9 Restaurant Chains That Only Make Sense in South Carolina
California Dreaming’s history traces its start to 1984, when the first dining room opened inside a Columbia train depot that hadn’t run a locomotive in decades.
The kitchen never left.
These are the restaurant chains that only make sense in South Carolina.
1. Groucho’s Deli
Chain founder Harold Miller, a Philadelphia transplant, carried his recipes south and opened Groucho’s Deli in Columbia in 1941.
Locals thought he looked and talked like Groucho Marx, so the nickname outlived the man.
It’s still Groucho’s.
The chain has since spread into North Carolina and Georgia, but it has never stopped being a Columbia habit first.
Order the Dipper today and you’re still dunking it in Formula 45, the sauce recipe the family has guarded since 1945.
2. Sub Station II
Sumter saw its first Northeastern-style sub shop in 1975, when Dominic Ruffalo opened Sub Station II in a part of the country that had never seen one.
Walk into one today and you’re standing in the same footprint Ruffalo built: 26 of the chain’s 37 shops still sit inside South Carolina, according to its location list.
Franchise growth carried the rest into North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, but Sumter is still where the ovens started running.
The Sub Station II Math
Sub Station II has 26 of its 37 shops inside South Carolina, according to the chain’s location list.
The other 11 split across four states: Seven in North Carolina, two in Kentucky, one in Tennessee, and one in Virginia.
3. Village Idiot Pizza
A running joke among three college friends became Village Idiot Pizza in 1990, opened on Devine Street in Columbia’s Five Points neighborhood.
The joke held up.
Village Idiot spent three decades as a Five Points-only fixture before it finally franchised and opened a second location in Olympia.
A third spot on Forest Drive came and went, closing after its landlord sold the building out from under the lease.
Climb the stairs at Five Points today and you’re standing in the same upstairs dining room University of South Carolina students claimed back in 1990.
4. Lizard’s Thicket
It took a private house on Broad River Road in Columbia to start Lizard’s Thicket: Bob and Anna Williams opened the first dining room there in 1977.
No concept required.
Thirteen of the chain’s locations still sit inside South Carolina today, according to Lizard’s Thicket’s current count.
Nearly all cluster across the Midlands, with a single outpost in Florence built on Anna Williams’s recipes.
Show up for breakfast and you’ve got until 11:30 a.m. on weekdays, or noon on Saturday and Sunday, before the kitchen switches over.
5. California Dreaming
The first California Dreaming restaurant opened inside Columbia’s Union Station in 1984, a depot built in 1902 that used to run trains, not entrees.
Four of its six dining rooms today still sit in South Carolina: Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, and Surfside Beach.
The name has nothing to do with the location.
The depot came first.
You’ll hear out-of-staters guess it’s about the West Coast, while regulars already know it’s about the depot.
Psst! How much do you know about South Carolina’s food history? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
South Carolina Food IQ
Answer these questions on South Carolina food history and state trivia. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
In 2006, South Carolina lawmakers named which food the state’s official snack?
6. Melvin's BBQ
Melvin's BBQ traces back to 1939, when the Bessinger family's cafe in Holly Hill started selling a mustard-based barbecue sauce almost nobody outside South Carolina's Midlands had tasted.
Mustard, not tomato.
Melvin Bessinger opened his restaurant in Mount Pleasant in 1982, and today you'll find Melvin's running only two dining rooms, both in the Charleston area.
That's the whole footprint.
7. Home Team BBQ
Home Team BBQ opened its first restaurant in 2006 inside a converted mid-1900s gas station in Charleston's West Ashley neighborhood.
Many chains tear down a building like that instead of keeping it standing.
Order today and you can still find six of its seven locations inside South Carolina, running from Sullivan's Island to Greenville.
Only one outpost sits as far off as Aspen, Colorado.
A ski-town barbecue joint sounds like a punchline.
Charleston still leads.
8. Hall's Chophouse
Sunday morning at Hall's Chophouse in Charleston looks like any upscale steakhouse, until the choir comes through the door.
The Hall family opened the King Street original in 2009 and built its name on hospitality as much as on the steaks.
Show up for brunch and you'll get a live gospel choir moving table to table from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., right alongside shrimp and grits and the whiskey bread pudding regulars order every time.
Nobody calls it a show.
Sister locations have since opened in Greenville, Columbia, and Nexton, with a single Nashville outpost the only stop outside South Carolina.
9. Poe's Tavern
A cottage built around 1920 on Sullivan's Island became Poe's Tavern in 2003, named after a soldier once stationed on that same island.
That soldier was Poe.
Poe was an 18-year-old Army private at Fort Moultrie in 1827, decades before he wrote a word anyone remembers.
Pick up his short story "The Gold-Bug" and you'll recognize Sullivan's Island on the page.
The tavern has since opened rooms in Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia, but the Sullivan's Island original still keeps that old Army history on the wall.
A menu built around a 19th-century ghost-story writer only works standing on the actual sand Poe once walked.
Staying Put, Mostly
Seven of the nine chains on this list publish a running location count, and every one keeps the majority of its dining rooms inside South Carolina.
Add up all seven and 57 of their 72 combined locations, about eight in every ten, still sit inside the state.
Poe's Tavern is the other outlier: Its founding cottage on Sullivan's Island is now outnumbered three to one by locations elsewhere.
Groucho's Deli, the ninth, doesn't publish a running count at all.
Columbia diners just know it's always been there.
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