Whisper Sister Shots

This picture was taken in April 2020 by the author, when not much was going on in the world.
Been a while since we covered Northgate, specifically the main drag (in fact, at of the time this was originally posted, from Chimy's we've covered from Wellborn to this bar, except for Duddley's Draw). 315 University is believed to have been built in the late 1940s, and trying to find the backstory of the building has been a bit difficult. The earliest I can find is 1971, when it was the original home of Budget Tapes & Records (a local store, not the chain as the University Square article, as of this writing, purports). In March 1981 the store moved out and while the owner tried to open an arcade in the spot, no information has been uncovered. In 1986, it became a restaurant known as Wing Joint, which was later bought and incorporated into the space of Cow Hop next door. In 1993, it too closed and moved out to University Square, leaving the combined space to a large bar called The Bullseye, which by 1995 closed and became two bars: "The Alley" (315) and "King of the Roadhouse" (317).

The Alley would soon give way to Coupe De Ville, which was sued in 1999 after a recently-turned 21 year old slammed a number of potent drinks between midnight (when he could legally buy alcohol) and 2 am when the bars closed. (Police found him dead with a blood alcohol content of .48, a lethal amount and four times the legal limit). Unfortunately I can't find the original articles in question (especially the Houston Press article which described some of the drinks and their contents...what do you expect from drinks like "DWI" or "Liquid Cocaine"?) but Coupe De Ville got sued and ended up selling out. In 2005 it became Bar 315, which closed in March 2012 and it remained empty up until Whisper Sister Shots opened in May 2017 after over five years of vacancy. Bar 315 did change the building facade significantly including removing the old awning and adding white brick to the outside, which Whisper Sisters continues to maintain.

UPDATE 09-17-2021: Deleted some redundant parts that were the result of carried over from an old post.

Jimmy John's on University Drive East

Might be a bit overcast but this is "Egg Roll House" looks today after an extensive re-do (June 2020 picture by author)
In perhaps a first for this site and sister site Carbon-izer, Carbon-izer was actually sourced on TexAgs for a bit on Egg Roll House, as opposed to the site's early days when TexAgs served as a primary resource for additional information beyond what I could remember or scrape from Project HOLD. While this restaurant was first covered on Carbon-izer, I can take some time to personalize the story about it.

Even back when I was younger, the University Drive East corridor was always one of the most interesting of the city (of College Station, anyway), a mishmash of suburbia both old and not quite as old, and going out to eat usually involved passing through the area. Of all the older buildings there, one building stuck out, an abandoned restaurant near the intersection of Texas Avenue and University Drive known as "Egg Roll House".

Egg Roll House actually started out as a location of Taco Torch in 1976 (not to be confused with Torchy's Tacos, a much more modern restaurant covered some years back), an early Mexican fast food option found in the Central Texas area, including Waco.

Taco Torch only ended up lasting a year (and had the address, at least to state tax records, 106 University Drive East as opposed to 200 University Drive East) before it was sold and became Egg Roll House. Egg Roll House was a strange-looking restaurant with hand-painted signage (may have had some sort of lighting on it) that operated from 1977 to around the late 1990s (as late as Christmas 2000), and sat vacant for close to a decade before around 2008 when it was gutted (a few walls were retained) and rebuilt for a Jimmy John's.

Speaking of the TexAgs post above, there were claims that Egg Roll House had a small apartment in it where the owners lived while it operated and several years afterward. If I had my 2005 phone book with me at press time, I might've verified that (or disproved that), but that will have to wait until a future update. The only fact that I did find in researching this for a full post is that former owner Yo-Fu Lee passed away in 2009.

UPDATE 08-14-2024: After consulting a few older phone books (1998-2005) I have confirmed Mr. Lee did not, in fact, live in the restaurant. (Besides, it's quite small). He lived at 1203 Francis Drive.

Holiday Inn on Earl Rudder Freeway

This is indeed my photo from July 2020. It's a far cry from the glossy evening shot for the official website, but whatever.
Two posts in two days? You bet! If you haven't checked it out, visit the new Kyoto Sushi page. Last year, the the Four Points by Sheraton, at the old Holiday Inn on Texas Avenue, closed down. While it is up for redevelopment (no hard evidence of anything yet), let's turn to the last Holiday Inn in the city we need to cover (excluding the Holiday Inn Express locations on University Drive East).

The modern Holiday Inn & Suites College Station - Aggieland at 2500 Earl Rudder Freeway opened around 2006 (looks like it was still under construction in October 2005, but it might've opened in some capacity by the end of 2005) and contains about 116 rooms and 48 suites (per a 2005 directory, and based on my experience writing for The Houston Files, no room count is ever 100% correct), and briefly was branded with the 1980s-era Holiday Inn logo before receiving the modern 2007 one shortly after it was announced (unfortunately, I can't find a picture of the Holiday Inn before re-branding).

Kem's Restaurant & Bar, named after the hotel chain's founder is open for breakfast and dinner these days (lunch appears that it was cut even before March 2020). In talking about the old Holiday Inn this one replaced, I assumed that Holiday Inn's restaurants were only advertised due to a relative lack of other competition, but now I'm thinking it was a corporate decision at some point in the late 1990s to stop advertising their restaurants (or have unique concepts). I don't know if Kem's was the restaurant since day one, though.

As the hotel has gone through no new flags, nor has interesting restaurants documented, and of course, is still open, it makes it less interesting than the old Holiday Inn. Then again, there aren't many interesting motels/hotels in the area left worth writing about. We've already written about hotels in sixteen other entries, and covers 19 hotels in total, including the Hilton, both of the older Ramada hotels, Days Inn, and a few others. Well, 20 hotels, including this article you're reading right now.

The hotel has the address of 2500 Earl Rudder Freeway but its parking lot is at the intersection of Holiday Inn Lane (from Southwest Parkway) and Holiday Inn Drive (from the frontage road), and more recently, a large, multi-story storage center was built between the hotel and the highway.

UPDATE 06-17-2024: Kem's has some light snacks available in the evening but it does appear that dinner was permanently cut during COVID-19 and has not returned. I added [restaurants] to the post anyway.

Kyoto Sushi

Last days of the original "Kyoto Sushi", picture by author, 2014
Kyoto Sushi (at 113 College Main) doesn't exist anymore, it's now "Mama Sake", but when I entered Texas A&M University in the early 2010s, Kyoto Sushi not only was open but it had another sign facing south, visible from University Drive, that added to the atmosphere.

I had first written about Kyoto Sushi on a large Northgate post (since removed in site updates) and then on another post called 104-115 College Main which is still up as of this writing (albeit out of date) with new posts being split off of it (like this one). From what I had researched from that point, the building was originally the home of College Station's first police department.

From fall 1993 to mid-1994 it was ProTutors Incorporated, and following that, Disc-Go-Round, which it was as late as 2001. Kyoto Sushi came in for fall 2002, but I don't remember if I actually ate there (also sometime around 2010-2011, the front of the building was painted yellow). By night it served as a sake bar, and around 2012-2013 the sushi ceased entirely, and became the bar it is today (though the "Mama Sake" name didn't come in until later, I believe it was still officially "Kyoto Japanese"). Before ProTutors, my records mention a "Northgate Athletic" in 1985-1986 (not to be confused with Northgate Athletic Club where Logie's currently is) and the last spot of On the Double (from 1992-1993). I can't find anything beyond or before that.

I do remember in early 2014 the restaurant portion (guess it was operated by the bar) was called "The Bulgori" (which I had a menu of, and was Korean food, not Japanese) but by April that had already shuttered. The restaurant was okay, I guess. There was even a slice of blood orange with the meal. The upstairs portion was 115 College Main, accessed from a doorway to the right of what I knew as Kyoto Sushi.

Awkwardly-angled 2007 Google Street View with the unpainted bricks but no ugly facade
Until around 2013, 115 was "The Law Office of Drew Gibson & Associates". The lawyer office is still in Northgate and offers full services but I seem to remember them catering to the local area by helping students to get them out of trouble from drunken escapades. Probably as early as late 2014 (I mostly avoided Northgate by that time) it was a bar called One15, which it still is as of this writing. There's an almost-gone "Aggieland Studio" mural on the side of the building. As you can see in the shot below (when the building looked even worse), there's a sign that says "Paradise" above it. That was Paradise Scuba. It moved to Parkway Square in the mid 1990s (soon after that picture was taken, my 1993 phone book still has Paradise Scuba as being in Northgate) and eventually moving to the old Putt-Putt location.

A document written in 1995 dates this building back to 1935, but beyond the original police department building being here (their Texas Avenue building was built in 1978, and I have no idea if they stayed here long) I don't have information on the previous life of the building.

UPDATE 04-09-2022: One15 appears to have been closed sometime in early 2022. Also actually fit the address into the post.
UPDATE 04-24-2024: One15 didn't actually close, it moved to 106 College Main (the former Holik's, which as of this writing there's no post for). The space is now Johnny Manziel's Money Bar.