40 years of Yesterdays: Iconic Five Points restaurant recalls past, looks to future

It is one of the most recognized buildings in Columbia, S.C.

Located at the intersection of Harden, Devine and Santee streets in the Five Points entertainment district, Yesterdays Restaurant & Tavern would be recognizable for the shape of the building — a triangular wedge — even if it weren't for the cowboy in the bathtub over the front door.

As one of the city's most iconic dining establishments prepares to celebrate its 40th anniversary beginning in August, co-owner Darrell Barnes met with The State newspaper to talk about the beginning of Yesterdays, its niche in the ever-changing Five Points district, the co-owners' approaching retirement and their hopes for the restaurant's future.

The origin of the cowboy is just one of the topics touched on by Barnes, who, along with the brothers Duncan and Scottie MacRae has owned and operated the restaurant since 1977.

The boys from Lancaster

Barnes points out that he is a native South Carolinian from Lancaster. The MacRaes are also from Lancaster — the one in Pennsylvania.

Barnes and Duncan MacRae met while working for the Hilton Hotel in Myrtle Beach.

Barnes, at the time a student at Coastal Carolina, worked for the hotel during the summer. He and MacRae were helping the hotel owner get the business up and running, and later the two transferred to the hotel chain's food and beverage department.

Duncan MacRae ended up in Dallas, Texas, as a food and beverage director for Hilton Hotels. He called on Barnes to join him when a job in procurement opened up. During five years in Dallas, the guys frequented a couple of restaurants that became favorites — and became the concept behind Yesterdays.

Black Eyed Peas was a restaurant chain specializing in comfort food such as chicken fried steak, fresh vegetables and good Bloody Marys, according to Barnes. Celebrations restaurant had only six items on the menu, including pot roast, chicken and beef stew.

Moving from town to town with the hotel chain began to wear on them, so they decided to go out on their own and start a restaurant.

Barnes suggested coming to Columbia because, having grown up in South Carolina, he knew Columbia was a college town. It reminded him in some ways of the time he spent in Austin, Texas, home of the University of Texas.

After looking at several locations, MacRae and Barnes signed a lease in 1977 on what was then Lombardi's sandwich shop in Five Points.

(A side note: Robert Williams, the founder of Lizard's Thicket, was negotiating for the same building for the very first Lizard's Thicket location. Lombardi decided to sign with Barnes and MacRae.)

Duncan and Barnes were joined by Duncan's brother Scottie in the business and for the first three months they ran the restaurant as Lombardi's.

In those early days, they did a lunch service, shut the doors at 4 p.m., "put on our carpentry aprons and put up stuff (on the walls) that we'd gone to the country to get." They did the decor themselves with wood, metal and found objects.

Although the paint on the wall may have changed over 40 years, not much else has. The church pews that form the booths along the walls in the restaurant came from actual churches in the Lancaster, SC, area or just over the border in Georgia. And the MacRae brothers' father became an expert at decoupaging the tabletops with artwork and magazine clippings.

As for the cowboy above the door?

"The man in the tub came to be because, in Dallas, they had a place that had a witch in a bathtub out on top (of the business)," Barnes said. "So we decided, since we're moving here from Dallas and the Dallas Cowboys and everything, that we wanted to project a relaxed atmosphere. What's more relaxing than a guy in a bathtub with his boots on and a beer and a brush in his hands?"

Sharpe's Formal Wear supplied the first mannequin, and one of the guys occasionally would have to buy a new hand or arm or leg when parts went missing.

40 years

"It's the 40th year of the business," Barnes said. "It's up for debate" about the actual date. Rather than celebrating a single day, expect a series of special days beginning in August and continuing through the end of 2018 that will commemorate the anniversary year.

"There were only about 10 things on the original menu," Barnes said. "At least six or seven of those things are still on the menu. The chicken fried steak and the London broil were original.

"The prices, when you see them (from the late 1970s to early 1980s), are $2.50, $3.75... $3.95."

Every 18 months or so, the three owners take a look at the menu to see what's working and what isn't and make adjustments. They have a library of more than 1,000 recipes that they have accumulated over the years and rotate through the daily specials board. Barnes said about 30 percent of Yesterdays' business comes from the specials menu.

There's even a "secret menu" that a few of the regulars know about. It contains loyal customer favorites that are still available but have fallen out of fashion with the general clientele (burritos, anyone?).

Barnes said emphatically that Yesterdays will never serve precooked entrees — the food prepared at the restaurant is made from scratch.

"We were farm-to-table since we opened. Now it's cool," he said. "Our kitchen manager went out and went up and down the stalls at the farmers market, picking produce."

Yesterdays still sends someone out to the market — the nephew of the original kitchen manager — and Barnes is excited that Johns Island tomatoes are just coming into season for making tomato pies.

What's changed

Barnes has seen restaurants come and go during the past four decades, and a shift in the city's nightlife scene.

He rattled off names of restaurants that used to be in Five Points: "The Peddler, the Gibsons were a great family; Harper's was an Exxon gas station; Harper's moved in and did 20 something years of business; D'Lights was there before that... John Scarborough was ahead of his time with a healthy fast-food restaurant."

Scarborough owns the building at Devine and Harden streets that once housed D'Lights, which was billed as a healthy fast-food restaurant, and Harper's. A Charleston-based barbecue restaurant is scheduled to open there this winter.

When Yesterdays opened in Five Points, Rosewood Drive was where all the nightlife was happening. Bars like Cellar Door, Twilight and Copper Door catered to the university crowd.

"We used to be more of a bar business," Barnes said. "Because we were all young, our friends were out and about, we were out and about.

"About 10 or 15 years ago, we decided to concentrate on food. Especially when the Dram Shop Clause came around (laws that hold restaurants and bars that over-serve patrons and then allow them to drive strictly liable for injuries to third parties) and underage drinking became big.

"We always have checked IDs.

"We used to take their IDs — the ones under 21 — we would take the kid's ID, photocopy it and mail it to the mailing address, to their parents.

"I understand now that you can't tell the difference (between real and fake IDs). But we don't get that crowd."

Barnes also believes that today the younger crowd doesn't seem to have limits. Younger people used to get embarrassed if they were caught drunk in public. Nowadays, he thinks, the younger people think drunken behavior is funny and it gets posted on social media.

As the university has expanded, the owners of Yesterdays have seen Five Points slowly grow and become more popular. Yesterdays has contributed to that popularity. The annual St. Patrick's Day celebration started in the restaurant's parking lot in 1983 and has become one of the largest St. Patrick's Day celebrations in the Southeast.

But with that growth, Barnes said, Five Points has become too bar heavy.

"A lot of the retail was allowed to turn into bars or restaurants," he said. "We used to fight it at the zoning board, and the zoning board just continued to let retail turn into bars.

"I think a lot of the anger at these bars is misplaced. I think they should go to the root of the problem — the zoning board is where it starts."

Barnes explained that restaurants are required to have more parking spaces allotted to them than do retail businesses.

If the zoning board didn't allow for parking variances — approving requests for fewer parking spaces than are required — then a restaurant couldn't be turned into a bar when the restaurant goes out of business or changes ownership.

He used the example of the TCBY yogurt store that opened next door to Yesterdays in the 1980s. The store was once a retail space and the new owners sought — and were granted — a parking variance. When TCBY went out of business, the space became home to a series of bars, including Monterrey Jack's and Hannah Jane's.

Parking comes up a lot in conversation.

There's not enough of it, and Barnes says the city won't give Five Points any more. Yesterdays' owners bought the parking lot next to their building. They own it and staff the booth, but don't want to be in the parking lot business.

There is a surface lot in the former Exxon station location at Harden and Saluda that the city took over, but Barnes says it's full between noon to 2 p.m., 6-9 p.m., and "when the kids come out" at 11 p.m.-3 a.m.

"They can close down all the bars that they want," he said, "but Five Points won't be able to grow without parking."

Yesterdays' future

Hiring everyday staff has gotten harder over the years, in part because the younger crowd has more options than working in restaurants. Barnes said Yesterdays keeps its staff longer than most other businesses do.

The managers try to schedule student workers around their class schedules — school comes first, Barnes said — and some of the workers hired today are children of former Yesterdays staff.

Barnes admits that he and the MacRae brothers are beginning to look forward to retiring from the business one day.

"We are looking for someone to bring in to tutor," Barnes said. "All of our children are doing other things. Maybe we need one or two 25-year-olds who want to take Yesterdays for another 40 years."

The restaurant could use some modernizing, he said, without losing the touches that make it Yesterdays and without losing customers.

Over the years, the restaurant has gathered its share of fame — ESPN Game Day highlighted the restaurant on a "Talk of the Town" segment, actor James Caan dined at the restaurant while filming "The Program" in 1993, all of author Pat Conroy's brothers worked at the restaurant and Pat Conroy had a designated corner booth when dining at the restaurant. Singer Darius Rucker hung out at Yesterdays. Gamecock football star Jadeveon Clowney ate two meals there back-to-back twice a week.

But still its biggest claim to fame?

"We started St. Patrick's Day in our parking lot," Barnes says. "Yesterdays and two kegs of beer."

This story was originally published June 22, 2018 at 9:08 AM with the headline "40 years of Yesterdays: Iconic Five Points restaurant recalls past, looks to future."