Rock Hill's The Yolk fulfills vision after fire, reopens at new location

An August fire at The Yolk restaurant on Mount Gallant Road couldn’t have come at a worse time for owners Greg and Subrina Collier. They had signed a lease on a new location and were ready to move when a fire consumed everything they had worked so hard for.

Greg Collier surveyed the damage – melted plastic, walls covered with a gray film, ruined kitchen equipment, all topped with an overwhelming smell of smoke – and cried. “I couldn’t cook, I was sad. It was a rough pause,” he said.

“It was back to square one,” Subrina Collier said.

Four months later, The Yolk is as busy as ever at its new location, a shopping center near the intersection of Mount Gallant and Celanese roads.

The menu is basically the same and the food may be arriving at the tables faster than before as The Yolk has doubled its staff from 10 to 20 employees. Greg Collier is even getting time to be the chef, and not a line cook. He can now sporadically sample the food and adjust the taste as needed.

But the diner-like atmosphere that gave The Yolk its initial feel is gone.

Instead of a shotgun-style restaurant, the new location has a feel inspired by the Colliers’ hometown of Memphis. The tables are wooden interior doors with glass tops. R&B music resonates throughout the restaurant. Specials are written on a large chalkboard wall, and the small counter space has messages scribbled from satisfied patrons.

“This was the vision, the vision from day one,” said Subrina Collier. “The vision is fully realized.”

Realizing that vision took patience, commitment and a bigger investment.

Their insurance policy covered $50,000 in lost contents. A Go Fund Me crowd-sourcing, fundraising campaign generated about $9,000 from supporters, which the Colliers used to cover two paychecks for their staff. “We felt we owed them,” Greg Collier said.

The Colliers invested $50,000 of their own. While the business stayed on Mount Gallant Road, they needed new permits to open. Although the new location was a former restaurant, it had to be updated to meet building codes.

The most hectic time was just before Thanksgiving as inspectors, contractors and The Yolk staff were on top of each other, racing to get the restaurant reopened. The Colliers decided to step back and pause: a delay of a few days would allow everyone to get their jobs done, catch their breath and then finally reopen.

“That was the last moment of calm,” Greg Collier said.

The new space is bigger. Capacity is now 58 diners, nine more seats than its former location. Space also is available for outdoor tables for when the weather warms, allowing another 10 to 12 people to have either breakfast or lunch. Hours remain 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily.

Greg Collier expanded the menu with the move. The new kitchen allows them to serve such South Carolina traditions as biscuits and gravy, but with The Yolk’s eclectic twist. The Yolk’s “There’s Fire” menu item has brown buttered biscuits with smoked chicken gravy and jalapeno jam.

Also new for breakfast is the Miller Stack of pancakes with dark chocolate.

More lunch items include the “What Came 1st,” a sandwich with a fried chicken croquette, a fried egg, a fried vegetable and remoulade.

“We were a good breakfast place. We are on the way to being a great restaurant that happens to serve breakfast,” Greg Collier said.

With the change comes more pressure, the Colliers said.

The Yolk has twice been named the best place in Rock Hill for breakfast by The Herald readers in the annual Buzzies contest.

Urbanspoon, a restaurant discovery app, listed The Yolk as one of the 101 most popular locations on its app. Four South Carolina restaurants made the list; the three others are all in Charleston.

“When we first opened, we didn’t have pressure,” said Subrina Collier. “It was just me and my husband. The community was not depending on us.

“Now the pressure is harder, more demanding. We have an obligation to our customers,” she said.

Offsetting that pressure, Subrina Collier said, is “ we love what we do.”

This story was originally published December 26, 2014 at 9:20 PM with the headline "Rock Hill's The Yolk fulfills vision after fire, reopens at new location."