Archive for March, 2016
Kiki's Chicken & Waffles, 110 Columbia Northeast Drive: 17 February 2016 (moved) no comments
Soul food purveyors Kiki's Chicken & Waffles have left their old, cramped, digs in Fortune Square, and have moved into the old Sticky Fingers location at Columbia Mall.
Judging from the parking lot Sunday 6 March, they will have no trouble filling the larger building..
No Day At The Beach.. no comments
Edna's #1, 3609 River Drive: 31 March 2016 32 comments
Well, this is the end of an era. Edna's on River Drive predates me into this world by something over a year, so has been a Columbia institution longer than I've been alive. Of course, it has been an institution in a part of the town we used to think of as far away, so if we ever ate here growing up, it was long enough ago, and infrequently enough that I can't remember it. I'll have to try to remedy that before 31 March.
This kind of walk-up, no inside dining restaurant used to be common. In fact that's the way I recall Bell's and the original Garners Ferry McDonald's. Nowdays it is much less common, though you can still see remnants of the style, now worked around, in Zesto and Dairy Bar. I love the common-sense practicality of the cement blocks shorter customers can stand on to bring them up to window level.
Edna's also had an affiliated located at 2200 Two Notch Road, in a building that is still there, and a third location off Forest Drive, which was razed some years ago.
Here is a nice appreciation of Marie Rose Tyner, who ran the restaurant for many years and passed in the summer of 2015.
Urban Metro Fashions, 3538 Covenant Road: Late 2015 4 comments
This small urban clothing botique is in the storefront that was the final location for Forest Lake TV. It's listed in the February 2015-2016 phonebook(*), and I think I would have noticed it being vacant for many months as I drive by there several times a week, so I'm going to peg the closing as "late 2015".
(*) For some reason I still have not received a February 2016-2017 phonebook..