Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

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)

The whole area on Garners Ferry near where this Pizza Hut sat has been reworked so much over the years that it's hard to say exactly where the restaurant actually was, but I think it's not far off the mark to say it was about where Ruby Tuesday now is.

I don't know what the ownership structure of Columbia Pizza Huts in the 70s & 80s was, but as far as I could tell, they were almost all about the same, with no real standouts or bad stores. (I believe PH was in general better back then -- I don't care too much for it today). I say almost because this store was something of an outlier.

I remember that my sister and I stopped there once in the late 70s, and after our pizza came we ate for a few minutes before, independantly, coming to the conclusion that while the crust was fine, the cheese properly melted, and the toppings we had ordered had been duly applied -- there was no sauce anywhere on the pizza. I believe we raised it as an issue to the manager, but decided to take a discount on the check rather than wait for a new pizza to be prepared.

I didn't think much of the incident though obviously it did not move that PH to the top my "where to eat pizza" list. Still about five years later, I found myself in the area when it was time to eat and decided to stop by again. As I'm sure you already suspect, my pie was once again served sauceless. Now, the old saying is

Once is happenstance
Twice is coincidence and
Three times is enemy action.

and I didn't try a third time, so I can't rule out coincidence, but I can't help suspect that there was a management policy to cut costs by shorting the sauce. After all it's the least noticable bit of the pizza, being normally mostly hidden under the cheese anyway.

I can't remember exactly what happened to the place. Either it burned down (I know the one of Forest Drive did, so I may be conflating with that) or was torn down during one of the plaza remodels. At any rate, it was never rebuilt, and I can't say I'm too heartbroken about it.

UPDATE 5 March 2011: Changed the post title to use "Devine Street" rather than "Garners Ferry Road". I thought the name changed at Fort Jackson Boulevard, but actually Devine Street goes all the way to Wildcat Road.

UPDATE 26 June 2023: Updating tags and adding map icon.

The French Quarter Deli was the replacement restaurant at the original location of The Keg O'Nails Deli. I'm still not entirely sure I understand the sequence of events that led to the Keg moving and The French Quarter being established, but it was a big brou-ha-ha and made the paper several times back in the day. You can read some comments at the Keg O'Nails closiing made by people who know more about it than I do.

At any rate, while I did finally get around to eating at the Keg after it moved, I never did get to try The French Quarter before it closed. I'm not sure why it closed either. It is in an odd little section of Rosewood, rather removed from where you would expect a restaurant. I know I would hesitate to fire up a cook stove next to Jim Casey's!

For some reason, as we saw here, and here and here, Columbia isn't real friendly for creameries whose name isn't Baskin Robbins. I don't know why this is, but I would say that this Ben & Jerry's location on Devine Stret lasted fewer than five years.

I find there's a certain Zen purity to ice creams like Bryer's Coffee (ingredients: Cream, Coffee, Sugar) and that going much more "upscale" than that yields diminishing returns. I certainly like Ben & Jerry's ice cream -- it just doesn't seem to have the magic qualities for me that some ascribe to it. It was nice having an ice cream store in the area for its own sake though. I'm probably missing something, but with the passing of this store, I can't think of any in the Devine corridor or Five Points. I know there's a Sandy's near the college, and a Coldstone or Marble Slab in the Vista, but that's really another market area.

UPDATE 20 January 2012 -- Looks like Ben & Jerry's was the middle store (2901-B) in this three storefront building, not the end store (2901-C). Here's a better picture of their actual location (which became Hardcore Tennis:

(Also added the full street addres to the post title).

The Forest Acres area used to have several Pizza Huts. There was one on Forest Drive more or less across the street from where Golden Corral is now. There was one on Garners Ferry about where Ruby Tuesday is now, and then there was this one on Beltline in between D's Wings and the Japanese steakhouse.

I was noticing that Casa Linda looks a bit like an old-style Pizza Hut (though with some additions) and that this building is one of the newer style Pizza Huts, so it's possible that they moved here from the Casa Linda building. However, I have no recollection of any such thing, so that's just speculation.

At any rate, this Pizza Hut was part of my ongoing disenchantment with the chain, becase the service was consistently... not good. In fact this store had an innovation I had not seen before, and have not seen since: A Neon Help Wanted sign.

Honestly, do you want your customers to notice that your help turns over so often that you have a built-in, lighted, Help Wanted sign? Much better to just continue to tape a paper one in the window every week. That will go below most people's radar.

After this place went under as a Pizza Hut it became a Rising High. This was sort of interesting because it was one of the most protracted re-purposings I can recall. My memory is that the Coming Soon Rising High! sign went up at least a full year before they got around to opening, with the actual work seeming to happen on a very off-and-on basis. I suspect that opening this store while also trying to cope with the road-work on Harden Street was what drove Rising High under. At any rate, this store didn't last long.

I think there may have been another operation between Rising High and the current tenant, Shane's, but if so I can't now recall what it was.

UPATE 26 June 2023: Updating tags and adding map icon.

This building more or less on the corner of Trehnolm Road and Beltline Boulevard, was for years, I believe, a florist. Then the "espresso craze" hit the country.

Remember how in the awful 1991 Bruce Willis movie Hudson Hawk Willis had to keep explaining to everyone what a Cappuccino was? Well, shortly thereafter, all of America knew, and coffee houses were something of a hot market item. I believe it was about this time that Cool Beans started on College Street (under another name), as well as Ibby's in Myrtle Beach, a place on King Street in Charleston whose name I'm blanking on and several others started. Most of this first wave of independant coffee houses located in shabby buildings and affected a very casual and laid back demeanor and their attitude was very much "we are real coffee houses, and you should get used to us and continue to support us because Starbucks is coming". However, I think that was something of a put on, like having a "real" Irish pub in a South Eastern city. The whole coffee-house "culture" was really indigenous to other parts of the country, and the local places weren't anymore "real" than Starbucks, though the survivors have become so over time.

Aside from the "culture" there was simply a matter of competence. Brewing the espresso seems fairly straight-forward, but it is very easy to burn the milk for items like cappuccinos or lattes after which they become completely undrinkable. Books-a-Million still gets this wrong about two times out of ten, while I've never had it happen at Starbucks.

All of which is a lead-up for saying that sometime in the 90s, the florist shop closed and a coffee house went into the building. I'm afraid to say that I stopped once, got a completely undrinkable latte and never went back. They may have gotten better after that, but with the lot being rather hard to get in and out of, and with first Books-A-Million locating at Trenholm Plaza and then Barnes & Noble at Richland Mall, they were gone even before any Starbucks opened in Columbia.

The place is now a cat hospital. And that can keep you awake too.