New downtown Columbia restaurant offering oysters, smoke meats opens Friday
A new, high-end restaurant focused on smoked meat and oysters with an in-house brewery on Columbia’s Main Street will hold a limited opening Friday.
Smoked, situated on the 1600 block of Main Street next to the Woody and Hendrix, is the latest restaurant in the area opened by the Middleton family. They also own Main Course, The Grand and Good Life.
Greg Middleton, who runs Smoked with his sister, Sara, said the restaurant will join the ranks of Columbia’s fine dining establishments. He said they both were chasing the feel of a restaurant one would find in a big city like New York, Los Angeles or Atlanta.
“We wanted to be more than just a another restaurant that you frequent after hours or whatever,” Middleton said. “We wanted this to be a really special place, somewhere you come for anniversary or a birthday or, you know, your kid’s graduation or something.”
Smoked, which will open Saturday and Sunday to limited reservations, will hold a soft opening next week and a grand opening Nov. 13.
The restaurant has two dining rooms and one private event room, complete with bar. When patrons first walk in, they’re greeted with a long bar with taps delivering beer straight from the Peak Drift microbrewery, set up in the second of three buildings renovated into one restaurant.
The restaurant also boasts an oyster bar, lounge, a speak easy with top shelf liquors and a sprawling patio. After the grand opening, it will be open for lunch and dinner weekdays and for brunch and dinner Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
For the Middleton’s, the restaurant business has been a family affair.
“It’s been really fun. I mean, we’re typical brothers sisters, so I mean it’s not like everything is just like smooth sailing between the two of us,” Middleton said. “I mean if you have a brother or sister then you know that sometimes you butt heads about things but it all ends up working out in the end for the best.”
Sibling compromise is actually how the restaurant got its unique culinary pairing of smoked meats and oysters. Sara was interested in opening her own oyster bar, but Middleton said, in his opinion, oysters are “terrible and disgusting.”
“Eventually, we were like, ‘You know what, let’s merge some weird stuff together,’” Middleton said. “And I was like, I love smoke meats, like ribs, and barbecue and steaks. And so we said, ‘Let’s do that. Let’s do smoke meats and oysters together.’”
The team even came up with an oyster that Middleton likes: their charbroiled signature oyster, which he described as “like an Oyster Rockerfeller, but instead of bacon, it has pulled pork on it.”
Another unique item on the menu is a “steak flight,” or a cut of wet-aged ribeye, dry-aged ribeye and Japanese grade A5 wagyu. The meats will be delivered to the table alongside a 500-degree salt block, where patrons will be able to sear their own meats to their liking.
Another different aspect of the restaurant is its in-house microbrewery.
Middleton said he was inspired by Wicked Weed’s small facility in Asheville that makes small, experimental batches of beer to test recipes. At Smoked, Peak Drift will be able to test new beer recipes and offer patrons flavors not available at other establishments, Middleton said.
Smoked will serve as a testing ground for a new, massive brewery the Middleton family is opening in an old manufacturing building on North Main Street.
The Middletons have been essential in revitalizing their block of Main Street.
Smoked includes three historic buildings that used to be home to a wig shop, a smoke shop and a furniture store. Their other three restaurants also occupy the 1600 block.
“Nobody else was wanting to come down here and develop,” Middleton said.
The Middleton family first opened what is now Main Course after the Mast General store opened on the block, thinking that other stores and restaurants would be sure to follow. But redevelopment wasn’t happening as quickly as they hoped, Middleton said. So they built The Grand, then vegan restaurant Good Life, dessert bar Robinson Room and now Smoked.
“We’ve reinvested back in Columbia, which I think is interesting because most of the people that make their money in Columbia, to not keep it here and I don’t know why that is,” Middleton said. “But we said, ‘Look, this is this is our home.’ I lived here almost all my life since, you know, since I was three years old.
“I’d rather do it here because I just love Columbia.”
