{"id":116,"date":"2008-06-23T23:09:37","date_gmt":"2008-06-24T04:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=116"},"modified":"2022-06-16T23:25:52","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T03:25:52","slug":"steak-ale-forest-drive-early-2000s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=116","title":{"rendered":"Steak & Ale, 5143 Forest Drive: Early 2000s"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The only time I ever ate at a Steak & Ale<\/i> was in Tampa Florida in the late 1980s. We were setting up a new office in Tampa at the time, and I had been seconded from the Fayetteville office to work on the software infrastructure down there. In the event, I ended up spending quite a bit of time in Tampa, but never really got to see much of the city because we were working such late hours.<\/p>\n

At any rate, most of the team working on the office startup would eat together every night, and one night I was dead tired and just wanted something simple and to go to bed. I recalled seeing what I took to be a Western Sizzling<\/i> type steakhouse down the road, so during the usual \"where do you want to go\/I dunno, where do *you* want to go\" scrimmage, I just piped up and said: \"Steak and Ale\". I figured there would be burgers and a salad bar and apparently beer so the guys who wanted a drink could get one. Well, it turned out to be a little fancier than a Western Sizzling. In fact it turned out to be a lot<\/i> fancier, and I found to my regret that I couldn't get a burger at all. (In those rare situations, I can usually get a baked potato & French Onion soup -- my \"too fancy\" fallbacks).<\/p>\n

I never went back to that Steak & Ale, and it fostered no desire in me to go to the one in Columbia. Nonetheless, it had always seemed something of an institution to me, and I was quite surprised when they closed up shop a few years ago. After they left, there was a very short-lived operation called Buster's Bistro<\/i> (which I also never visited) in the building, and now the place is split between some kind of furniture shop and some sort of athletic shop.<\/p>\n

It looks like the chain is still around<\/a>, but the closest one is in Greenville.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 25 June 2010<\/b>: Added full street address to post title.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 13 Oct 2010<\/b>: Added yellow pages ad from the 1975-1976 Southern Bell phonebook.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 16 June 2022<\/b>: Adding tags and map icon.<\/p>\n

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The only time I ever ate at a Steak & Ale was in Tampa Florida in the late 1980s. We were setting up a new office in Tampa at the time, and I had been seconded from the Fayetteville office to work on the software infrastructure down there. In the event, I ended up spending […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1707],"tags":[3532,269,96,5,3,86],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closing","tag-5143-forest-drive","tag-forest-acres","tag-forest-drive","tag-historic","tag-restaurants","tag-steak"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}