Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This former Dairy Queen had been the Eggroll Station for 35 years before it closed in December due to the this, the adjacent Capitol Square shopping center, and the old Al's Upstairs location being bought for redevelopment.

I never ate at this place, which is connected to Eggroll Station / Eggroll Chen on Crowson, but my sister reported it as very good.

You can read about the closure and redevelopment in The State, The Post & Courier or Westmetro News.

As for the redevlopment, it sounds very ambitious, but one property I conspicuously did not see mentioned was House Of Raeford, which, if the breeze is right, can put quite a kibosh on activities in the area.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

This building, on Broad River Road just North of I-20, has featured here several times, first as an Applebee's and most recently as Tha River. After that, it started to set up as a Blaney's, a local wing chain with several Midlands locations.

It may be too soon to apply the "Never Opened" rubric, but given that the Fire Marshall considers this a vacant building, and given that the posted door notice is from October 2025 with a re-inspection mooted for December 2025 and that it is still posted, I would say that things don't look promising.

This Ashland Park storefront has been a number of restaurants over the years, from Low Country Cafe to Steve's. Full Bellies moved in after Steve's closed in April of 2025, and closed just before Christmas of the same year. You can see their farewell message here.

I had to check out the phones. They are in very good shape, but there is no dial-tone. If you look closely, you can see that the nameplate on them is for Blackbeard's Seafood, a place I never heard of and have not featured here.

(Hat tip to commenter Heath)

I have only been in a Freddy's once, at the Sunset location and I got a milkshake which I thought was pretty good.

The State reported the opening of this location in 2018, with the chain representing that

The surrounding residential neighborhoods around Lake Murray make the location a great fit for Freddy’s.

I guess in the event eight years later perhaps not so much.

Here is The State story on the closing.

(Hat tip to commenter Kenneth)

I believe the first tenant in this spot after it was built was Bruster's Real Ice Cream, but Hibachi Express has been there quite a while now. I hope it will be there in the future, but the place appears pretty well gutted by the Saturday morning two-alarm fire.

The restaurant was open at the time, but luckily all the crew and customers are safe. So far the cause of the fire is unknown. You can read about it at The Post & Courier or The State or see video at WLTX or WIS.

(Hat tip to Mr. Guy)

As reported by The State, the Clutch Coffee chain has been bought out by Dutch Bros coffee (which is apparently quite large, though I had never heard of them), and the local Clutch outlets will be closed to remodel & retool before coming back as Dutch Bros locations.

This one, in Lexington is by the former Sonic location, which itself is apparently retooling to become an ice-cream shop.

(Hat tip to commenter James R)

I believe I have only been in a Captain D's once, at a family event, where I ended up getting the corn-on-the-cob side item since I am not a seafood lover.

At one time, Captain D's & Shoney's were under the same ownership, and they tended to locate the two restaurants close to each other. This was the case on Two Notch and Garners Ferry, and was also the case here. In the event the Shoney's pairing with this Captain D's was closed in 2012, razed, and rebuilt as a Cook Out.

This store soldiered on for 13 more years after its partner succumbed, so that is some stick-toit-iveness.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

I first knew this place as Frank-N-Stein, a monster-themed casual restaurant. That was followed by The Stadium Steak House and the first Columbia establishment to bear the name Twin Peaks, though the view was a bit more liberal there than at the current holder of the name.

I want to say Millennium came in sometime in the '80s -- at any rate they had been there quite a while.

Now the place, like seemingly every other address within miles, is to become student housing.

You can read about it in The State or The Post & Courier.

(Hat tip to commenter Mr. Bill)

UPDATE 22 January 2026: Actually the place had not been there as long as I thought. As several people point out in the comments, the Millennium name reflects the fact that the Buffet opened around that time.

Clean Eatz is more than a restaurant that offers healthy food. We are heart-driven to change livez through clean, balanced food, thought-provoking education.

That certainly sounds ambitious, even if I'm not quite sure what it means, but this location of the chain, next to the former Brueggers, has now closed.

(Hat tip to commenter Brian)

Kairos was part of the first wave of tenants in this new building which was constructed after the razing of the old Ruby Tuesday.

I ate here probably a dozen times or so over the several years it was open. Originally they had a few tables on the sidewalk in front of the store which I liked to sit at in good weather, but at some point they lost those, and nobody working there seemed to know anything about it.

I was rather ambivalent about the concept itself. I believe someone here called it "bowls of goo" a few months ago, and that was kind of an issue. I found that if I just treated it as a bespoke salad, it was good, but trying to go beyond that was just too much thrown together that should probably have been separate.

The place closed without warning (as restaurants tend to do) in mid-December, and the WLTX story is here.

(Hat tip to Mr. Hat)