Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Eating at Moes on Main today, I was struck by the sign at University Corner (the small strip mall at the corner of Devine & Main), and how it harked back to an earlier era. Of the businesses listed on its directory

Carolina's
Stuffy's
Bits & Pizzas
Smoothie King
Varsity BIlliards

only Varsity Billiards is still actually there (and to my memory has been there forever). Apparently the wi-fi coffee shop that was there last year didn't last long enough to make it onto the sign, and apparently they are holding off on putting Firehouse Subs up there..

UPDATE 8 Feb 2010: Took the opportunity tonight to take some pictures of the lighted Varsity Billiards sign as it's a classic design (From the same school as the old Redwing Roller Way sign).

Ponderosa Steak Barn,
Meet Your Friends There!
Where Good Eatin' is a Family Affair!

Ponderosa was in Trenholm Plaza more or less where Holey Dough & Heavenly Ham are now, and was one of the first wave of steakhouses (that I can recall) to come into Columbia. We went through a period of eating Sunday dinner there more often than not. They had a Western theme, both in the names of the menu items and the decor. The Western motif extended to the seating. I think there were booths around the walls of the restaurant, but the seating in the middle of the place was polished wood benches and tables. They weren't quite "picnic" tables because the benches were free-standing, but it was pretty rustic. Aside from the standard steak and burger offerings, they also had a salad bar, which was something I hadn't seen before. As an 8 year old, I had no interest in it, but I think it impressed my mother. They also had "Texas toast" which did impress me, and since it didn't come with anything I ordered, I was always angling to beg it off of my mother or father.

As I said, all of the menu items had Western themed names, and I invariably orded the "Buckboard Burger", which was simply a hamburger (you could get it with cheese as well..). This item led to a 30 year misunderstanding between my father and me. Since I would always get the same thing (and since he would be doing the ordering), he would always ask in that way parents have of kind of "deviling at" their kids:

So, are you going to get the Buggy Burger again?

and then watching in amusement as I got all worked up about it:

It's the Buckboard Burger!

When we were reminiscing about it years later, we finally came to a mutual understanding. My father, who was born in 1915, knew very well what a "buckboard" was -- a type of horse-drawn buggy. I had no idea. He thought I was just being "prissy" about wanting to call the burger by the name it was listed under on the menu, while I always thought he was implying that the burger was made out of bugs!

Unfortunately, Ponderosa burned down sometime in the late 1960s (I think), and never came back to Trenholm Plaza. I believe there was another one in Cayce where we used to go sometimes (and ask to go to the Giant Slide), but that was a long drive, and it didn't seem as good.

Years later, I ran across a Ponderosa chain in the Kansas City area, but the menu items had different names, and I was never able to tell if it were the same operation or just a common choice of a Western name. It was OK, but nothing out of the ordinary. That chain came very briefly to Myrtle Beach (to the parking lot of the Surfside Kroger actually), but folded after a very short run.

This one is not a "real" closing, but I thought it was kind of odd, so I'm going to note it.

I had noticed Bruster's Real Ice Cream in a few locations before ever stopping by, and it seemed to me that there was always a crowd standing around outside for some reason. When I finally did stop by, I found that the reason is that there is no "inside", at least for customers. All the business is done through walk-up windows, even though the buildings are plenty big enough to have counters inside. The ice cream is pretty good, but certainly not noticably better than Baskin Robbins, Ben & Jerry's, Coldstone or Marble Slab, all of which operations have counters and seats inside. I can't really think of why the chain would adopt such a concept, except to "be different". It's a concept I can see working well in resort areas, but it seems ill-suited to year-round markets. If you get a hankering for ice-cream in November, are you going to go somewhere warm, or stand outside Bruster's?

I noticed a month or two ago that the store on Beltline at Forest had been dark a while, and I stopped by to see what was going on. There were signs in the windows saying that they were closed for "renovations & training" and would be open again early in 2008. Well, it is now early in 2008, and they are still closed. Since it is a brand-new building, and I have seen no work trucks at the site, the renovations angle is puzzling, and I have to wonder what kind of training the staff at this store needed that isn't needed at their other locations, especially since it was a going operation. If I were to speculate, I would say that their business model just doesn't work in the winter at non foot traffic sites. But I would never do that.

UPDATE 27 March 08: Looks like the place is for sale, but for sale as a Bruster's franchise, not as just a building:

I wish him(?) luck, but those "loyal customers" the "for sale" sign references have had half a year to find other creameries..

UPDATE 31 March 09:

Well, they backed a truck up to the place and loaded all the equipment and took down the signs. That was in January I think and so far nothing has gone in there.

UPDATE 8 June 2010 -- Well, it's going to be a Hibachi Express "soon", though it seems like the "soon" sign has been up a month or so, and there doesn't look to have been any interior work done..

UPDATE 23 Dec 20-- Hibachi Express is open:

UPDATE 30 August 2021: Updating tags, adding map icon.

Well this was a bit unexpected. I had been planning for a while to do a closing on Quncy's, but when I went there today to take the picture, I found the successor business, Stiletto's strip club had just closed down as well.

Quincy's Family Steakhouse was part of the second or third wave of steakhouses to hit Columbia, and at its peak, the best of breed in my opinion. The first wave consisted of places like Ponderosa Steak Barn about which I mean to do a post someday, while the second wave (or late first, I haven't decided) was places like Western Steer & Western Sizzling.

Quincy's was a very appealing operation for family Sunday lunches, and we ate there almost exclusively on Sunday for a number of years. You would go in, get in line, pick out your silverware and make your order which would be brought out with reasonable promptness. I thought they had a very good burger (which fewer places do well than you would expect), and their salad bar was unquestionably the best in Columbia. The waitresses were all friendly, and came to know and greet "the regulars". The only fly in the ointment was that whatever mechanism they used to wash the silverware wasn't very efficient, and you always ended up having to go through several knives and forks before coming up with unspotted ones.

I liked Quincy's well enough that when my employer started sending me to various cities around the South East, I would take the little list of "Our Other Locations" that used to be in a stand by your way out, to have somewhere familiar to eat when I travelled. (In practice, it would usually work out that either I didn't get to pick where we ate, or we would end up working so late that it was Denny's or nowhere..). I started noticing too that all Quincy's were not alike. The one on Two Notch was definitely the best one in Columbia, much better than the one on Forest Drive, and a bit better than the one off I-26 & US-378. The one in Surfside Beach was very good, the one in Florence, not so much.

Naturally like any chain with a generally winning concept, they started to tinker with it. First, the salad bar started to decline. They took the large wedges of chedder and pepper-jack cheese off, and would start skipping very basic things, like onions, more and more often. Then they decided that the "honor system" had to go. The initial concept was you got your ticket and paid on your way out. The new system was that you had to pay at the end of the ordering line. I suppose it reduced shrinkage some, and obviated the need for another employee and register stand at the door, but it also slowed up the line, and made it seem that you weren't quite trusted to pay for your food. Real decline set in after this, and the chain obviously realized it with their somewhat desperate ad campaigns for The Big, Fat Yeast Roll. The rolls were actually pretty good, but you want to think several times before launching a restaurant ad campaign in which the words "big" and "fat" play prominent roles.

I think the Forest Drive location was the first in Columbia to go, with Two Notch being the last. I believe the chain is still in business and has a few stores left, but I haven't seen one in several years.

I forget what moved into the Two Notch building after Quincy's, but it didn't last too long, and I think the building sat vacant a while before becoming Stiletto's. That brief-lived operation had a sign with a very shapely set of legs, the feet adorned with the aforementioned footware. I'm pretty sure I saw the sign as recently as last week, but I can't say for certain. The sign also mentioned that, like Quincy's, they had steaks on the menu, but I suspect "the sizzle" was more their stock in trade.

UPDATE 9 May 2008: New construction is going on at the old Quincy's/Stiletto's

Looks like it will be a "Harbor Inn", which either means that there will be two Harbor Inns within a mile or so of each other on Two Notch, or that the one in front of Bi-Lo (in the old Ryan's building) will be moving here.

UPDATE 22 March 2010: Added full street address (and some tags)

In principle, I should like Rising High, since it is sort of a local version of The Atlanta Bread Company or Panera Bread, and I like both of those operations (in general, but see my post about ABC at Sandhills..). In practice I never really found the sandwich or other food item that could make this place a regular stop for me. The sandwich which came closest, The Sundrenched was a bit too artichokey. The deck was a nice idea in principle, but I found that when it wasn't too hot, or too cold to use it, I tended to get panhandled by passers-by.

I'm unsure if the building was built for Rising High. I remember The Villa being in about that location before it closed. At any rate, I think a combination of things did in this location. First and foremost was the interminable Harden Street revamping which also cost us The Parthenon. I believe that, combined with the fact that the chain was at the same time trying to establish a new location on Beltline Blvd (where Shane's Ribs now is) just put too much stress on the operation.

The building now hosts The Congaree Grill, an operation I have yet to visit.

The Pizza Hut on Broad River Road found itself in a less than ideal location after the implosion of Service Merchandise and the downscaling of Dutch Square. Still they hung on until they had a chance to move to the new Wal-Mart location on Bush River Road, which they have now done.

I can only remember eating there a few times over the years. It's interesting to me how during the time I've been buying my own meals, Pizza Hut has gone from being a "nice" place to eat to a sub-par fast-food experience. They have always had a problem over the years with the customer being able to figure out whether to pay the server or pay at the register, but they used to have a fairly good food and reasonable service.

It seemed to me that the food started going down-hill in the 90s, and the service, including the kitchen staff followed quickly. For me the final straw was when a lot of locations started serving "fountain" ice tea instead of fresh brewed. I recall being at a location in Lauringburg NC, and sending my tea back as I could taste that there was "something wrong with it". The waiter commented "yeah, a lot of people say that since we switched." I was kind of flabbergasted that the store had an obvious problem which people were giving them feedback on, but about which they apparently did not care. The most recent time I stopped at a Pizza Hut was in Walterboro when I could find nothing else reasonable looking off of I-95 that was still open. The tables hadn't been wiped, I sat for 20 minutes without a drink or my order being taken, the ice tea was fountain, and the cook hadn't been taught how to cook the garlic bread orders (apparently there is an opening half-way through the oven where you are supposed to insert a garlic bread tray, but he ran it all the way through).

So, that's a bit of venting about Pizza Hut in general. It's not fair to put it on the Broad River one, but I don't think I'll be visiting the new location.

UPDATE 23 May 2011 -- Here's a picture of this Pizza Hut's new location in the Wal-Mart plaza on Bush River Road:

UPDATE 15 September 2012 -- The old Broad River Road building is now a title loan operation:

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

Fran's was a small meat-and-three on Forest Drive almost across from Trenholm Plaza. They always appeared to me to do a good business though I only went there a few times myself. My opinion is that they tended to run out of most items very early in the evening. If you weren't there by 7pm, there was probably no point in going (seniors found it ideal..). Combining that with the fact that the layout was very crowded and that they had no booths, I decided years ago that Lizard's Thicket was preferable when I wanted down-home cooking.

The new restaurant going into the location will be called Zoes Kitchen (but with the little European dots above the "e" in "Zoes"). Looking at their web site, it appears that they are a regional chain and will be serving a "healthy" Greek-inspired menu. To be frank, I didn't see anything there that really looks appetizing to me.

UPDATE 6 Oct 2010 -- Well, Zoe's is open, and has been for a while. As I said above, the menu doesn't appeal to me in general, but the Greek salad is good (if pricey), and with the closure of Zorba's on Decker I do visit here for that every so often. The patio is nice in the spring and fall as well.

UPDATE 1 September 2022: Change date year from '08' to '2008' in title. Update tags and add map icon.

Applegate's Landing was on Decker Blvd somewhat behind Zorba's and the current Chik-Fil-A location. At least that's the way I remember it, though it's hard to visualize it there looking at the land today. Applegate's Landing was a sort of semi-upscale casual restaurant, on the order of Bennigans, though I don't believe it was part of a chain. I think it opened sometime in the 70s while I was in high school, at least the only two times I went there, it was with high school friends (though the second visit was some time was after our graduation).

As I recall, their main claim to fame, at least the one which made it into most of their advertising was that their salad bar was set up in the bed of a Ford Model-A pick-up truck. I'm pretty sure it really was an authentic Model-A, though it was mostly gutted. As well as the standard steaks, burgers and pasta dishes, they also had pan pizza, which they would bring to your table still in the pan. I liked my first visit well enough, but the prices were a bit high for me at the time (considering that I had no job..), and I didn't bother to go back until several years later. I had myself all set for the pan-pizza that second time only to find that they had revamped the menu and dropped that item. After that, it was again some years before I suggested the place to a group only to be informed that it had gone under. I'm not sure if this was for Applegate's specific reasons, or if it was the harbinger of the decline of the Decker corridor. At any rate, the building sat there for several years with no longer any clear way to get to it and was finally torn down. I don't know what happened to the Model-A..

UPDATE: I originally had the name of this restaurant wrong as "Appleby's Landing". I have corrected it to "Applegate's Landing" based on the comments. Thanks!

UPDATE 14 Feb 09: Commenter Midnight Rambler sent in a scan of an old Applegate's coupon, and I have posted it above.

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

I don't have a lot to say about Santa Fe. It was one of the Mexican run Mexican restaurants in town. These tend to fall into three categories: The San Jose affiliated, The Monterey affiliated and the independants. Regardless of affiliation, they tend to have bland tomatoey salsa with no hint of heat and over-cooked, unsalted chips. Since chips & salsa are my favorite part of a mexican-style meal, I don't go to these places much unless I am with someone. I would place Santa Fe about on par with the San Jose restaurants, and not quite as good as the Casa Linda independant.

The building itself started as a Shoney's, back in the days when they were "Shoney's Big Boy". We would often go there for Sunday dinner, and would always get the latest "Big Boy" comic book. For dessert I would get the Ice Cream Sundae Cake: hot chocolate syrup poured over vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two layers of warm chocolate cake and all topped with whipped cream. Pure goodness!

We went less after the Big Boy days, and the whole chain got into trouble in the 90s with this location shutting down as part of the retrenchment. You can still see the Captain D's restaurant next door. The two chains have the same ownership, and they liked to co-locate them.

UPDATE 30 April 2009: It's to be an all you can eat buffet called Savannah's

UPDATE 10 September 2020: Update tags, add map icon.

Julie's was a small Columbia restaurant chain with a Bennigans-like concept. There were two in town, one on the frontage road at the Broad River Road/I-20 interchange, and one on Garner's Ferry Road near the old Woodhill Mall (about where Hampton Hills Athletic Club is now, but closer to the road).

I think these two started in the heyday of restaurants like Bennigans and Tuesdays 1865 (though those chains never came to Columbia for some reason), but never updated after their initial opening. I was more-or-less unaware that they existed until a group of friends ended up going to the Garner's Ferry location one night. Along with the standard burgers, steaks and pasta dishes, they also had a few Mexican items on the menu, and one, quesadillas was something I had never had (Mexican food was not very common at the time) and sounded interesting. In the event, I enjoyed it, but ended up with food-posioning from bad sour cream, and spent two days flat on my back (when I wasn't racing for the bathroom). I felt so low that I was unable to get up from the couch where I was lying in order to turn off the TV when one of my all-time most hated shows, The Scarecrow & Mrs. King, came on.

Needless to say, I never went back to Julies, and both locations closed sometime in the late 80s, the I-20 one after Woodhill. I don't recall anything else going into the building at Woodhill; I think it was torn down soon after Julie's closed, but I believe the building of the I-20 location did house something else before it too was demolished.

Update 30 May 2008: Added pictures of the doctor's office now on the old Julie's lot.

UPDATE 30 July 2012: I believe this building was the Julie's off I-20.