Church Street Blues and BBQ

This post has been merged! Please see this page for more information.

Something to Aspire to

By the time La Bodega moved in it didn't resemble a house anymore. (Picture by author, 2014)
A little more than a month after I added a nearly-forgotten restaurant to 104 Church Avenue, I decided to do a full overhaul on the page as part of continuing upgrades to the site, most notably integrating the original 100 Church Avenue.

As of this writing, the new Aspire Reserve¹, after a few years of construction, is nearing completion with 19 stories and 346 units (though, as it's a student-oriented property, sells itself on 873 beds). I'm sure that I'll probably get hits on this post strictly because it IS an apartment complex-based post, but let's get down to the fun part...what did it actually replace? The stuff it replaced is within recent memory, but let's go down the list.

A good chunk of the land is recycled from the long exit lanes that branched off of University Drive, but there were namely three buildings on Church Avenue that it took over. The first one was 102 Church Avenue, the most interesting of the three. It was built as a house 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 at some point 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, by Donnie Anz, who later opened the nearby (and more successful) Cafe Eccell). "La Taq", though, was arguably the most memorable of the restaurants at 102 Church Avenue and is still talked about sometimes today but it closed around summer 1991 in response to the opening of Two Pesos. It was extensively remodeled² as a new restaurant called Planetary Grub & Juice Bar, featuring trendy California cuisine, opening late August for the new fall 1991 semester. Unfortunately, it was mistaken as a vegeterian restaurant (no doubt, the California/Austin vibe it gave off turned people away) and after just a month of heavy losses, reopened as Rosalie's Pasta House on September 25, 1991, which proved considerably more successful, closing around 1997 in favor of Cafe Eccell Annex, serving as Cafe Eccell's banquet hall.

After Cafe Eccell and its sister restaurants were sold to co-owner Costa Dallis, 102 Church Avenue reopened as a restaurant with La Bodega Baja Taco Bar opened in October 2000, 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. By the end of 2016, it had been torn down.

2014 picture by author
The second of the three buildings was the original 100 Church Avenue. Despite many buildings in the Northgate area being decades old, there was no 100 Church Avenue (colloquially Church Street, though the annexation of Wellborn meant there was now a Church Street proper in the city limits) until 2010, built and opened as a modern restaurant conforming to Northgate design and use at the time, called "Church Street Blues and Barbecue". I never got to visit it as it was never open for lunch and only in the evening and night of certain days (weekends and the days leading up to it). It was one of the first places to have New Republic Brewing Company beer on tap back in 2011, but in 2014, Church Street Blues closed. It soon reopened as "West End Elixir Company" in late 2015, which catered to an older crowd, with much of the staff being veterans.³ A Bryan location followed a few years later, but in 2018 the decision was made to shutter the Northgate location. In late April 2022, CALZ, a cazone restaurant opened having signed a lease a year before. Unfortunately, CALZ shut down in less than two weeks after a legal dispute (allegedly), the social media pages wiped and the doors locked, perhaps becoming one of the shortest-lived restaurants in town. By spring 2024 it was torn down, with the construction of Aspire Reserve starting shortly afterward.

The third building was just an apartment building (104 Church Avenue). It was built in the early 1970s but some of the units had been converted to offices—namely, this is where Eccell Group operated out of⁴, even in the mid-1990s. It was torn down around the same time as La Bodega. I did take a picture of it, but my finger covered a quarter of the shot (May 2014). It's not much better than what you can see from the older shots on Google Maps Street View.

There was also a fourth business on the premises, Wayside Food Park (taking the address of 203 First Street). 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 previous versions of the post, I had referred to it replacing 104 Church and La Bodega, but it didn't even sit on the same part of land, suggesting that it had nothing to do with the demise of the two Eccell-affiliated buildings.

1. Originally planned and announced as "Nova Northgate"
2. At some point, a renovation that brought the building to code as a restaurant and less of a house, it's possible it happened during this time. 3. Dustin Batson, the proprietor, wasn't always doing bartending, he was forced to resign from the local Walmart after shooting a shoplifter in self defense.
4. Eccell Group briefly was at University Square Shopping Center, but nowadays Mojo Concepts, the successor business, operates out of a mailbox...1511 Texas Avenue, PMB 333.

UPDATE 07-23-2026: Renamed and rewritten post (previous updates archived), merging in 100 Church Avenue. (Last titled as "A Look at Former Restaurants at 102 Church Avenue"). New tags were added ([2000s], [1970s] , [residential] ,[2020s], [punny titles])

Blackwater Draw Brewing Company, College Station

I liked Blackwater Draw's food, despite its shortcomings.

Back in the days prior to the 1950s, professors lived in houses on campus, from the place of the modern-day Memorial Student Center and parts south. Most of these buildings were not demolished, however--they were literally partially disassembled and placed in other parts of town. The house on 303 Boyett at Church Avenue is one of them. Of course, a lot of them still have been demolished, but the one at Church and Boyett hasn't. I'm not sure of the house's history since being moved off-campus, but it has served as restaurants in recent years.

By the early 2000s, it was "Satchel's BBQ & Steaks". According to Restaurant Row, it was "a casual family style restaurant with a rustic ambiance, a fireplace, cozy booths and knickknacks placed throughout. The cuisine is traditional American fare with beef, turkey, pork, chicken, steaks, and seafood entrées. The bar serves domestic and imported beers, wines and mixed drinks. They offer a kid's menu, take out and catering."


From LoopNet, back when it was Fredriko's
By 2005, Fredriko's moved here from the old Fajita Rita's (I ate there once—it was forgettable). It closed in 2009. By 2011 (roughly) the building was "DC, Inc.": the headquarters for Dixie Chicken and other related restaurants (Dry Bean Saloon, Dudd's, Chicken Oil Co.), but by 2013 it moved again (former location of Alfred T. Hornback's) and started to renovate as restaurant space again: the Blackwater Draw Brewing Company, a brewpub owned by the same owners as O'Bannon's. Given the generally positive response to brewpubs I visited in Michigan, I had high hopes but was tempered by the lousy reputation of Northgate (Chimy's, I remember, was a huge disappointment). Reviews looked great though, and upon trying it (in November 2013, if I recall) I found the food to be very good, a decent value (more expensive than a typical campus lunch option) with good beer. One downside was limited burger toppings without an extra charge (even things like tomato). The menu was a bit limited as was the seating. I always wished that they expand and open a larger location, taking the example of The Chimes in Baton Rouge, a popular bar/restaurant near campus, which ended up opening a larger, two-story location called The Chimes East away from campus with a ton of parking (for a restaurant, that is).

In December 2015, they did open a second location in downtown Bryan, but it was only to focus on beer production, and did not serve food. The Northgate location ended up closing in May 2018 due to rising rents in the Northgate area, replaced with another restaurant by fall, "The Spot on Northgate" which was more of the same in terms of Northgate food variety (burgers, beer).

During the Dixie Chicken Inc. days, a banner outside said "Come And Drink It" in the form of "Come And Take It" of Texas Revolution lore.

UPDATE 03-26-2022: Following the last update in 2019, it appears that Satchel's operated from 1998 to 2004 and may have been officially recorded in tax documents as "Savannahs", and also the first restaurant in the spot. Fredriko's was here from 2005 to 2009.
UPDATE 05-10-2024: Updated with new information including Fredriko's moving from Texas Avenue.
UPDATE 08-17-2024: It appears Satchel's changed its name to Savannah's Catering in mid-2004, which was clearly short-lived. It at least accounts for that discrepancy.