Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

It's unclear to me whether this is a new operation or just a reflagging, but Chicki's Wings on Broad River in the old Taco Bell/Atlantic Seafood building is now Wings House.

Curiously, though the Grand Opening flags are out, the place was not open during their posted Saturday hours.

New York Pizza & Pasta was the follow-on in this little US-1 building to another pizzeria, Palmono's, which was a follow-on to Reds On Augusta.

According to their Facebook they appear to have closed on 31 August. The menu looks decent, but I was never in the area at the right time to try it out.

(Hat tip to commenter JamesR)

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I believe it is safe to borrow commenter Larry's phrase

Well the renovations are extensive

for this Knox Abbot Drive Zaxby's.

This also appears to have entailed knocking down the Sprint building at some point.

As commenter Larry mentions, Liberty Tap Room is going through extensive renovations -- so extensive that in fact it will open as a new restaurant Taco Mundo Kitchen y Cantina. This is another place I never got to, though I think I may have been to the one in Myrtle Beach, which is still open as far as I can tell.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry)

Judging from the Google reviews, this place probably closed sometime this Spring. The closing is also marked "Temporary", but we'll see. You might think that sitting across from two campuses of hungry kids would be a good place for a sandwich shop, but I have to say that the Google reviews have about the highest concentration of one star ratings I have seen anywhere, so perhaps you really can't sell sizzle.

UPDATE 17 June 2025 -- Open again, under new management:

Looking at the Google Reviews, as well as the cafe's Facebook, it seems that O'Hara's was not making book as a table-service cafe, and tried converting to a counter-service bagel shop, which didn't bring in enough new traffic while alienating the existing clientele. This also invoved Rules #1 & #6.

The owners remain committed to the spot, and it sounds from the most recent Facebook post, that something new may be in the offing.

(Hat tip to commenter James R)

Perry's Gourmet Flaming Grilled Chicken (there's a mouthfull by itself!) opened in this former Taco Cid building in on 29 August of 2022. WLTX had the story here.

Apparently the chicken was Portuguese style, which I am not familiar with, but they had traditional Southern items as well. The Google reviews are almost uniformly positive, though there are not a ton of them, which may be an indication they weren't getting the volume they needed.

And of course, the building is odd and old, something Taco Cid finally gave up on, so there may well be a lot of issues to be addressed as indicated in the Closed For Remodeling sign. Unfortunately I don't see any work going on, and those signs are often more aspirational than accurate. Hopefully that won't be the case here and they will be back, but we'll see.

(Hat tip to commenter Payne)

I had meant to go by the Festival on Saturday when I would have had some time to walk around, but in the event forgot about it completely somehow, and ended up dropping by Sunday afternoon. By that time all the Galaktoboureko was gone, but I did snag some Baklava & Kataifi to take home. There looked to be a pretty good crowd, and the weather was great, in fact unusually warm for late September!

Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce... And everything else now too.

This Burger King is on 8th Street in Fernandina, which is the main road coming onto the island from the mainland. That makes it a high traffic location, and the store was in a decent area (there aren't any really bad spots on 8th), so I'm not sure what happened here.

Well, OK, apparently the place was just bad: The google reviews are sprinkled with one-star reports, including the classic

I recommend taco bell or starve.

and the Yelp reviews are worse. The question is how does that happen? I get that the franchaise system means local ownership, but at some level corporate has to take care of the brand.

Anyway, as I said it's a decent location, so I would expect something else before too long.

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7 Spices was the follow-on in this building to The Villa and opened in the Summer of 2023. I ate there twice, I think, and it was pretty good. Driving by recently, I noticed that it was gone and replaced by another Indian restaurant Hyderabad House. This appears to be more than a re-branding as the phone numbers are different, and the reviews (mostly positive) suggest the new place focuses more on "Nawabi style" dishes. I'm not exactly sure what that means given my limited knowledge of Indian regional cusine, but I will try to check it out at some point.