New live music club, restaurant opening on Columbia’s Main Street
Jazz is returning to Main Street.
The Joint at 1710 Main on Columbia’s Main Street, in the old Mac’s on Main location, will feature jazz and blues, craft cocktails, tapas and a revolving farm-to-table menu for dinner. It will also serve gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches, soups, salads and “designer” mac and cheese for lunch, among other fare.
Ed Roberts, who has owned Social Bar and Lounge on Gervais Street in the Vista, a dance club, since 2015, is opening The Joint.
Social “is more of a 25 to 35 (years old) crowd,” he said. “I wanted something for the older folks, like myself. And jazz is something that has been missing on Main street.”
Mac’s on Main owner Barry Walker closed that club — known as much for its soul food and popular cobblers as the music — in 2013 after 15 years in business. It had a couple of reincarnations — CW’s Grill Blues & Jazz Restaurant and Daufuski’s Gullah Bistro and Piano Bar — but they didn’t stick.
Roberts has extensively remodeled the room, built a new bar, turned the basement into a modern lounge as event space and hired executive chef Daniela Savone to oversee the menu, which will feature tapas and set dishes as well as weekly farm-to-table specials.
“We just want a nice relaxing little place that people can enjoy,” said Roberts, a guitarist himself.
The decor upstairs echoes a New York jazz club from the 1940s.
But downstairs is an ultramodern lounge.
The club has been opening on weekends and for special events since April 4, mostly to break in the menu, Roberts said. The club will have a grand opening May 17. Lunch service will begin May 13.
Matt Kennell, president and CEO of of City Center Partnership, which encourages and guides investment in the Main Street District, said The Joint, along with the new Hendrix restaurant and a resurgent Tapps building in the 1600 block, is moving Main Street’s resurgence to the north.
“It is bringing action back to the 700 block,” he said. “Things are definitely pushing down that way.”
This story was originally published May 9, 2019 at 5:30 AM.