed, and the new owner did not fix it (allegedly believing it was the landlord's duty), leaving town soon after. Have the days of restaurants at 326 George Bush come to an end?
UPDATE 02-10-2024: In 2022 it became part of "FNL Nutrition", which didn't long and occupied the address of the former Subway next door.

Fairfield Inn Bryan

Fairfield Inn in August 2021 (by author)
Fairfield Inn opened in 1994 (early plats read "Heritage Inn #1", there's no way to prove that it actually opened as such), which is a budget/economy chain launched by Marriott in the late 1980s to compete with lower-end motels and hotels like Days Inn and Hampton Inn, and has remained since. The hotel, at 4613 S. Texas Avenue, is the furthest south business on Texas Avenue in Bryan (even across the street is College Station).

Of course, the site it sites on has its own history, with two lots originally on the site, 4613 and 4611. 4613 was the first building on the site, opened in 1957 as "U-Pak-M", a small locally-based convenience store. Following a new schedule set forth by a Dallas based convenience store that made the schedule its own gimmick, the store was open from 7 am to 11pm, and had one other location, at 3800 S. College Avenue, which is now Mini Mart (or "Mini Mini Mini Mart"). In the mid-1960s, U-Pak-M closed and became a new restaurant in 1967, the Barbecue Barn. Barbecue Barn would soon become Arnold's Barbecue, and by 1971, was owned by Thomas Beltrand. In 1976, Beltrand changed the name to his own, despite advertising "New Name in New Location", Tom's Barbecue (no "Steakhouse" yet) was the new name of the restaurant. (It would move to 3610 South College Avenue in 1985...and later, open a College Station location).

In 1965, an A&W drive-in restaurant opened at 4611 South Texas Avenue. According to the Facebook group Bryan-College Station, Texas: Now and Then (friend of the blog), the last reference to A&W found in newspapers was November 1975 that mentioned the restaurant needed a new owner. Well, given what was happening to A&W's parent company United Brands at the time, it's no surprise that A&W closed up shop locally!

Wow, it had an eat-in area? That's better than Sonic ever had.
The good news was by that time, United Brands had started a subsidiary to sell bottles and cans of A&W root beer in stores (today owned by Keurig Dr Pepper after it changed hands several times) but the A&W restaurant (separated from the bottling side) would not return to the area until the late 1990s, and then, only briefly.

Unfortunately, at this time, information on what happened to the addresses after the departure of their respective tenants is unknown. This may be explored by a future update.

UPDATE 12-19-2023: In 2023, the hotel was converted to "SureStay by Best Western" (SureStay by Best Western Bryan College Station). No other changes have been made to the post other than removing the link to Marriott's website, which no longer works.

Former Applebee's

Applebee's is gone, but is it truly missed?
For our next few posts, we'll be covering more of the "North of University Drive but south of Bryan" businesses that used to be combined into one post but was cut out in recent years (well, some of them at least). What remained of that post was reassembled as the Econo Lodge post.

Late-night eats weren't that uncommon in the world that was.
As mentioned in the post title, today's post is on the old Applebee's at 200 Texas Avenue South. Applebee's is a chain and needs no further introduction and opened a College Station location in 1994. Applebee's still had the older logo a few years before its closure, and the parking lot connection to Home2 Suites (opened in 2015) gave Applebee's back access to the street formerly known as Meadowland, but I've never actually eaten there, so I have no words to say to about it. Like with the local Fuddruckers (previously covered on this blog), Applebee's was closed with numerous other Applebee's restaurants owned by the franchise during COVID-19, but this one never reopened. It's worth noting that despite some poor reviews of this location (even for Applebee's standards), it was always a bit isolated from the other restaurant clusters.

Hmm, looks like problems were brewing even before March 2020. (The paper on the door is a notice from the city regarding lawnmowing).
Applebee's was built itself on 200 Texas Avenue South, which was the site of Western Motel was there at 204 Texas Avenue. Western Motel was one of the area's earliest motels, built in the mid-1950s and demolished in the early 1990s (likely shutting in the 1980s). One advertisement I could find from a 1980 phone book indicated it was very low end, mentioning only air conditioning, color televisions, AM/FM radios, and of course, weekly rates. Slightly nicer motels of the same time frame were able to offer swimming pools, in-room phones, cable TV, or even a small restaurant/coffee shop (though the motel did have one in its early days in the 1950s and 1960s). Applebee's didn't build on all of the lot, however, and the remaining frontage will be discussed when we get around to Home2 Suites (unfortunately, not in the next few posts!).

Table for none?
All photos in this post were taken by the author, August 2021.

Masfajitas

Masfajitas, menos Dickey's. (Picture by author, 8/2021)
Masfajitas (aka MasFajitas) has been listed in the local phone book for years, with (initially) a single location in Caldwell. Only very recently has it opened a native College Station facility, with this one opening in July 2020.

The building was built as Dickey's Barbecue Pit, a hot "barbecue as fast food" franchise that opened many Texas stores around the same time frame. The last commercial development at the old Boriskie Ranch site (see "'At Home' at the Boriskie Ranch", the post this one spun off of) and opening in May 2009 (another article), Dickey's never did particularly well and closed May 31, 2017 (though this website, which tracks closed stores, incorrectly lists it as "4/31/17").

After Dickey's closed, it sat vacant before MasFajitas, which by this time had locations in the Temple-Killeen and Austin areas, announced it would renovate the building and open a store. The renovation ultimately expanded out the building and left very little of the Dickey's facade (at least in front), only the brick part with the stars is original. You can see the original facade at Google Maps Street View and a side view of the building at the aforementioned At Home post.

UPDATE 10-03-2021: Forgot the address: it's 2297 Earl Rudder Freeway South.