Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

In the mid-90s, Cucos Mexican Cafe was in the Capitol Centre strip-mall, adjoining Columbia Mall, the same place which was at the time home to Circuit City and Capitol Centre Theaters.

Cucos was a casual Tex-Mex eatery with what I still consider to be unusually good salsa. (It wasn't particullarly hot, but had some unusual ingredients, including carrot chunks to give it a very good flavor). The vegetarian burrito was good as well, and my sister, father & I enjoyed eating there on the weekends when I was back in town.

In the winter of 1995, I made the mistake of answering a technical question on an internal e-mail list just at the time they needed someone else to fill out a work party upgrading computers in Seoul Korea. Having raised my visibility, and being between projects, I was chosen and flew out of Augusta GA to Atlanta, through Portland OR and to Seoul to join the team from the west-coast office.

When I got there, everyone from California was sick and I was fine. Seoul in the winter is the coldest place I have ever been, and I have been in Kansas in Janurary. We were working mainly after hours so as not to disturb the computer users during the day, and I remember one night in particular when we had to leave a warm building (with no key to get back in) and wait 40 minutes in the snow and wind for a cab. Anyway, the point is, as I borded the plane back for the US, everyone else was feeling pretty good and I was starting to feel rocky. The trip from Seoul to Chicago (which was the route back) was the longest trip I can ever recall. When we hit Chicago, I put my watch from Seoul time to Central, meaning that when I got to Atlanta, I was off by an hour and missed my flight back to Augusta. By this point, I was ready to just lay myself down on a bench of Hartsfield seats and expire, but Delta got me on the next flight to Augusta, and somehow I made the drive back to Aiken. I had about enough energy to crawl into bed, and I didn't leave it for two weeks except for the bathroom and forcing down the occasional soda-cracker. I don't know the technical name for what I had, but I called it the Korean Death Flu. After two weeks flat on my back, I was finally able to start making it back into work for partial days, but I was still as weak as a kitten when the annual holiday break rolled around. What does this have to do with anything? Perhaps not much, but I vividly remember that the first day I felt really well again, it was close to Christmas, and I was sitting in Cucos having lunch, just marveling that I had an appitite and didn't ache anywhere. The realization of well-being came over me, and I just sort of sat back and enjoyed it, being in no hurry at all to finish and leave, and as it happened that day, my waitress was a very pretty Southern-Belle of Korean descent.

So what happened to Cucos? As far as I could tell, they did a very good business in that location, but that doesn't matter much if the whole chain gets into trouble. Googling around a bit, I find that in their SEC filing for 1995, Cucos said that casinos in the New Orleans area (their home base) were starting to cut into their earnings (frankly that sounds like a pretty flimsy excuse for doing poorly..) though they were taking measures to counter it. I'm guessing they started to retrench then, and not long after that, the Columbia location closed. Apparently they soldiered on until going into bankruptcy in 2002. I think there are still some Cucos left, but my impression is that they were succesful franchises bought out by the franchisees.

After the local Cucos folded, the corner spot it had occupied became a sports bar which lasted a few years, but is now vacant.

As for myself? -- I make sure to get a flu-shot every year now.

At one time, "The Italian Oven" was an up-and-coming casual Italian chain. I visited locations in Kansas City, Aiken, and of course, Columbia. The stores had a welcoming ambience that was a bit less formal than something like The Olive Garden, but still classier than something like Pizza Hut.

They had, in my opinion, a very good pizza, not too thin and not too thick and made better by having very large diameter pepperonis and bottles of olive oil at the tables for drizzling on it. I don't recall having anything other than pizza, but my father and sister seemed satisfied with the other Italian dishes on their menu. They also had a "gimmick" to distinguish them, and endear them to kids: Their drinking straws were actually long pasta noodles. This worked better than you might expect as cold beverages didn't seem to soften them to any appreciable extent, and it was fun to crunch them when you were finished.

They also had their problems. This was a chain that was founded on the idea of rapid growth, and as often happens, it got out of hand, and staffing suffered as (in my opinion) franchisees and staff were insufficiently vetted. When I was living in Aiken, I used to enjoy going to the Aiken Mall location because it was open until 10:30 on weeknights, and fit my preferred dining hours better than most places. I was in there one night happily reading a book and waiting for pizza when the manager came over and tried to proselytize me. This didn't sit at all well with me, and I never went back. (I remember reading somewhere about restaurants: "Americans don't complain, they just don't come back"). The place closed not long after that, though I doubt my boycott made the difference.

The one in Columbia lasted a bit longer, long enough to provide one of the oddest restaurant experiences I've ever had. My father, sister and I were eating lunch there one day, probably a Saturday. I wasn't paying any particular attention, but service seemed kind of slow. Finally a well dressed man with a notepad came to the table and asked for our order. My sister seemed rather hesitant though my father, like me, had noticed nothing. We made our orders, and he asked if we wanted bread. I said that, it was hard to choose there because sometimes they brought out bread as an appetizer and sometimes they didn't (I still have a peeve about places like that). He said that he would make sure we got the complementary bread this time and walked off.

After he left, my sister pointed to a table of young, business-looking guys, and said, "That guy was with that table -- he's a customer". And indeed, this table of "can-do" customers had gotten so disgusted with the slow table staff that they had taken over waiter-ing for the whole store. They carried our, and their, orders in to the kitchen, made sure the cooks understood, and later brought our food!

Not long after that, the whole chain folded in bankruptcy and acrimony. Some individual restaurants survive, their owners having negotiated rights keep the name, and the original owner is apparently now trying to refound the national chain, but as a Fazoli's style no-table-service concept.

After the Decker location closed, no successful retail operation ever went into its spot, marking the start of the decline of that particular strip mall. Goodwill finally put a thrift shop there, but I prefer pizza.

UPDATE 12 April 2010: Added full street address to post title.

UPDATE 8 June 2012: Changed post title to spell out "Boulevard" in full. Also added tags.

Godfather's was in a little strip mall off of Parklane on the one side, and the Columbia Mall perimeter road on the other side. My memory says that the same building (I'm unsure if it were the same suite) was at one time home to Shakey's Pizza Parlor, the first pizza restaurant I can remember in Columbia at all.. I think I recall going to Shakey's once or twice. They must have had pizza, but all I can remember is that they were showing silent-movie comedies in the rear of the store (and I'm not even 100% I remember that -- I may be remembering something I heard later -- it was a long time ago).

Pizza was a fairly exotic dish when I was a kid. My first experience with pizza, if you could call it that, came at Satchelford Elementary School, where from time to time, the cafeteria food line featured "pizza pie". This was a pie shell filled with gound beef and topped with melted cheddar cheese and it distorted my perceptions of pizza for years just as their "submarine sandwich" (a rectangular cut piece of bologna and a piece of pre-sliced American cheese cut into two rectangles all in a hotdog bun) turned me off on "subs" for years.

Later we discovered Chef Boyardee's frozen cheeze pizza and pizza mix (he must know pizza, he's French!) which was actually a step up as was Pizza Hut (though I feel they have cheapened their brand).

By the time I became aware of Godfather's, I was pretty much a Pizza Hut snob, and the few times I ate there, I didn't like the pizza much at all (I don't think this was all callow youth, I had the same opinion years later in Myrtle Beach). Furthermore, if I recall correctly, Godfather's was one of those order-at-the-counter places and I have always preferred ordering from a menu at the table. Be that as it may, I don't know exactly how Godfather's got into trouble, but suddenly it seemed there were a lot fewer of them. I think the one at the beach outlasted this one, but it's gone now too. I did a web search and there are actually a few left in SC, but not in places I go.

If you look at the second picture, you'll see lots of plastic bins inside the former Godfather's. The labels didn't come out well in the picture, but they all say things like "leak #8". I take that to mean that on some very small level at least, someone still cares what happens to the building though it's been vacant so many years now that I don't see much future for a business there.

Unless someone makes them an offer they can't refuse.

UPDATE 30 July 2010: Added Shakey's to the post title as well as the full street address.

UPDATE Friday 13 May 2016: Add *correct* street address.

Don Pablo's seemed to be an up-and-coming Mexican restaurant chain in the Southeast during the 90s. They had this location at Columbia Mall, a location in Charleston on Rivers Avenue, one in Augusta off of the Bobby Jones expressway and several in the Atlanta and Charlotte areas.

I have always enjoyed "chain" Mexican restaurants more than "authentic" ones, but Columbia has always seemed to have a problem attracting and keeping them. We had Garcia's (on O'Niel Court, I think) but only very briefly, and never had a Chi-Chi's, Chevy's, Rio Bravo, or On The Border, and my favorite Cucos lasted only a few years. El Chico (which I do like) seems to be the only national player with staying power, but at the time, I didn't see any reason Don Pablo's couldn't be a second.

They had a very comfortable interior, with plenty of booths, and I enjoyed several of their menu items quite a bit. In particular, the cheese & onion enchiladas were very tasty and were covered with a nice brown sauce and the chile rellenos were really good as well. The standard salsa was a bit bland (though better than the completely kickless tomato gunk at "authentic" places), but they had a "macho" salsa which was a bit embarassing to order, but which was a bit more interesting. My father liked the place too, and we often ate there with my sister on weekends when I was in town (I was living in Aiken and working in Augusta at the time).

Unfortunately, the place came to exhibit several of the Signs Your Favorite Restaurant is About to Close including cutting back their hours. I mentally put Don Pablo's on the critical list, and sure enough I came by one evening, and the place was dark and empty.

I was disappointed, but there was still the Augusta location and the Charleston one which I could visit when I went down to see The Have Nots. I recall I was in the Augusta location on Election Night of 2000. On my way out (probably about 11:00), I passed by a TV in the bar and recall thinking very clearly something like "Man, this is going to be a squeaker!" -- little did I know..

Shortly after that, the Augusta location closed, while I was eating in the Charleston location, I noticed the Augusta manager making his way around the dining room, checking on the customers. He recognized me, and said he had always wanted to live in Charleston, and he considered himself lucky because the spot opened up just before the word came down that the ax was falling in Augusta. I guess his luck ran out soon after that as the Charleston location closed. (It's a "Wild Wing" now).

I don't go up to Charlotte very often, but I did find a Don Pablo's up there once, by chance but it was gone too the next time I stopped by.

I just spent three weeks working in the DC area (restaurants up there are very iffy on ice tea!) and found a DP still in operation at the Ptomac Yards mall on Jefferson Davis Highway. After several years with no experience of the place, it was a mixed bag. I think I went there three times, and once it was average, once it was very greasy, and once it was as good as I remembered. Looking around on the web, it seems that they had a corporate "near death" experience and have been bought by a new parent company at this point (which also seems to have "Hops", which still exists up there). We'll see how it works out.

In the meantime, the old Columbia Mall location now hosts The Charleston Crabhouse, and I wish them well, though I tend not to darken the door of seafood places.

UPDATE 17 July 2012 -- Below are some neon pix of the Don Pablo's logo from the streetside and front door signs at the Greenville Don Pablo's across from Haywood Mall. I've been there twice in the last month, and it was pretty good (as were the ones in Orlando and Atlanta that I've visted over the past year):

I should probably also mention here that the Charleston Crab House has closed.

Like Crazy Buffet, the Black Bull was a new tenant in an old steak-house building on Knox Abbot Drive. I never got around to eating at there, though it was somewhere on my "to do" list. It appears that may no longer be an option. The signs on the door suggest a remodeling, but in my experience of restaurants, "remodeling" is like open-heart surgery: You hope for a good outcome, but say your goodbyes anyway. And that's genuine, planned remodeling. The other signs suggest this came on very suddenly, and in fact the Black Bull web-site has no mention of the place being closed at all.

UPDATE 18 February 2014: Added Western Steer to the post title based on comments for the follow-up operation Hard Knox Grill.

This post is a companion of sorts to the last one, at least as far as age and location go. This defunct deli sits catty-cornered from the defunct bank that was the subject of that post. Its location is actually rather interesting as it has changed without the building ever having moved.

I've given the location as the corner of Decker Blvd and Trenholm Road Extension, but of course when the building was built, there was no Trenholm Road Extension, and it wasn't on a corner lot at all. In fact , though I may have my dates off a bit, I think the building predates most of the land around it! At one time what is now the Staples/Goodwill plaza across from Dent Middle School wasn't a plaza, or even woods: it was a lake. It wasn't a very good lake -- it was rectangular and obviously artificial, but it was a lake, and the deli building was more or less on the lake bank. Given all the empty retail space on Decker, they probably should have left it a lake.

I never ate at the deli, and don't recall the owner. My sister thinks it was an "Andy's Deli", and I have no reason to think she's wrong. As far as I can tell, it's not an awful location, and I don't really have any idea why it went under. However, unlike the bank, the lot owner still has some hope for the property, and a for sale sign hopefully beckons passers-by. I don't know if the owner rents the lot, or if it is extra-legal, but various road-side sales set up there from time to time. You know the kind of thing: velvet paintings, cheap sofas, cyprus knee art..

UPDATE: This post was originally titled "Deli". Everyone seems to agree that I was wrong and it wasn't a deli, but a Grandy's restaurant. I've changed the post title to reflect that. Here is a working Grandy's in a very similar building.

That plan's so crazy it just might work!

Or not.

Crazy Buffet was on Knox Abbot Drive in Cayce just down the hill from Krispy Kreme (and on the other side of the road) in a building which has seen several restaurants come and go. In the beginning I think it was a Western Sizzling steakhouse. After that I'm a bit hazy, but think it became some sort of seafood operation. That was followed by an independant Mexican-run Mexican restaurant. I stopped there once and am afraid I found it pretty dreadful. When it too had had its day in the sun and passed, the place became an Asian buffet.

When the end came, it came quickly: If you click on the last picture you may be able to make out the soy-sauce and other condiments still sitting on the tables. I'm guessing the end came in 2006 since the Free Times issue sitting on the table is not from 2007 or 2008 (I checked their cover gallery), and I remember the closing as "recent".

I'm not sure why the place failed, but it certainly wasn't from lack of parking!

UPDATE 4 December 2009: Added full street address to post title.

UPDATE 21 July 2010 -- Added "Western Sizzlin" to the post title, and this ad from the 1974 phonebook:

also this note: The follow-on operation to Crazy Buffet Hot China Buffet has opened and closed.

What can I say about Denny's? Well, if you are working until 2AM, it's the only place other than The Waffle House that you can eat at, and the food in the pictures on the menus looks really good!

No matter which location of Denny's I stop at, I have invariably found that the service is both slow and poor, and that the food, while edible, rarely looks nearly as good as the pictures on the menus. I recall an incident in the news some years ago where a couple of Secret Service agents, who happened to be black, were suing the chain for discrimination. I remember thinking at the time:

Well, it certainly could be discrimination, but it's also possible that they got the standard Denny's service and couldn't believe something that bad was not on purpose..

At one time, Denny's had three locations in Columbia that I can think of, this one, one on Airport Blvd and one on Harbison Rd. I think at this point only the Harbison location is left. I recall this location in particular as one to which my father, aunt, sister and I went once when we had the urge for pancakes. My father was the nicest man in the world, and would put up with anything, but even he commented on how bad the service was. After Denny's failed in this location, it was a sports bar for a while, and is now a carpet and floor store -- but I bet they could still get you a plate of pancakes faster than Denny's could.

Then:

And Now:

Don't panic: The Egg Roll Station (also known as Egg Roll Chen) is not closed. I just thought that I should note the loss of the original building here. I understand why they might have wanted a newer building, but the old one (which I believe started as a Hardee's) had a unique "space-age" look.

I think that with the demolition of this building Silver City (the comics store) on Knox Abbot Drive in Cayce is the only remaining structure of this type in the Columbia area.

UPDATE 30 April 2010: I've corrected the street address in the post title. Also, I've found they have their own web site which has a good picture of their old building.

D's is a local (I believe) chain of casual restaurants with an unusually large menu. They have a little something for everyone, and are the only restaurants in Columbia (that I know of) which fry their own potato chips ("raw fries" they call them). They have a number of locations; I can think of Clemson Road, Parkland Plaza, and Beltline Blvd. They now have one less.

This particular building on St. Andrews Road appears to have a restaurant curse attached to it, as I have seen a number of operations go into it over the years, and none of them have lasted very long. More prosaically, it may just be that while it is easy to exit I-26 to eat there, it is difficult to get back on the Interstate because a left turn out of the parking lot is almost impossible when traffic is moderate or heavy.

UPDATE 24 Feb 2010: Added a bunch of previous names to the post title based on the comments. Also see here (Baja's Southwestern Grill) and here (Delmonico Diner) for the next two operations in this building.

UPDATE 31 Jan 2011: Added the full street address to the post title, finally.