COLUMBIA — An immigrant-owned Asian restaurant is coming to Rosewood Drive. The sibling pair running the restaurant hope to bring more diversity to Columbia’s Asian cuisine market.
Alley Street Eats, located at 4478 Rosewood Dr., is shooting for an early June opening, co-owner Sally Chung said. The spot will offer skewers and street-style varieties of Asian food with a tapas feel, she said.
Sally and Joe Chung are no strangers to Columbia. The two have lived in the city since high school after immigrating from Hong Kong with their parents.
The two grew up working in their parents' mom-and-pop style Chinese restaurant before pursuing other ventures – Sally going on to corporate banking, Joe to medical school. But both decided to return to the restaurant industry.
“It’s funny we told ourselves, ‘We’re never going to get into the restaurant business,’” Sally Chung said.
Seeing their family experience the time-consuming nature and difficulty of working in restaurants turned them away from the industry, but a love of the food they grew up with brought them back, Sally said.
The two have operated various restaurants in the area for the past several years, including the Freshe Poke Huger Street and Forest Drive locations and formerly Ganbei in Lexington, she said. Joe operates the No 1 Chinese Restaurant on Garner’s Ferry Road.
But their new venture at Alley Street Eats promises a new challenge as a full-service restaurant.
“A full-service restaurant definitely takes a lot more time and effort and creativity, but I think we’re excited to be back into the business and take on a challenge,” she said.
Offerings of Asian cuisine in Columbia have grown and diversified in the past few years, she said. Thai, Vietnamese and fusion restaurants have joined the staple Chinese and Japanese offerings, but there are still cuisines from other countries not represented in the area.
“There’s more variety now,” she said. “It’s more diverse, but I think we’re still missing a lot of the options that are available in larger cities. We want to bring that into this market and just kind of share.”
The two hope this varied menu will provide an opportunity for patrons to try new things and not be limited by cuisine from one locale, she said.
“We want to be able to have a place where let’s say a group of friends comes in and someone is like ‘I’m not too fond of Thai food,’ they have other options,” she said.
The skewers and shareable portions on their menu fill a gap in the local scene and reflect the food they grew up eating, she said.
Along with the small-bite menu items, there will also be a select number of entrees, noodles, rice and soup options.
Staples such as Korean fried chicken, bao buns, Thai curry and Japanese ramen and Hong Kong braised beef noodle soup will be available, as well as weekend specials reflecting recent trendy dishes.
Alley Street Eats, a new Asian street-style restaurant, is coming to the former Eric's San Jose on Rosewood Drive.
“Whatever the hype is, we will put that as a special, rotating menu option,” she said.
The menu will also be vegetarian friendly, reflecting another way Columbia has grown recently, but is still lacking in comparison to other cities, Chung said.
“There are a lot of people that are gearing towards just being more sustainable, so we want to be able to offer that to people in Columbia,” she said.
There will also be a variety of drink options, focusing on Asian beers and liquor options. Tapping into another newly-growing market, non-alcoholic cocktails will also be on the menu, Joe said.
Spending time in Chicago for medical school inspired Joe to bring more options back to Columbia when he returned, he said.
“Everyone always skips Columbia, but they always go to either Charlotte or Atlanta … why not right here in the middle so we can show people we can actually grow?” he said.
More than bringing new food to the Columbia market, the new restaurant also offers an opportunity for Midlands residents to experience more Asian culture in the atmosphere and eating style, she said.
The small shareables on the menu will let people try new and different things and eat together in group settings, she said.
“In the Asian culture, we go out with friends, we go out in large groups, everything is family-style,” she said. “In the States it’s a little different. It’s like ‘I order my entree, you order your entree’ … but when we go out, we hardly ever order the same thing, because we want to try a little bit of everything.”
The growth of the Asian cuisine scene in the city has mirrored an overall increase in diversity, she said. That change has happened both in New Jersey – where the family initially immigrated to from Hong Kong – and visibly in Columbia.
“When we were younger there were a lot of times where we were judged for the foods we ate, certain things that we did, but right now it’s become more accepted,” she said. “People actually embrace diversity, embrace culture.”
Part of growing up as immigrants also involved cultural and generational expectations for the siblings' careers, they said.
Alley Street Eats, a new Asian street-style restaurant, is coming to the former Eric's San Jose on Rosewood Drive.
“When you grow up in a family that all they do is work at a restaurant, long hours, 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, they have an expectation (of) ‘We’re working so much to provide for you, you should not be in the restaurant field’,” Sally said.
Their parents weren’t too opposed to the siblings leaving careers in corporate finance and healthcare for the restaurant business, but often reminded the two how difficult it would be.
“They love saying ‘We told you’,” or it was a lot of comparison between their family member’s kids – ‘They’re in the financial field and making this amount of money’,” she said. “But anything you’re going to do is hard.”
“I think eventually we became quite successful, and our parents do see that,” she said. “So they don’t say that anymore.”
The younger Chungs are embracing a more modern approach to restaurant ownership that is more self-sufficient and less taxing, she said. But the two will still be offering a family-style establishment, she said.
“This is going to be a family run business,” she said. “We're going to be here and make sure that people are going to get a great experience.”
The paperwork process for the new restaurant is mostly complete, and the pair will now look to performing soft-openings ahead of the early June target date, she said.
The building housing the new restaurant was formerly home to Eric’s San Jose, a Mexican restaurant which closed in 2022. The building was last sold in February 2023, according to county records.
