Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Got 1.5 million dollars for a restaurant? If so, Columbia icon Jaco's on Bluff Road could be yours.

I believe the place used to be a Texaco filling station at some point in its life, and I recall reading a story on the place years ago, in The State, I think, about how the place used to blow off Texaco coporate during its national "always a clean restroom at Texaco" campaign. I'm sure the story was apocryphal, and was presented as such, with the point being a certain devil-may-care spirit about the place.

Unfortunately I can't say from experience as this is yet another of the many Columbia places that go on the blocks before I get around to visiting. I suppose part of it is that I rarely get down that way except for The State Fair, and traffic makes it somewhere you wouldn't even think of stopping then. On the other hand, it may not be too late. I know they had a Superbowl party, so they may be keeping the business open until they get a buyer.

UPDATE 16 May 2017 -- According to The State, Jaco's has been sold and closed on 13 May 2017. I am updating the post title with that information.

UPDATE 3 February 2023 -- Torn down and rebuilt as J's Corner:

Also adding a map icon. (And I note that the address is now listed as 1015 Rosewood Drive rather than 638 Bluff Road).

When they initially started out, I liked Ryan's a good bit. When I was living & working in Fayetteville, there were a couple of years where I ate lunch at Ryan's several times a week. I particularly enjoyed the salad bar, which I believe they had dubbed The Mega-Bar because it had peanuts instead of sunflower seeds and wheels of cheddar slices of which went well with the large, hot yeast rolls. About the only drawback was that the lettuce was shredded rather than torn.

After I left Fayetteville, it was a number of years before I ate at a Ryan's again. As it happened, I was in Georgetown one afternoon and stopped in at the US-707 location. I'm afraid I found it much less appealing that I had remembered. I found the chairs clunky and uncomfortable and the salad bar was much diminished, with no cheese, rolls or peanuts. I later talked to a friend of mine who at the time was writing cash-register and point-of-sale software for the restaurant industry, and he said he had heard that the owners of the Ryan's brand were unhappy and felt that a number of their franchises had trashed the brand's reputation. (Their solution was to open a new chain called Fire Mountain to go into areas where the Ryan's name was bad).

Anyway, I don't know exactly what happened to this Ryan's on Saint Andrews. It may have been an exemplary store which simply suffered from the location and the chain's falling fortunes, but whatever reason, the building is now not even a restaurant at all, but has been converted to offices.

This closing continues a recent series of dead restaurants on Saint Andrews Road. One of the very first closings I did was of the Wendy's on Two Notch in Dentsville. If I recall correctly, I said how much I enjoyed Wendy's when they first came to town, and how they gradually seemed to lose their way as many fast food chains have.

I don't know specifically what happened to this store (being on Saint Andrews can't have helped!), but the last two times I have had occasion to stop at a Wendy's (once in Aiken and once on Forest Drive), the service and food have been very indifferent -- not at all like the can-do! store that could get you a decent burger the way you wanted it almost by the time you finished being rung up. I don't doubt the disasterous ad campaign with the guy wearing the red "Wendy" pigtails helped more than a few of their stores shuffle off this mortal coil as well.

UPDATE 8 September 2017: Added full street address and some tags. Also found this LoopNet listing that says the building is still vacant, but has recently had a plan approved to connect to the traffic light and "would be great for a breakfast restaurant".

UPDATE 13 December 2019 -- Now Ms B's Southern Soul Food:

River City Cafe is a Murrells Inlet institution. Located on the creek side of US-17 business, it is a very casual burger joint with license plates all over the walls, peanut shells on the floor and graphitti carved into the tables. They make a good burger, and keep malt vinegar on the tables for your fries. The restaurant is part of a coastal empire called The Divine Dining Group which includes River City, Bovine's, Ultimate California Pizza and some other brands I forget. Anyway, in the 90s, or it could have even been the late 80s, they decided to try to expand from the coast into Columbia. They opened two River City Cafes in Columbia that I am aware of. One was on Greene Street near the train tracks and the other was this building on Two Notch Road. I'm not sure why neither store prospered. Sometimes I think that when a local chain gets large enough that the owners can't just casually drop by any given store to see how things are going, quality suffers. At any rate, neither my sister nor I felt the Two Notch location was as good as Murrells Inlet (I never tried Greene Street), and both stores closed fairly quickly. The Greene Street store became The Salty Nut Cafe, and this one became Yesterday's.

I don't go too often, but I've always enjoyed Yesterday's in Five Points. They have a good combination of down-home food plus stuff like lasagna and mexican-inspired dishes. The Two Notch location was only open long enough for my sister and I to go once, and we both agreed that it was considerably lower in quality than Five Points. I remember in particular ordering the chips & salsa appetizer and having a dish of round Tostitos with about a tablespoon of frigid salsa in a sealed plastic container being plopped onto the table. The presentation was bad, and the quality was, um, lacking.

I believe the current tenant, Micato, was the next venture in the building, and it has been there some years now, so I would guess they actually know what they are doing, though I have never eaten there.

River City at the beach remains good, as does Yesterday's downtown. I guess they just couldn't find the talent to replicate the experience.

UPDATE 26 May 2011 -- Commenter palmettopanic sends in this 1989 ad for another restaurant in this building, one that came before RIver City and Yesterday's and one that I had never heard of (or at least can't remember having heard of): "Bird's":

Also, I haven't mentioned it on this entry yet, but the follow-on in this building Micato has been gone for some time.

First of all, can someone give me a definitive name for the road that starts at Fort Jackson, goes under I-77, passes in front of K-Mart and ends where Devine Street meets Garners Ferry? I've called it "Jackson Boulevard" all my life, but the I-77 exit signs read "Fort Jackson Boulevard", and half of the street signs on the road itself have "Fort" and half don't. Likewise, when I googled the address of this storefront, I find both uses.

Anyway, I became aware of this building when I would drive down (Fort) Jackson Boulevard and cut through to Ruby Tuesday's. As far as I could tell, it was a mexican restaurant which seemed to have passed through a protracted coming soon stage directly to an out of business stage without ever actually opening. Google on the address gives an even more interesting story. Apparently at some point in the not too distant past, it was a Chinese place called Lulan Wang. I'm not surprised I don't remember that as I'm not overly fond of Chinese food so those places don't really attract my attention. On the Mexican front however, it was apparently two different places, and must have been both quite recently: El Korita and Los Portrillos, so I'm apparently conflating and re-arranging two coming-soon and out-of-business progressions in my mind.

I like that the main available sign leaves the palm tree -- that's nicer than just a blank white sign. Also, notice the plaintive writing on the fences to the side of the restaurant urging No Steal Plant. Is that a big problem in Columbia? The fact that they felt the need to write it argues it happened at least once..

UPDATE 28 Jan 09: Several people in the comments mention that the place was also (and first) Jesudi's, an Italian restaurant that was decorated as a cave inside and out. I had completely forgotten that! I knew I had eaten in a "cave" restaurant somewhere in Columbia growing up, but did not connect it with that building at all. I've updated the post title to add Jesudi's to the list of tenants.

UPDATE 31 March 2011 -- Added full street address to post title. Added 1973 Southern Bell ad for Capital Health Club an establishment with a rather different menu than the rest.

UPDATE 22 July 2011 -- The place is now being worked on as an "Upfit for proposed new restaurant":

UPDATE 25 October 2011 -- Well, it's to be The Diner:

UPDATE 15 January 2012 -- The Diner is open:

UPDATE 25 January 2012 -- Here's the mural on the side. Looks as though they are still working on it:

UPDATE 28 January 2012 -- Yep! Definitely still working on it:

UPDATE 28 October 2021 -- I have added the first picture, a shot of Jesudi's in full Italian Cave mode. Commenter Bill alerted to me of this shot at the Library of Congress of all places. The accompanying text says that it was taken by photographer John Margolies in 1988, and is part of his John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive collection, with no restrictions on use.

While I am here, I am also updating tags and adding the map icon.

Also note that several more businesses have come and gone in the building since I first made this post, and that the building was badly hit by the flood of 2015. You can click here for more details.

I talked about the doughnut store on Saint Andrews Road a few days ago, and that made me think of Mister Donut on Forest Drive.

I've written earlier about how we used to get hot Krispy Kremes when we went to wait for my aunt at the train station, but after Krispy Kreme moved across the river, Mister Donut was the only doughnut store near us, and it was always a special treat to stop there.

I had a little trouble with the name of the place. Their sign used a flowing cursive script, and to me it looked like "Wister Donut", which when you are a kid doesn't seem like an impossibly stupid name for a store, so that's how I always thought of it, though I was always able to get it straight when talking about the place.

Mister Donut dougnuts were both larger and more substantial than Krispy Kremes. My favorite was the "honey dipped", which I would say was about twice the size of a Kripy Kreme "original glazed", and much denser (though it was still a true [non "cake"] doughnut). In those days, I wasn't allowed coffee except on special occasions, so I liked to get the hot chocolate (which I remember as very good) for dunking purposes.

I was upset when Mister Donut was replaced by Dunkin' Donuts, a chain which I felt (and feel) had inferior recipies (and which at this location, according to my sister and The Free Times, can not operate a competent drive-through window). I didn't know until I looked it up today that Dunkin's parent company bought out Mister Donut and mostly dropped the brand in the US (it survives overseas).

The Dunkin' operation was smaller than Mister Donut and the east side of the building stayed vacant for years but has recently been occupied by, I believe, a travel agency.

UPDATE 26 March 2012: Added full street address to the post title, and added some tags.

This store-front, in a nice looking little plaza at the top of the hill on the south side of Saint Andrews Road, has been a number of things over the years. I can't begin to recall them all, but I think the one that impressed me as the most off-the-wall was a "bring all your friends and make pottery" store.

The one I actually visited a few times though was a doughnut operation. I think it was an independant operation, and I recall thinking that its doughnuts were more like Mr. Donut's "honey-dipped" than the much less dense Krispy Kreme "original glazed". Unfortunately for them, I liked both MD and KK's product better than theirs, and was rarely on that side of town anyway. I don't know what happened to them in the end. Perhaps most people felt that way, or it just could be Saint Andrews Road, which, as one commenter pointed out, has become something of a restaurant graveyard. At any rate, I believe they closed sometime in the 90s when I was living in Fayettevile. I think the closest doughnuts to Saint Andrews now may be the Dunkin in Boozer Shopping Center. (Though Dunkin is another operation I like less well than either MD or KK -- I was bummed when a Dunkin replaced the Forest Drive MD).

There's been some back-and-forth on Have Your Say as to whether Birds On A Wire on Devine Street is closed. It is.

I didn't get any close shots of the interior since some people were in and out and the guy from the gourmet shop was giving me the evil eye, but all the fixtures are still intact. However, the "for lease" sign pretty well settles it for me. It's kind of funny since I was there just last week looking for the Ben & Jerry's I had been told by my sister and a couple of commenters had simply moved from its original location. Not only didn't I find B&J, I thought to myself that Birds looked pretty quiet for a restaurant that, if it wasn't usually open for lunch, must have a dinner opening coming up shortly..

As for the restaurant itself, I can't say much about it. I believe it started off on Green Street in Five Points, just down from Group Therapy then moved to its current (now former..) location in the late 90s. Since the name involved birds and I don't do birds, I never inquired further into its claim to fame, but by osmosis got the idea it was a rotisserie chicken operation. I guess the wire is now bare.

UPDATE 17 Feb 2010: A new restaurant is now in the Birds On A Wire space, Cantina 76:

Also I updated the post title to include the full street address.

I'm not a big fan of chicken -- in fact, the smell of it puts me off a restaurant. I'm also not a big fan of breakfast. Well, that's not true exactly; it's more that I'm not a big fan of waking up early enough to have time for breakfast. I like bacon, eggs, grits and biscuits as well as anyone. So on those rare occasions when everything comes together and I'm on the move -- Bojangles makes a very good sausage biscuit!

Perhaps not enough other people think so though as this Bojangles location on Saint Andrews Road near the dollar cinemas has been gone for a while now. I'm not sure what the story on the property is. The for-sale (reduced!) sign suggests that it has been unsuccessfully on the market for a while, but I can't figure out why anyone would be doing work on the building in that case as seems to be happening.

UPDATE 7 October 2009: Looks like the building will be The Delhi Palace Indian restaurant. I'm not sure if that means The Delhi Palace will be moving from The Economy Inn on Broad River Road, or if this will be a second location.

UPDATE 10 November 2009: Add street address to post title.

UPDATE 23 February 2024: Adding map icon and updating tags.

This is yet another of the many restaurants in Columbia that I always intend to go to "someday" but in the event don't make it before they close. The Hilltop Restaurant building has been a landmark for as long as I can remember, though I think it has gone through several different names and incarnations over the years. It seems to me that there was one in particular that used to do a lot of advertising on WIS radio in the late 60s and early 70s, but I can't bring the name to mind right now (and may be mistaken since I had no clear idea of the geography of the Saint Andrews area in those days).

From the way the parking lot and signage is configured, it appears that Hilltop had some association with the adjacent Econo Lodge (which used to be something different also).

UPDATE 10 March 2011: Updated closing date and street address based on commenter Andrew's research.

Thanks to commenter "O'Reilly" who reminded me of Hilltop and pointed out a lot of other restaurants on St. Andrews on which I'll do some future closings.

UPDATE 2 January 2012: As noted in the comments, this place has been torn down:

UPDATE 25 January 2022 -- There is now a QT gas station being built on the Hilltop site:

(Also adding map icon and updating tags)