Red Lobster / Jumbo Asian Buffet, 2701 Decker Boulevard: Early 2000s 8 comments
I said in another post that Asian Buffet is the last stage a restaurant building goes through.
I didn't mean that in any disparaging sense -- I have a lot of admiration for the folks who, often as a family effort, can take a marginal location and make a go of it. Unfortunately, as we have seen before, it doesn't always work.
In this case, the building was the former Red Lobster location next to the former Olive Garden on Decker Blvd. The Red Lobster closed in the general flight from Decker towards Sandhills which also took the neighboring Olive Garden. I'm not sure why Jumbo Buffett failed in this case. It could be that the established buffet on Two Notch by Lowes was too nearby, perhaps the Red Lobster building was just too large for an operation with less traffic to pay the utilities or perhaps people never got past the "jumbo shrimp" jokes. Whatever the reason, I recall this operation as rather short lived, no more than a year or so.
UPDATE 19 Feb 2010: Added full street address to post title.
UPDATE 26 August 2024: Add Red Lobster to the post title, edit tags, add map icon.
8 Responses to 'Red Lobster / Jumbo Asian Buffet, 2701 Decker Boulevard: Early 2000s'
Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'Red Lobster / Jumbo Asian Buffet, 2701 Decker Boulevard: Early 2000s'.
-
ColaRai
26 Jun 08 at 8:20 pm
-
Comments are good!
ted
26 Jun 08 at 10:53 pm
-
My coworkers and I ate here once and we quite enjoyed it!
Alicia
10 Feb 10 at 11:37 pm
-
My neighbors and I loved this place. it's a shame it closed down. Very nice people and a nice atmosphere, good variety of food.
Christina
28 Aug 10 at 6:11 pm
-
didnt they move to 2 Notch Road
-
ennn i knew they wouldn't last..so sad to see olive garden + red lobster go. That place looks so desserted
Aliina Jackson
4 Feb 11 at 10:04 pm
-
When it was Red Lobster... I used to love eating there... Their dining room had a platform in the center of the restaurant, which included raised seating, a couple feet off the ground. The Knox Abbott location in West Columbia is still open, and has the same old-school style platform set-up. There's also an original-style building in Greenville, SC.
The Rush's restaurants also have a similar platform-style dining area.
Dee Dee
27 Jan 13 at 1:56 am
-
All this time later, and this popped into my head tonight, and turned up on a Google search. Anyway, I remember this place. I even ate at it when it was a red lobster. One thing I specifically remember from this place, was that all the food was really good... but I wanted white rice. They didn't have any out. I asked a waitress and she said yes they had it but you had to ask for it. She went behind the bar or counter, I don't recall which... but there was a rice cooker there. The kind you would get in Kohls or a department store. Just enough for 1 family. I got a scoop of rice and that was it. We didn't go back, we found other buffets we liked. But this one was good. It reminds me of several that are around town now. In particular the one by Columbiana Mall in the old pool hall
Brian
9 Sep 23 at 10:28 pm
My coworkers and I used to eat here once every two weeks when it was open and we really enjoyed it, although one of them used to staunchly argue that Little China (just up the street near Rush's) was still his favorite and that the "Little" guy would beat the "Jumbo" every time. He was right. But we're still not sure what happened with Jumbo. We blame the INS.
[I'm sorry I'm commenting so much, I'm just so excited about discovering your site!]