Longstanding Midlands Chinese restaurant eyes closure, as new development looms

“Go Cocks Go E*Rolls”

Those four words have greeted drivers rolling along Sunset Boulevard in West Columbia for three decades. And while the sign that holds them now has a significant lean, Sherry Chen, co-owner of Eggroll Station, the Chinese takeout restaurant behind the sign, said she and her husband have no intention of changing the marquee’s message.

“The sign’s going down a little bit, but we haven’t changed it,” Chen said from behind the counter as she waited for her next customer.

The restaurant and its locally iconic sign might soon go by the wayside. Eggroll Station’s building changed hands in December, at which point Chen said they were told they had between a year and a year and a half before they would need to vacate the space.

Baker Commercial Properties, which purchased the building, is looking to redevelop the nearby Capitol Square shopping center across from West Columbia’s House of Raeford chicken plant, and Eggroll Station’s parcel is included in a recently revealed conceptual plan for that potential project.

The restaurant at 135 Sunset Blvd. is one of a pair of fast, affordable Chinese restaurants owned by the same family. Chen and her husband oversee the West Columbia eatery, which opened in 1990, while Chen’s brothers operate Eggroll Chen, located at 715 Crowson Rd. in Columbia, between Devine Street and Fort Jackson Boulevard.

The family’s other restaurant, which opened in 1984, is in no danger of closing, Chen noted, explaining that they own the Eggroll Chen building.

Eggroll Station remains one of the cheaper eats in the area, offering plates ranging from chicken chow mein to spicy Taiwan beef to sweet and sour pork and beyond for less than $10.

Chen said she isn’t sure if the restaurant will look to relocate when its time in its current building is done.

“My husband’s very tired. We’ve been in business 34 years,” she said. “We are maybe looking for something that will be a little less or maybe a food truck or something like that. I don’t know.”

Chen said the timing is unfortunate, as business had just started to come back to where it was before disruptions brought by COVID.

The news of Eggroll Station’s impending exodus comes after a rash of longtime businesses departing the surrounding River District of West Columbia , which has seen a lot of redevelopment in recent years, including the additions of the Brookland condo, retail and dining complex and Savage Craft Ale Works.

Italian fine-dining mainstay Al’s Upstairs , which owned both its building and the Eggroll Station space until it sold both to Baker, closed after 44 years in December. That same month saw the exit of New Brookland Tavern, which moved to Five Points after 26 years in West Columbia, and the closure of Chinese restaurant Jin Jin , which left the Capitol Square shopping center vacant when it shut down after 29 years.

“There’s more population,” Chen said of the area surrounding Eggroll Station. “It’s just changing.”