Athens’ Oldest Restaurants

Update: The Mayflower closed in November 2023, leaving the question of which restaurant is Athens’ oldest open to debate. Also note that the Bar-B-Q Shack on Lexington Road closed earlier in the year.

The Mayflower Restaurant, located downtown, is the oldest Athens restaurant currently in business, having opened February 12th, 1948, according to a recent profile published in the Athens Banner-Herald. Moreover, unlike many restaurants—as we will see here—it has been at the same location all those years.

How long has it had the distinction of being Athens’ oldest?

When the Varsity restaurant at the intersection of Milledge Avenue and West Broad Street closed in 2021, several news outlets stated that it had been in business in Athens for nearly 90 years. To be precise, though, the downtown Varsity opened in 1932 and its second location most likely opened in 1963. The official Varsity site inaccurately states that it opened in 1962. Articles in the Red and Black show that construction began that year (see the cover article of February 1st, 1962). Delays in construction were reported on November 6th, 1962. Varied sources state that the restaurant opened in 1963, 1964, or 1965; the only exact date given is March 11th, 1964, in a 1992 article in Athens Magazine by Tom Barrett, a fact supported by an advertisement found in the program for the opening game of the University Coliseum, which happened to take place in February 1964: the ad says, “Opening soon.” Either way, the two Varsity locations co-existed for about fifteen years, the downtown spot closing in 1978 according to reports at the time in the Athens Banner-Herald.

In short, depending on how you distinguish between multiple locations of a franchise restaurant, either the Mayflower only recently became Athens’ oldest restaurant or it has been for a long time. Unlike most chains, the two Athens Varsitys had the same owner, but naming them collectively as Athens’ oldest restaurant seems like “quite a stretch” to me.

Deciding who gets the award for second-oldest gets even messier. Many would say it goes to Strickland’s Restaurant, now located on the outskirts of town on the Atlanta Highway, but until 1995 located downtown. It apparently opened in 1960, albeit under the name Essie’s Cafe. In its later downtown years it sat at 311 East Broad Street, but was originally located just a few storefronts down at 447 East Broad. In the 1976 Southern Bell Telephone Directory, it was at 447, as seen in the advertisement below. In the 1977 Johnson City Directory, it had moved to 311.

If one wants to be strict and exclude restaurants that have changed names or changed locations, then the silver medal may go to ADD Drug Store. Its beloved lunch counter has been serving malts and burgers and more since the store opened in 1961. The advertisement below comes from the Southern Bell telephone directory of 1966, referring not only to the luncheonette but also showing that it had the same phone number then that it does now.

However, there is another contender for second place. Since it opened in 1957, the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education has included among its features a restaurant, open to the public. These days of course it is called the Savannah Room, but the available evidence suggests that in its early years it was merely referred to as the restaurant at the Georgia Center. For example, a brochure for the University published in the late 1960s, found in the Heritage Room’s vertical files, makes note of a “Dining Room” at the Georgia Center, as compared to the cafeterias at Snelling, Memorial, and Creswell halls. That said, an article at UGA Today about the restaurant’s famed strawberry-ice-cream pie suggests that there has been a great deal of continuity at the restaurant since the early 1960s, not only in the food served but in those doing the cooking. So perhaps it’s Athens’ second-oldest.

Now we jump ahead a few years. Another local culinary institution that, like Essie’s-Strickland’s, changed names at one point is Plantation Buffet. It began as Hanley’s. Or, to be precise, “Hanley’s Hickory Pit,” as listed in the 1977 Southern Bell directory.

In next year’s directory, it is simply “Hanley’s.” In 1982, according to the restaurant’s web site, the name change to Plantation Buffet happened. For many years, Plantation was known for serving barbecue goat. That is no longer the case, but come lunchtime it is still packed with hungry customers making multiple trips to its buffet line.

Also opening in 1977 at its original east-side location (2222 Barnett Shoals Road, to be exact) was Peking Restaurant. The Red and Black reviewed it, as seen below.

Though the original closed in 2016 (having long since moved from that original address to the Green Acres Shopping Center), the west-side location on the Atlanta Highway, with its elaborate Chinese-design facade, remains. It opened in 1988, as announced in the advertisement below from the 1988 Southern Bell telephone directory.

Yet another grand opening occurred in 1977: the Taco Stand. Advertisements and classified advertisements running in the Red and Black that year confirm that it has been at the same address, 670 North Milledge Avenue, all these years, with an east-side location opening in 1985 and locations in Atlanta, Watkinsville, and downtown Athens coming and going in the meantime. These Taco Stand closings have all occurred recently enough to be reported at online sources: Patch; Tomorrow’s News Today; the Athens Banner-Herald/ Online Athens. Clarke Central High School’s Odyssey magazine recently gave us an update on the original location.

As the historian moves into the 1980s, he comes across more restaurants that are still open today: besides the aforementioned second Taco Stand and second Peking, there are the Grill (established 1981, moving from its original spot at 229 East Broad to 171 College in 1989), Mama Sid’s (1983), Weaver D’s (1986), DePalma’s original downtown spot (1988), La Fiesta (the extant east-side location opening in 1989, its defunct original spot on Hawthorne opening in 1983), and the Globe (1989), a bar that, unlike most Athens bars, has served food for at least significant portions of its history. Also, the original location of Loco’s at 724 Oconee Street, now gone, opened in 1988; its east-side and west-side versions remain, though the latter has changed locations. And Kyoto Japanese Steak and Seafood House was open by 1987; it later became Inoko, which, though now closed, its distinctive Alps Road building having met the wrecking ball, still survives (sort of) in the the form of two Inoko Express locations. Another restaurant that survives in such an indirect fashion is Gyro Wrap, its beloved long-standing downtown location, launched in 1979 under the name Russo’s Gyro, not surviving the pandemic, a new version around the corner on College Avenue opening in September 2022.

Mama Sid’s friendly atmosphere was apparent from its earliest ads running in the Southern Bell telephone directory, as seen here. How many born-and-bred Athenians had childhood birthday parties there? A lot. We should note too that Mama Sid’s was originally Express Pizza East, an off-shot of the popular Express Pizza, located near campus on Harris Street. Classified ads in the Red and Black indicate that the east-side Express opened in early 1981.

DePalma’s announced its opening with the cheeky advertisement seen below, from the September 20th, 1988, Red and Black.

So far we have only discussed local (or in the Varsity’s case, Atlanta) businesses. But certain national or regional chains’ Athens locations have been here for decades, whether in the same building, such as the Red Lobster on West Broad Street (which ranks among Athens’ oldest, having been in business since at least 1971) or not, such as the McDonald’s locations on Prince Avenue, West Broad Street, and Gaines School Road, all of which have seen the original structures demolished and replaced by the chain’s new models. These McDonald’s spots also warrant places among our town’s oldest restaurants, the Prince opening in the ’60s, the Broad and Gaines School in the ’70s. The Prince location, in fact, has been demolished and rebuilt more than once.

Other national chains in Athens, as listed in the 1970 Mullin-Kille city directory, still present in some form in present-day Athens include: the Arby’s on West Broad Street, Burger King (at a different location, 1078 Baxter Street), Dairy Queen (at its recently-closed location at 1076 West Broad Street), two Kentucky Fried Chickens (on Milledge and Hawthorne, both closed), Pizza Hut on Baxter Street (long since closed, though the building still stands), and Waffle House spots on Broad Street and in Five Points (both gone). So the only one that, like the Prince McDonald’s, is still at the same address is the Arby’s, with its old-fashioned neon-light sign—the structure itself, though, having lost its vintage look.

By the time of the 1980 Southern Bell telephone directory, these fast-food joints had been joined by the Wendy’s at 415 Prince, the Captain D’s next door at 425, a second Burger King on Barnett Shoals Road (the current east-side location, though the address has changed slightly more than once), the Domino’s on Baxter (at 529, whereas it is now at 396; the first Domino’s in town at 753 West Broad had already come and gone), Dunkin Donuts at 771 Prince, a third Kentucky Fried, on Lexington Road (which moved to Barnett Shoals around 1988), Krystal on Baxter (closed), another Pizza Hut (on Lexington Road, the building still standing, giving Athens two examples of a meme the internet loves: former Pizza Hut buildings), Popeye’s at 1125 Prince, the International House of Pancakes at 1180 Baxter, and two Schlotzsky’s (171 College Avenue downtown and at the Alps Shopping Center, the latter of which is more or less at the same place today). That totals to nine restaurants that are still with us today, if one includes the Schlotzsky’s, Kentucky Fried, and Domino’s that made short-distance moves; adding to the Red Lobster, Arby’s, and the three McDonald’s spots, we have only 14 chain franchises that were open in 1980 still in business today. No one said running a restaurant is easy.

For a fuller portrait of Athens’ dining options at the time, the following document provides a listing (however incomplete) of restaurants circa 1980. It was found in the Heritage Room vertical files.

The number of restaurants, local or otherwise, still extant that opened in the early ’90s includes the following: the Bar-B-Q Shack on Lexington Road, the Last Resort downtown, and Peppino’s, originally downtown, now at the intersection of Whitehall and Milledge. Also, Fresh Air Bar-B-Que, the original location of which, in Jackson, Georgia, opened way back in 1929, first appeared in Athens during this time (its two Athens locations are these days, in some form or other, different businesses than those in Jackson and Macon, but remain linked by name and history). That’s not to mention again numerous chains, like Chili’s, that have operated at the same location since that time.

For future posts at this blog, we will highlight long-standing Athens restaurants no longer with us, using scans of additional artifacts from our vertical files. Among those to be featured are the Chase Street Cafe, Wilson’s Soul Food, and Charlie Williams’ Pinecrest Lodge.

–Justin J. Kau