Cafe Strudel moving, expanding

Café Strudel will move next month into a bigger building, a few doors down from where it has operated for 16 years on State Street in West Columbia.

Last May, owners Trip and Marila Turbyfill bought a 1920s-era building at 300 State St. They gutted the building and have turned it into an 80-seat restaurant with a private dining area for parties and other functions, Marila Turbyfill said.

“We wanted to buy a building for years, and, every time, something would come up it just didn’t work out,” she said.

The restaurant owners lease their current 2,000-square-foot, two-story space. The new building – with exposed old brick and the original tin ceiling – will give them an additional 1,400 square feet of space.

“And it’s all on one level. It will be a lot more manageable,” Marila Turbyfill said, joking the restaurant might have to buy a stair climber for servers who kept in shape running up and down the stairs at the rented location to wait on customers.

The new building will include a full bar, allowing the business to serve cocktails, including bloody marys, at Sunday brunch, she said.

The owners also plan to build a fenced patio in the back so they can continue to offer live music.

The bigger space also will allow for a larger kitchen, Marila Turbyfill said. That will help get customers their orders more quickly and will allow the company to expand its catering services, she said.

“With Amazon and all these big corporations moving out (to Cayce), we want to start marketing our catering,” she said.

The restaurant will close down for seven to 10 days next month to make the move. The reopening is set for the end of September. The owners plan to hire a few bartenders and more kitchen staff, Marila Turbyfill said.

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This story was originally published August 3, 2012 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Cafe Strudel moving, expanding."