Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, as a man walking up to the closed doors said, "Another one bites the dust." In fact, as I went to take these pictures, a number of customers dropped by to find the place closed. I heard one woman talking to a friend on her cellphone saying in effect, "They had the best salmon, but every time I came here, the portions were smaller". That may have been her imagination -- I've always heard that the actual cost of food ingredients is a very minor component of your restaurant bill.

At any rate, The Village Bistro apparently closed quite recently: The interior still looks ready to go, and their web site is still live for now. I never made it there, but it appears they had a pretty good menu. Most of the entrees are off my beaten track, but I could see lunching on the greek salad or Angus burger.

I'm not sure what this says about Sandhill. They also recently lost Shane's Rib Shack but that chain apparently has bigger problems. I walked around that part of the Village a bit, and Wild Wing appeared to be doing a good business, but of course Brixx is still closed for repairs, and it was past lunch time, so Which Wich they wasn't really available for comparison either.

UPDATE 10 March 2010 -- It seems the next step for a building already outfitted for a restaurant (if it doesn't become a Lizard's Thicket) is to become an Asian buffet or a Mexican restaurant. In this case we get La Fogata Mexican:

Well, this isn't a total surprise as Paulie's had been undergoing kind of a combination of Sign #2 & Sign #6 for a while.

To be a bit more specific, I used to eat lunch at Paulie's once or twice a month. I really enjoyed the Italian Sausage Sandwich with peppers and onions, and it was all the better in that they linked their own sausage in two different flavors: hot or sweet. The hot was excellent, and my favorite.

Then I would come in for lunch, and they would be out of the hot sausage, and I would have to get the sweet. Then after that, they would be out of both, and I finally concluded that while they weren't going to drop it from the menu, they weren't really going to have it any more either. Since I rarely eat pizza for lunch (it makes me want to sleep the rest of the afternoon..), I just stopped going there. (They also stopped putting out an un-sweet tea urn, leaving a half-empty pitcher with an implied and we're not making any more when that's gone!.

Their pizza, I do have to say, was excellent! Unfortunately, they closed so early (9pm during the week, 10pm Friday & Saturday) that I was rarely able to have any.

We'll have to see how the Village Idiot incarnation does menu and hour-wise. I've only eaten at VI in Five Points once, and was less than impressed since they had average pizza and no unsweet tea at all. I did not go in, but it doesn't appear that they've changed the physical plant much. The booths could really use some padding!

Hat Tip: Matt.

UPDATE 6 December 2023: Adding map icon and updating tags.

I was at Za's and noticed that Momo's Bistro in the same strip was dark, so I went over to take a look and snap a few pictures (the flash worked better than I expected). After that, and a bit of googling around, I'm not entirely sure of the status of this place.

The sign on the door suggests that they will "hopefully" be back at the start of August while the message on their answering machine says the end of August while their facebook pagedoesn't commit them to anything specific. On the other hand, this site (which I would expect to be pretty careful about what goes out under their logo) seems to imply that they are gone for good.

I would say that the phone still being connected and the website still being up are good signs, but it sounds very iffy at best.

UPDATE 16 November 2009: Open again!

UPDATE 27 May 2014 -- Momo's is closed again, this time for good. According to The State, an Eggs Up Grill will be opening there soon. Eggs Up started in Litchfield Beach in the same building as Latte Litchfield (and they originally shared ownership). Currently their flagship store has moved to the old Piggly Wiggly shopping center a bit north on US-17 and they have several other coastal locations for the breakfast and lunch concept.

I should remember this place, but for some reason I don't. From the 1970 Southern Bell Yellow Pages ad, it looks much too fancy for anything that our parents might have taken us to, and when I was picking restaurants on my own, the lobster and fish would have scared me off.

As you can see from these shots, the building is long gone, and the area is now an annoying parking lot (always half empty, but zealously patrolled) at the corner of Gervais and Assembly streets bordered on the bottom by The Mellow Mushroom and on the right by the former John Paul’s Armadillo Oil Company.

Notice also on the ad another common feature from restaurants of this era: Late hours. I really wish this had continued and that there were decent places open until "11:15" on week-nights nowdays.

Anyone know what happened to this place?

UPDATE 13 October 2009: Added a postcard of The Market and the text from the back of it.

UPDATE 4 January 2012: Updated the closing date in the post title from "1970s" to "11 January 1985" based on the comments. I was only off by 10 years or so..

Well, I wasn't expecting that. I drove by McDonald's on Two Notch tonight and found the place razed to the ground (with the exception of the sign). There's a yellow "zoning" notice sign in front of the place, but I couldn't tell what it said from across the street, and I didn't stay because I was about to be panhandled. I wouldn't have taken night pictures anyway, but with the bulldozer parked there, I was afraid that the sign would be gone by tomorrow.

This McDonald's, on the corner of Two Notch & Beltline, took the place of Chappy's Authentic English Fish & Chips in 1987, so it had been there a bit over 20 years. I don't believe I ever ate inside though I'm pretty sure I've gotten drinks at the drive-through. In general I haven't eaten much at McDonalds since the 1970s, but lately they have been getting better with pretty good coffee and wi-fi.

Apparently, this is being done to add drive-through capacity, according to this 9 Dec 2008 Zoning Board document:

This is a request to demolish and construct a fast food restaurant (McDonald’s) with a drive-through. The property will have ingress/egress along Two Notch Road and Beltline Boulevard. The drive-through for the fast food restaurant is situated within the site such that adequate stacking for vehicles can be provided.

The ammended request for a double drive-through was apparently approved on 14 July 2009 at 10am and they didn't waste any time after that!

UPDATE 17 July 2009: OK, the above reads a bit disjointedly since I hadn't looked up the zoning documents before writing the first part, ie: I wouldn't have worried about the sign being bulldozed if I had known from the get-go that they were going to rebuild on the same lot.

Anyway, here are the daylight pictures:

UPDATE 7 November 2009 -- Open again:

Well, this is unpleasant news:

Columbia Fire Department firefighters were dispatched at 11:09 p.m. to 486 Town Center Place, the location of Brixx Wood Fire Pizza, where a fire had spread up a flue from a pizza oven, Assistant Chief Aubrey Jenkins said.

Brixx is one of my regular after 10pm Tuesday night pizza hangouts (Pizzeria Uno on US-378 is the other), and it's pretty much a roll of the dice that put me at Uno on the 14th rather than enjoying the fun here. Luckily, nobody was hurt. I'm a bit surprised that the news story states that the fire was post closing -- Usually they don't close until midnight or 1am.

I think Brixx is a bit of a frustrating place in that they have a good concept and very attentive staff, but the food execution could be better. They have lots of different combos and some more unusual ingredients, but often when I get a custom pizza, the extra stuff on top is not hot, and the crust and sauce are acceptable, but not great. (Landolfi's at Pawleys Island is the best brick-oven pizza in SC, arguably the best pizza in SC period). Anyway, the sign on the door says closed until further notice, but I hope they come back soon and better than ever.

While I was in there once, one of the wait staff mentioned that the people living upstairs had been complaining about the noise at night -- I suppose that's the good old days now!

These pictures are not very good because at first there was a group of men standing under the front awning with clipboards making some sort of assesment of the situation and I didn't want to just walk up and stick my camera under their noses, snapping away. After that, it started to rain, and I had to stand under an awning at Which Wich. There were some sort of hoses running to the upstairs apartments, but given my angle you can't see them.

UPDATE 20 July 2009: OK, some more pictures, a bit closer:

UPDATE 21 December 2011:

Well, Brixx is closed again, this time for good. I had not been there too much lately because my situation had changed, and I could get to some closer places that closed earlier. However, I did make it there several times after they re-opened, with the last time being on Sunday 11 December 2011. It still wasn't my favorite pizza in town, but a perfectly acceptable one, and my toppings were all nice and hot the times I got back there recently. The waitresses were always good about keeping the tea refills coming too.

I don't know what this says about the Village at Sandhill except that it can't be good news for them as they have taken several hits in 2011 including Talbots, Corked, AAA and La Fogata.

(Hat tip to commenter Sidney)

This is a little place I would see from time to time driving down Beltline to Two Notch but not really notice. It appears from this filing in The Columbia Star that they were in business and applying for a liquor license as late as 2007.

This seems to be a hard-luck stretch of road -- below Covenant and above Two Notch. The little office plaza more or less across the street from this place has always struggled, the drugstore at the corner closed, and even the new church being built down the block has had its sanctuary windows broken out during construction.

UPDATE 15 July 2009: Add Dragon Inn, Players' Paradise and El Amigo to post title based on comments. Further fix: Dragon Inn ==> Dragon Chamber

Ok, I'll admit the brothel part was unexpected, but it's a comment from a rather staid planning document:

In more modern times, I believe this once was Dixie Used Furniture, but I would have to go back to an old phone book to verify that for sure.

Sometime in the 90s, it became a trendy brewpub, Vista Brewing Company. After that, it was The Club House (sometimes written as one word "Clubhouse"), which was also a brewpub, at least into 2004.

At some point after 2004, it became Park Place Ultra Lounge. Frankly, I've never been exactly sure what an "Ultra Lounge" is. In fact, my idea of a "lounge" doesn't lend itself to the "ultra" intensifier..

I'm not sure, but I believe that in the Park Place incarnation, beer was no longer brewed on the premises.

Park Place apparently closed this year, but I gather from the minutes of this city of Columbia planning meeting, that the ownership is not changing and that the owner plans to reopen as a restaurant after some remodeling, which was approved in the meeting. (As far as I can tell, there was no proposal to install a red light at the top of the outside stairs :-)

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

UPDATE 15 July 2009: Added Richard's to the post title based on comments.

UPDATE 9 March 2010 -- Work seems to be going pretty slowly:

UPDATE 23 May 2010 -- Pearlz is finally open:

I've known about three Luigi's italian restaurants. The one in Fayetteville NC was great and one of my lunch and pizza hangouts -- it also made the national news due to a horrible tragedy early in the Clinton era. I tried the one in Broad Street in Augusta a few times while I was working there and was never impressed. This one, in Triangle City, was completely off my radar, and I learned about it only when I started looking through old phone books (this ad is from 1970). I'm not sure why that was as I've always loved spaghetti, and got into other Italian food, starting with pizza and lasagna in the 70s. If I had to guess, I'd say it was because it was all the way across town from our area and off my parents' radar during the years before I was driving and that after I started driving, I was, in those years, very satisfied with Pizza Hut pizza, and usually too broke to eat out anyway.

Commenter Dennis wrote:

Is Luigi's before your time?

Was a wonderful Italian place, great pizza, in an old white house
right in the middle of Triangle City.

It's now West Columbia Pawn & Loan, 1215 Augusta Rd, West Columbia.
Building has hardly changed at all on the outside.

No idea what year it closed. It was a hot spot for Carolina students
in the 70s.

The place was easy to find, though a bit hard to get to what with medians and all the odd cross streets in Triangle City. Interestingly, as I was taking these shots, a lady in a car with a sleeping kid in a car-seat pulled into the lot and basically panhandled me. She had some sob story about how she had locked herself out of the house, didn't have any money and wouldn't be able to get back in until 8pm and she was running out of gas and needed to keep the AC running for the kid. I have no idea if it was true, but the sleeping kid did it for me and I gave her some cash. This is the second time I've been "out-of-gas" panhandled taking these pictures. I don't know if I just naturally look like an easy mark, or if something about a guy out snapping pictures in the heat suggests a certain lack of common sense.

UPDATE 23 September 2009: Updated the closing date to "mid-1980s" based on commenter fw's story.

John Paul's Armadillo Oil Company was one of those places that never registered with me. First, there was the name, which didn't give me a good idea of what to expect. "Hmm, southwest? But then why drag the Pope into it?" Second, it opened while I was living out of town and third, it was in the Vista so parking was an issue.

I'm not sure if John Paul's started in Greenville and expanded to Columbia or vice-versa, but there's apparently still one up there.

As you can see from the facade work currently being done on the building, it was at one time the Royal Crown Cola Bottling Co, and if there's anything more Southern than RC Cola, it could only be RC with a Moon Pie. I would have to guess from the style that the RC incarnation may go back as far as the 30s or 40s. I'm saying that the John Paul incarnation closed in 2006 based on this restaurant review, but in that case it seems odd that there are still chairs inside three years later.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)
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