{"id":119,"date":"2008-06-26T17:46:05","date_gmt":"2008-06-26T22:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=119"},"modified":"2010-04-12T17:22:20","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T22:22:20","slug":"al-amir-clemson-road-at-sparkleberry-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=119","title":{"rendered":"Al-Amir, 111 Sparkleberry Crossing (Clemson Road at Sparkleberry): 2003"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

After establishing itself on Divine Street, Al-Amir opened a second location on Clemson Road at Sparkleberry (near the I-20 interchange). At the time, I was working in Augusta, and living in Aiken. Since I spent the weekend in Columbia more often than not, I was very happy about a location I could drive straight through to from Augusta and hit while it was still open on Friday evenings. I really liked the fare at Al-Amir, but it could be a challenge getting to the Divine location if I were running late. In my opinion, the Clemson location was very slightly below the Divine location in quality. The Damascus bread seemed thicker, harder and less puffy and the seating was less quirky and inviting than the wraparound booths in the back of the Divine building. Still, it was completely acceptable, and somewhere I liked going. However, the last time I went there, they were in violation of Ted's Rules for Restaurants #1<\/a>: Honor your posted hours. I got there at 8:30pm on an evening when they were supposed to be open until 10:00pm and was told: \"Well, it wasn't busy, so we closed the kitchen\". Shortly thereafter, they closed.<\/p>\n

After Al-Amir, there was a short-lived Mediterranean grill of some sort. Perhaps that was Mirage<\/i>, or perhaps Mirage is the incoming operation which is now hiring. It appears they are keeping the nice fountain that Al-Amir installed. I wonder if the brick oven is still in there?<\/p>\n

UPDATE 12 April 2010<\/b>: Added full street address to post title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After establishing itself on Divine Street, Al-Amir opened a second location on Clemson Road at Sparkleberry (near the I-20 interchange). At the time, I was working in Augusta, and living in Aiken. Since I spent the weekend in Columbia more often than not, I was very happy about a location I could drive straight through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[5,3],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-historic","tag-restaurants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","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=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}