What was originally planned to be a French restaurant has become a 25-year-old business and a place of tradition for many Aggies.
Café Eccell, a casual fine dining restaurant, which was closed for business after the city of College Station sold the property, will reopen at a larger location and continue to offer a budget-friendly menu, said Costa Dallis, owner of Café Eccell.
“We already love the facility and we’re not even open yet,” Dallis said. “We used to do private parties, as you know at the old Café Eccell. But our threshold to saying ‘no’ was about 70 people.”
In May, the restaurant began moving to its new location — the building where Luby’s was until it shut down in April.
Dallis said that the 44-foot bar boasts 12 beers on draft along with a frozen liquor tower, new desserts like caramelized banana and fig tart, grilled peach tart with agave nectar and new lunch and dinner items.
“Now we can spread our wings a little more on the menu and do different things from a production standpoint that we couldn’t do before because of the restrictions of our space and our equipment.”
Tanner Pederson, senior international studies major and manager at Café Eccell, said he helped Dallis assemble some minor interior fixtures over the course of three months.
The reconstruction process consisted of installing new restaurant equipment and gutting out the old buffet.
“There was a long conveyor belt here before and we stripped it clean,” Pederson said. “That was a hard job so much so that we nicknamed the belt ‘Big Bertha.’ Now we have plenty of room for our staff to move around compared to the old location.”
Café Eccell opened in 1989 and has seen several generations of students come and go, Dallis said.
“There has been so many generations that have different fond memories of a different restaurant as its evolved,” Dallis said. “The tradition is — I’ve lived here since ’79, since I was nine years old I’ve seen a lot of business come and go and everything. I think you reach the tradition status between year 12 and 15.”
Café Eccell will reopen on Aug. 20.