New St. Clair Square restaurant serves wings and beer

It’s the only place in the mall that serves shoppers cold beer. Now, a new restaurant at St. Clair Square wants to become a destination for gaming, too.

Wing It, a fast-causal restaurant with a blue-collar feel, plans to add slot machines to its dining room, assistant manager Melanie Pinion said Monday.

Olga’s Kitchen previously occupied the space located on the lower level of the mall near Dillard’s. For 36 years, the restaurant served Mediterranean dishes. The establishment closed in 2015, but former Olga’s customers still drop in to reminisce.

“Sometimes they want to see their old booth,” Pinion said.

Seating and decor hasn’t changed inside the restaurant. You’ll find the same patterns and lighting fixtures in the dining room. The cash register is in the same spot, but instead of ringing up soup and salad, customers are ordering wings with a side fries.

Wing It offers four different flavors: hot, barbecue, Teriyaki or spicy garlic ranch.

Spicy garlic ranch is the most popular flavor, Pinion said. She expects more customers to roll into when the slot machines arrive in a few weeks. There’s already a pool table in the back of the restaurant that has become a popular hangout for mall employees.

Luke Emmons is one of them. He said the restaurant provides an alternative to the food court, which lost a vendor last year.

Fitopia, the healthier option for shoppers at the mall, closed in September. It moved into the space previously occupied by Chick-fil-A.

That space remains vacant.

This story was originally published January 8, 2018 at 3:50 PM with the headline "New St. Clair Square restaurant serves wings and beer."