A Look at Former Restaurants at 102 Church Avenue

By the time La Bodega moved in it didn't resemble a house anymore. Back before Church and Wellborn was taken over with new housing, there was a restaurant built out of a converted house not too far away from that intersection.

The structure was built in 1959 as per Brazos CAD, built as a house, the first reference coming from a 1963 obituary about one Mrs. Marguerite Mary Edmonds, age 48, and at some point in the 1970s it was abandoned.

Dead Solid Perfect was a hamburger restaurant and the first that opened in the former house in February 1976. According to this article, [owner Searcy Bond] did nothing to the building" during conversion to a restaurant, which matches up with this description is from Yuccadoo on TexAgs, with "no exhaust vents, smoke pouring out a coupla windows in the kitchen". It closed in 1979.

In December 1979, One Potato Two Potato opened; I'm guessing it was the first "meal in a peel" style restaurant in town. In the summer 1983 it was retooled as Two Blocks North and added hamburgers to the menu. In 1983 Two Blocks North closed, and in August 1984, La Taqueria & Tortilla Factory opened. "La Taq" was arguably the most memorable of the restaurants in the space and is still talked about sometimes today. La Taqueria closed around summer 1991. According to Aggieland 1992, Rosalie's Pasta House opened September 25, 1991 in the former La Taqueria space (and had the same ownership). Around 1997 it closed.

Finally, La Bodega Baja Taco Bar opened in October 2000 (likely with a major renovation that brought it up to code), and closed in November 2014. I do have a picture of the specials as of May 2014 including the gimmick of the hotter it was outside, the cheaper drinks were.

Despite some talk of more upscale dining in the Northgate area, it and the adjacent apartment building next to it (104 Church Avenue, where Eccell Group operated out of) was torn down. What has replaced it is supposed to be a food truck park, called Wayside Food Park. It was supposed to be a permanent place for food trucks complete with electrical conduits and a covered pavilion area, but it failed hard, opening in December 2017 and closing by early 2019. In regards to that apartment building, I have terrible pictures of that, the one with my finger covering a quarter of the shot is from this May (2014) and I thought had a better picture that shows the building as a whole but I can't find it. It's not much better than what you can see from the older shots on Google Maps Street View.

UPDATE 04-26-2024: Article rewritten for better prose and better information. This article was previously amended in May 2019 to account for the coming and going of Wayside, but now it and the adjacent 100 Church Avenue have been knocked down for a new student housing complex. On April 22nd 2024, the article was been renamed to "A Look at Former Restaurants at 102 Church Avenue", with [demolished] also added.

Dominik Drive Whataburger

The sun sets behind this Whataburger, but don't worry, it's open late!

This Whataburger at 105 Dominik Drive is another restaurant that has been here for decades (though been rebuilt a few times). This is the closest Whataburger to campus and I've heard (and felt) like quality is a bit sub-par compared to the Rock Prairie Whataburger. In 1969, it changed hands from an unknown seller to Grace Dobson (wife of Whataburger founder Harmon Dobson), with the earliest reference in newspaper archives to this location in 1971. In 1987, Grace Dobson to Whataburger. It changed hands again in 1987 to Whataburger officially, which was about the time a rebuild of the store commenced, as a permit had been filed in 1986. Regardless, it was rebuilt again in 1996. This is what Brazos CAD says about the store, and that is correct--I had heard when I was a bit younger of a large fire at the store in the 1990s, and later I found a newspaper that said that it did in fact burn down in January 1996, with a "mobile Whataburger" serviced the area until the Whataburger reopened that spring. The store was No. 78 even in the Dobson days and it still is.

While it is the closest Whataburger to campus, for a brief time it was not as you could get Whataburger in the Sbisa basement, and with the revelation that they had a "mobile Whataburger" even back in the mid-1990s, it makes me wonder how much money a Whataburger food truck could still make on campus today. It was at this location that I realized Whataburger had subtly changed its logo.

Today, it has an all orange logo (formerly, the name was in black and there was often blue trim). Compare this picture (not mine!) to the store today. There's another blank lot nearby used for overflow parking. This used to be a Shell station (it was a Texaco prior to 2003) just about three years later when Texas Avenue started to widen, and demolished a few years later. Since then, nothing has taken its spot, but it provides excess Whataburger parking. It was one of the "Max Food Mart" stores that were in a lot of the Texaco stores at the time. The gas station at 1405 Texas Avenue I believe did not co-exist with the old Zip'N at George Bush and Texas, as the stores I remember converting around January 2003 (Eagle archives show the conversion of the store at Southwest Parkway and Welsh converting, and I think that was one of the first to convert), and by February 2003, the old Zip'N had been completely leveled.

Update May 2019: This Whataburger is scheduled to be rebuilt soon, and the Gumby's has moved out.