Revived Steak and Ale to Revive Classic Dining Experience in Anderson
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
John and Dixie Benca have enduring memories of their first date. It was at the Steak and Ale Restaurant, where they both also worked, the site of many of the couple’s family memories and special events.
Thirty-seven years later, the couple is planning to open the second site in the reboot of the Steak and Ale chain in Anderson.
The Bencas, who own McGee's Scot-Irish Pub, a favorite spot in downtown Anderson for more than 30 years, are ready for the challenge of adding a new restaurant experience to the area.
John talks about restaurants the way some people talk about weather systems, as forces that cannot be controlled, only understood, prepared for, and survived with good training and a decent attitude. That explains why the planned Steak and Ale in Anderson feels less like a novelty or exercise in nostalgia than a return to a place his life has been headed for years.
A summer job at Captain D’s first gave John an introduction to the rhythms of service, pressure and repetition. What has kept him in it, he said, is the part that never changes and never quite feels routine: providing something people want and watching whether they leave smiling.
This sensibility is central to the Steak and Ale plan. Benca and Dixie first encountered the chain while they were students at the University of Georgia, where she worked as a lead waitress and he bartended. Later, as a family, they returned to the Steak and Ale for celebrations — baptisms, confirmations, graduations, birthdays, anniversaries — and, in Benca’s memory, it became the sort of place one went not merely to eat but to be marked by the occasion itself.
He described Steak and Ale as an unusually disciplined brand, one that had a distinct culture of service, a recognizable menu, and a deliberate sense of occasion without drifting into excess.
When the chain shuttered after the Metro Media bankruptcy, the loss felt, to him, like more than the disappearance of a restaurant; it was the closing of a familiar emotional room. The revived company, now controlled by Paul Mangiomelli, who bought the intellectual property, the recipes, the training systems and the whole operating memory of the brand, and has been working to bring it back in a way that feels old in spirit but current in execution.
The Anderson location is being positioned as a prototype. Benca said the plans call for a ground-up build of about 6,500 square feet, perhaps larger, with some al fresco dining, the famous salad bar, the brown bread and the Tudor-style atmosphere that once made Steak and Ale feel like a special-occasion restaurant without making it inaccessible. It is meant, he said, to be warm and cozy, but also professional enough for business lunches and polished enough for date nights.
Benca was careful to say that the new restaurant is not meant to compete with McGee’s so much as complement it. McGee’s, in his view, serves a more casual role; Steak and Ale will fill another lane, one that may pull in diners from Greenville, Clemson, Seneca, north Georgia, and the interstates that make Anderson a kind of midpoint between larger cities and smaller habits. He sees the county as geographically well placed for that kind of stopover dining, especially for people looking for something familiar but hard to find elsewhere.
Benca said the team is negotiating with property sellers, working with contractors and corporate on design details, and hopes to announce a site within a couple of months. If all goes well, he said, the restaurant could open by the second quarter of 2027, with summer the goal and football season the deadline. It is a business timeline, which is to say that it is both precise and full of caveats.
His understanding of finance is deep and wide, as he serves as Anderson County’s Auditor, an office to which he was elected in 2022.
He also expects the project to create up to 80 additional jobs and to serve as a training location for the brand in the South. That, too, reflects the larger strategy: not just opening a restaurant in Anderson but using Anderson as a place where the company can establish its own southern foothold.
Benca said that when people hear about the return of Steak and Ale, many react as if a long-missing favorite has finally come back into view. He takes that response seriously, looking at the restaurant is not only a business opportunity but a way to feed memory itself.
When he and Dixie sit down to order their first meal and Anderson’s Steak and Ale, he said his choice will be the chain’s iconic prime rib (“a big, juicy one”), something not common locally. It is a quiet bet that the path to rebuilding an American classic is paved with both seared meats, and a profound, unapologetic sentimentality.
