Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I used to see this place whenever I was driving down I-26 to Charleston and wonder what it would be like. My guess was that it was a no-nonsense meat & 3 for hungry travellers, but I'll never know for sure now. If I had to speculate, I'd say it wasn't far enough out of town anymore and that traffic was now stopping at national chains before getting this far. (It's just a few miles up I-26 to Harbison or up I-77 to Two Notch). From all the work being done inside though, it looks like something wil set up in the building.

UPDATE 9 June 2009: Well, something did set up there -- Maggie Mae's! Looks like they're open again.

UPDATE 6 Nov 2010 -- Closed again:

UPDATE 11 November 2011: Found an extra interior picture and added it above.

UPDATE 24 January 2024: Adding tags and map icon, and putting the full street address in the post title.

Although I originally designated Tuesday as my "pizza night" to conform with the practice of the local Pizza Hut when I was living in Fayetteville, I generally don't go to buffets anymore. I would rather wait and pay to have something exactly like I want rather than take what's out. That being the case, I've never been to this Stevie B's Pizza located in an outparcel strip at the Wal-Mart complex on Forest Drive.

Judging from their signage, their main marketing pitch (for supper, at least) was for after-game free-for-alls by kids' sports teams. That certainly seems like a viable market niche to me, especially with no Chuck E. Cheese on this side of town. In the event though, perhaps not. I may be wrong. This place may come back on October 29 as the closed for remodeling sign suggests, but closed for remodeling is a standard, hopeful, dodge of places that have actually gone under. Add to that the fact that this is a new building with Stevie B's being the first tenant, and that looking inside shows no actual remodeling being done, and I have my doubts, especially since their phone number has been disconnected.

UPDATE 3 Nov 2008:

I was wrong -- they're back. Good for them!

UPDATE 17 June 2009:

Gone again!

UPDATE 26 Aug 2009: Took the 'temporary' out of the post title -- they are gone for good this time.

UPDATE 25 March 2010: Added full street address to post title.

UPDATE 21 March 2011 -- It's now a Navy Federal Credit Union:

The Golden Spur was USC's on-campus, University sanctioned (and run) bar. That sounds odd now, but before 1984, there was a quaint notion that you should punish people for public drunkenness or drunk driving, not forbid them access to the means beforehand.

Anyway, the Spur was on the second floor of the Russell House at the top of the stairs that ran from the row of phonebooths on the ground-floor sidewalk all the way to the third floor if I recall correctly. I think the stairwell area was semi-segregated from the upstairs fast-food area by swinging doors and that there was some sort of trail-mix kiosk across the space from the Spur.

I wasn't a drinker, so I only went one time to the Spur that I can recall. They often had lounge acts in there, and I went to see some young female blues singer. The only thing I can recall now is that she sang Bessie Smith's "Gimme a Pig Foot" -- the first time I had heard that song.

In 1984, the federal government (which acknowledged that it had no right to raise or lower a state's drinking age on its own) passed a law saying that highway funds would be withheld from states which did not raise their drinking age to 21. South Carolina gave in to this bit of extortion, and suddenly the majority of college students were too young to drink. The Spur closed as a bar during this period. I believe various things were done with the space, but I don't recall any permanent re-purposing by the time I left grad school.

When I went to check on it recently, I found that the whole upstairs food-area of Russell House had been completely revamped. Gone was the collection of ARA burger & pizza windows and now national brands seem to provide all the upstairs food. The space has been completely remodeled as well, and the old seperate Golden Spur area has been torn out and is copmpletely gone except that a new "private" meeting-room/dining-room occupies the area I'm pretty sure it once did.

The name lives on though. I found that in Carolina Underground the dim and depressing failed retail mall that is in the basement of the Russell House, a new Golden Spur has been set up, as a game room where you can "Wii for Free":

Well, I wasn't going to do two Mexican restaurants almost back-to-back, but this one came up in the comments to El Chico, and has come up in other comment threads as well. Besides, someone may want to take advantage of the 31 October deadline.

I only ate here once, years ago, when it was Little Mexico. I think it had just been written up in The State's weekend section as the best Mexican restaurant in Columbia. I liked it well enough, but it seemed like fairly standard "authentic" Mexican fare to me: good, but not worth driving almost all the way to Irmo vs San Jose, Casa Linda and the like.

I noticed a while ago that it had changed the name to Cancun, but I never got around to checking it out again. Various people in the comments have speculated about what happened, and have said that it wasn't as good as Cancun as it was as Little Mexico.

You can see here that apparently the "Little Mexico" name was actually embedded in the tilework by the front entrance. It appears that it was taped over during the Cancun period. Also, I find it a bit interesting that the "Little Mexico" sign was hauled around to the back of the place and stored. Why not throw it out? It seems like an odd kind of thing to save.

Columbia has had trouble getting & keeping national brand Mexican restaurants. Garcias, Don Pablo's, and Cucos have all come and gone while Chevy's, Rio Bravo, On The Border and Chi-Chi's never made it here.

El Chico is the only one I can think of that has been here and stayed here, and I like it a good bit. I'll say, in fact, that once you add the crushed hot peppers, their salsa is the best in town, and chips & salsa are about 60% of what I grade a mexican meal on. (I also think that it's a very American story that an Indian family comes to America to open a restaurant -- a Mexican restaurant.)

I was disappointed last week when I made it to that side of town just in time (I thought) to scoot in before closing, and found the place shuttered due to a fire. I called this week to see if they were back and was told that it will be until about the end of the month (I think I was quoted a date of 27 Oct) before they will be open again.

UPDATE 7 Feb 09: I should mention that El Chico is now open again (and has been for a while).

UPDATE 24 July 2010 -- Not a good sign: The hours have been cut to close at 9pm Sun-Thur and 10pm Fri/Sat.

UPDATE 4 January 2012 -- As mentioned in the comments, El Chico has had another fire and is currently closed again. From the look-see I took just before Christmas, it does not seem to have been an especially bad fire, so I would not expect them to be closed for long:

UPDATE 14 March 2013 -- After a long while with no apparent activity, cleanup has started at El Chico, so it appears that they definitely will re-open:

UPDATE 18 September 2013 -- Still no sign of any rehabilition work at the place:

UPDATE 22 October 2013 -- As reported by several people, the end has come for El Chico and they will not be reopening:

UPDATE 27 January 2016 -- It looks like we are finally getting near to an opening date for Persis Biryani Indo-Mexican Grill:

UPDATE 4 May 2016 -- As mentioned in the comments, now open as Persis Biryani Indian Grill:

I changed my mind about getting on I-77 today, and turned onto Old Forest Drive at the Wal Mart meaning to hop over to Percival. As I did so, I noticed that Liquids Gentlemen's Club was closed.

I don't know what this building was originally (you can see where some windows have been bricked over), but when I was first aware of it, it was The Carriage House. I may be wrong, but I think this was the first (and for a good while only) strip club in Forest Acres, though the town boundries are kind of odd, so I'm not absolutely sure it is now, or was then in the city limits. The building abuts what was once a viable strip mall at the corner of Forest Drive & Percival Road and which had some sort of convience store, a barber shop and a few other stores which I have long forgotten. It also had a Putt-Putt course about which I posted earlier.

After The Carriage House folded, Liquids moved in (though there may have been a gap). Although the location isn't great, I suspect that it already being zoned for a strip club was a big factor. Either The State or The Free Times did a profile on the owner. I can't recall his name, but he was somehow connected with the Columbia Rap scene, either as a performer or a promoter. I don't know if that business took off and he dropped the club, if they were closed down for some violation or other, or if it just wasn't profitable. Whatever the case, Liquids has dried up.

UPDATE 2 June 2010: Added the full street address to the post title. Also did some googling and found out that the Liquids was granted a liquor license on 22 Feb 2006, but that it was revoked on 14 Feb 2007 for violations of the conditions under which is was issued -- I suspect that had a good deal to do with the club closing. Also, oddly, the first link states that the building was planned to be demolished in 2007 for a hospital, something I never heard of (and which obviously didn't happen).

UPDATE 13 Oct 2010 -- Apparently The Carriage House was a legit restaurant before it went topless. Here's an ad from the 1975-1976 Southern Bell directory:

UPDATE 11 Feb 2011 -- the place continues to deteriorate to the point that there is now a warning letter from the sherrif on the door:

UPDATE 4 April 2012 -- The building continues to degrade, but on some days it's prettier than on others:

UPDATE 1 March 2018 -- This building was razed long ago to build the back parking lot for the new Panera/Petco plaza, but here are some pictures from 16 July 2011:

I like to take pictures in the afternoon, because it seems to me the light is best then (leaving aside the fact that I rarely get my act together before 1 or 2pm anyway if I don't have to..), and so since I happened to be out in the Intersection Center area one Saturday afternoon recently, I decided to walk the whole place and take a bunch of pictures. I think I've already used some, and others will show up from time to time.

This former Chinese restaurant really caught my eye because of the life-sized cut-out figure still affixed to the front wall. I wouldn't call it fine art, but someone put a good bit of work into it once upon a time and it's a shame that it will probably go under the wrecking ball sooner or later. I was going to get a lot closer to the building and do my standard trying to look into the doors etc, but as I turned the corner, I saw a Highway Patrol car sitting beside the next defunct business. I believe there was a major drunk driving crackdown on at the time, and I suppose they were watching Broad River for people they could pull. I know I wasn't doing anything wrong, and I know the Highway Patrol could care less about most non-car related shenanigans, but it made me a bit nervous, so I made sure to flourish the camera very ostentatiously, and tried to look very much like I was not "casing the joint"...

I don't know what happened to Chung King. I think a lot of Chinese restaurants are family run and operate on a shoestring. Perhaps the place put the kids through college and it was time for mom & pop to retire. Perhaps being in a dying strip mall meant there was too little drive by traffic. To me it seems like the place has been closed forever, so I'm saying 1990s in the tag line, but apparently it was open recently enough that one of the online restaurant sites thought it was worth entering in their database -- something that does not give me a great deal of confidence in the rest of their listings!

UPDATE 22 January 2020: Add map icon, update tags.

I only ate at The Santorini Grill once, about two or three years ago, I guess. I believe that the place had just been written up either in The State or The Free Times, and had gotten a pretty good review. After that, I meant to get out there several times, but the location, on Hardscrabble Road, just made it very difficult to do from Forest Acres. You had to take either I-20 or Two Notch to Clemson Road, and then go through a bunch of lights and it was just too much to make it a habbit. That said, the time I did get there, it was quite good. Their now-zombie site has a partial menu (it seems to be missing the "Greek" and "Dessert" pages):

I can't quite recall what I had, but it was probably either Spanakopita if I was going "Greek", or Lasagna.

I know I had trouble getting out there, but given how much the area has grown in the last few years, I would have thought that the place could have made it on the population that lives out there now. I don't know what happened -- perhaps Santorini was simply too upscale.

I see that it will become a pizza place. I wish them luck, but there was a "fancy" pizza place in the previous block of Hardscrabble (where Computer Renaissance is) and it lasted only a few months before going under (the space is some sort of Asian place now).

I like the Santorini building quite a bit. It's a nice structure, and I am partial to Lantana. It's a bit disappointing to see it from the rear and realize the nice smooth top lines are provided by false walls, but you really do need all that stuff on top of a restaurant, so there's not much else you can do. This final picture is from their zombie web-site. Normally I don't do that, but I guess in this case it's pretty moot. I include it because I like neon, and didn't get a chance to take any of my own pictures with the place lit up.

Thanks to commenter "Elizabeth" for the heads up that this place was gone!

UPDATE 9 June 2009: Well, apparently the North East Pizza Palace idea didn't pan out -- It's now another San Jose

Well, here's another one I managed to miss for a good while. I did a closing for Zorba's on Decker Boulevard a while back, but this one took me by surprise.

To be honest, I only ate at this Zorba's (which was not under the same ownership as the Decker Zorba's) once, last Fall. A cousin who knew I enjoyed eating at the Decker restaurant was coming to town with her kids to do some shopping, and suggested we have dinner at the Decker place. By that time, it was only open for lunch, and I knew she was going to be hitting Circuit City, so I suggested the Two Notch Zorba's.

Going in, I got the vibe of a place in trouble. Not really anything I could put my finger on at first, but on the way over, I had been getting in the mood for some Spanakopita, and when we got our menus, I saw that there wasn't a single Greek dish listed. For a Greek/Italian restaurant, the total absence of the Greek half seemed like it was probably a recent development, and not a good one. To be clear, the food I ended up ordering was perfectly acceptable -- the choices were just not what one would expect from a restaurant called Zorba's.

When I was out getting a video card at Office Depot a while back, I saw that the place had closed. Judging from the holiday snowflakes still hung in the windows, I'm guessing they probably didn't reopen after Christmas. The window note suggests that at one time the owners were considering options for the building, but the realty sign out front implies that nothing materialized. I'm not sure there is now anwhere closer to Forest Acres than Grecian Gardens out on Sunset for spanakopita..

UPDATE 7 Oct 2010 -- Work is advancing to reopen this building as a Buffalo WIld Wings:

UPDATE 23 Dec 2010 -- The Buffalo Wild Wings is now open:

It seems to me that a number of Jamacian or Caribbean restaurants have come and gone in the past few years. I'm somewhat curious about the cusine since my impression is that it is spicy, but since the only specific dish I hear of often is "Jerk Chicken", and I don't eat chicken, I've never gotten around to trying one. I believe before this restaurant, the building housed El Menchaca Mexican Restaurant for many years. I'm not sure what happened here to make the building unsafe. The windows are too grimy to see much inside, so I'm not sure if it was a fire or what.

UPDATE 21 July 2011: Finally got around to adding El Menchaca and full street address to the post title!