Something quiet has happened at Evans Towne Center over the past eighteen months, and if you have been driving past the same corner on your way to Publix, you may not have clocked it yet. The stretch between the Performing Arts Center and Town Park Boulevard is now the densest cluster of locally invested restaurants in Columbia County, and the park across the street is running a summer calendar that rewards showing up more than planning ahead.
This is not a "best of" list. It is a working map for residents who have already been here a while and want a reason to walk somewhere new on a Thursday.
The corridor now has an owner class
The interesting fact about the new dining scene in Evans is not the number of openings. It is who is doing the opening. Three of the four highest-profile projects on this corridor are run by people who live in the CSRA and put their own name on the door.
Towne Center Tavern
The second-floor corner space above The Plaza sat empty for roughly three years after Stay Social Tap and Table closed in 2022. Shawn and Katy Ledford, the local owners behind Mellow Mushroom, took it over and opened Towne Center Tavern on April 1, 2025 at 7025 Evans Town Center Blvd as a locally owned, family-run American tavern serving house-smoked meats, elevated pub food, and a full bar. The upstairs patio looks directly across at the park and the performing arts center, which makes it the most useful pre-show room on the corridor if you can get a table by 6:30.
Order signals from the first year: hand-cut fries, house-smoked wings, a Steak Dipper with sliced ribeye and provolone on a hoagie, a TCT Dipper with smoked meatloaf, onions, and gouda on a Cuban roll, and a frozen Irish coffee that keeps showing up in early reviews unprompted.
Winston's Tavern
Winston's Tavern opened in October 2025, offering elevated dining near the Performing Arts Center. Two details worth knowing before you drive over: it is open every day except Sunday, and the bar opens at 4 p.m. The owner has been open about the strategy, saying the room is set up as a destination for date nights or pre-show dining before events at the Performing Arts Center. If you have a 7:30 show, this is the room that will get you seated and out on time.
Nordhavn-Rustik
This is the project to watch this summer. It broke ground in October 2025 at 406 Town Park Blvd, near the Ponder Place Office Park, targeting a summer 2026 opening. It is a standalone building, roughly 6,000 square feet, built in a Scandinavian architectural style.
The concept is unusual for the CSRA. It runs two operations under one roof. The Nordhavn side is fine dining with a menu influenced by German, Danish, and Norwegian cuisine, roughly 70% seafood and 30% meat, with the possibility of wild game including elk or bison. The Rustik side operates as a European-style bakery and deli during the day serving fresh breads, pastries, sandwiches, and coffee.
One of the investing partners is Dr. John Bojescul, a retired Army colonel and orthopedic surgeon, and he was explicit about why the building is standalone rather than in a shared retail box. The short version: he wanted the whole envelope. That is a level of local capital commitment the corridor has not really seen before.
What is landing next
Two more openings are already on the map for the back half of 2026.
Biscuit Belly, a Kentucky-based restaurant centered around Southern breakfast and brunch, is coming to the CSRA at 4274 Washington Rd, Suite 2, in Evans. No firm date yet, but the Washington Road frontage is a different geography than the Town Center core, and it will pull weekend brunch traffic that has been driving down to Augusta.
Farther inside the Town Center, Eggs Up Grill opened in early 2025 at the Shoppes at Evans Towne Park, 1200 Towne Park Lane, after a planned December 2024 opening was pushed back by Hurricane Helene. The operators are Clarissa and Alvin Knotts, a father-daughter duo who signed a four-location development agreement that makes Evans their flagship market. Flagship market matters. It means the ops team is here, not visiting from Atlanta.
The park has become the anchor, not the amenity
Evans Towne Center Park has stopped being a place you take the kids on a Saturday morning and started being a real programming venue. The county's events team is running a calendar that leans into summer weather while it is still here.
The June kickoff was Beach Blast. Families in Columbia County celebrated summer with a Beach Blast at Evans Towne Center Park that featured volleyball, live music, kids entertainment and food trucks. Programs manager Janet Wheatley described the format simply: trucking in sand and running the day like a coastal weekend without the ocean.
What to keep on your calendar over the next eight weeks:
- July 4, 2026 — Independence Day programming at 7016 Evans Town Center Boulevard
- August 20, 2026 — Evening event at the same 7016 address
- September 25, 2026 — Fall programming at 1005 Market Street, across from the Performing Arts Center
The park itself, for anyone who has not walked it recently, includes a playground, dog park, gazebo, picnic pavilions, and lawn area for concerts. The lawn is the piece most residents underuse.
A pre-show cheat sheet
The Columbia County Performing Arts Center is booking a busier fall than most residents realize. Set in the heart of The Plaza at Evans Towne Center at 1000 Market St, the theater seats about 2,100 across orchestra, mezzanine, and balcony levels. Here is what is on the calendar and what to pair it with:
| Show | Date | Walk-to dinner |
|---|---|---|
| Ozark Mountain Daredevils | Aug 28 | Towne Center Tavern patio |
| Black Jacket Symphony | Oct 9 | Winston's Tavern, 5:00 seating |
| Daniel Tosh | Oct 14 | Nordhavn side if open, or Rustik for a lighter pre-show meal |
| Air Supply | Oct 15 | Winston's Tavern |
| Rodney Carrington | Oct 30 | Towne Center Tavern |
| Zach Williams with Cochren & Co | Nov 13 | Rustik bakery cafe for early dinner |
Show times and ticket availability move around, so confirm on the CCPAC site before you build a night around any of these. The pairing logic holds regardless: Winston's for a sit-down two-hour dinner, Towne Center Tavern for a faster patio meal with a view of the venue you are walking to.
One Saturday, mapped
If you have out-of-town family visiting in the next two months and you want to show them the version of Evans that does not exist on the highway, this is the sequence I would run:
- Morning coffee and biscuits somewhere on Washington Road, with Biscuit Belly on the shortlist once it opens
- Walk the park loop, dog park included, before the heat lands
- Lunch at Eggs Up Grill at the Shoppes at Evans Towne Park
- Afternoon at whatever county event is running that day at 7016 Evans Town Center Boulevard
- Early dinner at Towne Center Tavern's upstairs patio, timed to a 7:30 show at CCPAC
- Post-show drink at Winston's if it is not a Sunday
That is a full day inside a half-mile radius, which is not something you could say about this corridor three years ago.
The takeaway for people who already live here
The reason to update your mental map is not that Evans has more restaurants. It is that Evans has more restaurants owned by people whose kids go to school here. That is a different kind of stability. Chains open and close on quarterly performance. Owner-operated rooms adjust menus, extend hours, and pick up the phone when you call. Over the next year, the difference will show up in service, in seasonal menus, and in which places are still open in 2028.
If you have been in your Evans home for five or more years and are starting to wonder what it is worth in a market where the Town Center itself has repositioned this much, that context matters for pricing. When you are ready to look at what your home would sell for in this cycle, Lanorris Carey offers a free home valuation grounded in the specific corridor you actually live on, not a countywide average.
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