Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, I don't know why this Pizza Hut closed, but just having visited once, to take these pictures, I can hazard a guess as to a contributing factor: The exit to St. Andrews Road is terrible. I drove around the building on the old drive-through route, and found that when I came out in front of the building again, there was not enough room to get my car pointed to the right and exit onto SAR headed for Tram Street. Granted some cars have a better turning radius, but still it's not well designed, and due to space constraints probably cannot be well designed.

I think it's interesting that the building is of the current generation of Pizza Hut designs. I'm more used to seeing the old style ones (like this and this) closed.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

UPDATE 16 February 2016 -- As mentioned in the comments, the Domino's in this location is now open, and has been for a while:

I've always liked Za's, though I go there less since they stopped being open to 11:00 on Thursadys. The only things I would change would be to make the individual pizzas a little larger, and to brew stronger tea. I suspect, however, that more than that is slated to change as the place is now closed for revamping as The New Za's. Commenter David suggests that it will then be under the same ownership as Cantina 76, a place I have somehow never gotten around to.

(Hat tip to commenter Dennis)

Here's an older house set up as a restaurant on Lexington's South Lake Drive. I try to keep tabs on local pizza, but this one is not really local to me, and I'm afraid I had never heard of it before they closed up shop. The place kind of sits on a little hill, and I think it would have been nice to eat on the deck and look over the comings and goings on the road.

According to their sign, they are moving, but to where is not clear. Commenter Brian notes that the main chef has moved to All Star Pizza Company at 2001 Augusta Road.

(Hat tip to commenter Brian)

UPDATE 20 May 2018: The State says this will open as the second location of Cafe Strudel on 21 May 2018.

Pie-Tanza was in the little shopping center on Polo Road at the light where Mallet Hill Road starts. The area has certainly changed from my high school days when there was nothing in that particular area except stables and the eponymous polo fields. Now there is a gas station convenience store, contract Post Office, liquor store and 24 hour gym, and the currently empty restaurant slot.

I'm afraid I wasn't as impressed with Pie-Tanza as some of the commenters in Have Your Say. Basically, I had three issues with the place.

First, they had a very nice garlic bread appitizer item, except they never actually had it -- there were three or so times I took the trouble to go out that way rather than one of my usual pizza "go-to" places just on the basis of that, and then would not be able to get it. You would expect that they could white-board a substitute basic garlic bread, but that never happened either.

Second, it was very expensive -- noticably more so than the competition, and I felt the pizza was pretty average, despite the supposed superiority of "wood fired" ovens. I remeber looking at the lunch menu too and thinking that the Italian Sausage sandwich looked good, but I could never be comfortable paying that much for one.

Third, there was no water pressure in the bathroom. It was like trying to wash your hands under a thin stream of drool.

Now, looking at the closing sign, I suspect the first two were due to this being the South Carolina location of a Virgina chain (which I did not not before reading that). The expense was the result of trying to import DC Metro prices into Columbia, and the availability of chain specialties was probably beyond the control of local management.

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There are a lot of "House Of Pizza" restaurants around, but I'm not sure if it's a chain of some sort, or just a common name choice. Usually though I see them with a (smaller) town name like "Pontiac House of Pizza", "Camden House of Pizza" etc and not an owner's name like this small storefront at the corner of Clemson and Hardscrabble Roads. This was always on my "to try" list, but as it was so far from where I normally am, I never got around to it in time.

I've blogged several places in this strip, The Crossings, including Food Lion and Blockbuster. They still have not managed to fill the anchor Food Lion space.

I first became aware of this strip-mall storefront on Garners Ferry when it was Ye Old Fashioned Ice Cream & Sandwich Cafe.

Next it became Anthony's Old Fashioned Burger & Fry Co.. When that closed, there was a sign for a time that it would be re-opening as Ma's House Of Pizza, but in the event the new concept was actually Pepper's Pizza, Burgers, Pasta & More aka Pepper's House Of Pizza.

As reported by MrBO, that seems to have closed sometime around mid-January 2014.

Through all the incarnations, a lot of the physical plant remained the same, including the neon sign for Fresh Salads. In fact, walking around the side of the building, I found the remains of the Ye Old Fashioned sign:

(Hat tip to commenter MrBO)
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Here's a belated notice that Dano's Pizza has moved from the Publix strip mall at Rosewood Center and down the street a bit into the former Ole Timey Meat Market location at 3008 Rosewood. I still have not eaten there, but they already seemed to be doing a good business at the new location the one time I checked it out.

Commenter MB reports that Liberty Pizza in the old Pop's location is closed. After peering inside, I would like to ammend that report: Liberty Pizza is not mearly closed, but truly most sincerely closed:

(Hat tip to commenter MB)

After eating at Moe's last week, I noticed that Universal Copies in the little bi-level University Corner strip-mall, is closed and papered up.

Then, when I went to make this post, I looked back on the University Corner post and realized that I had missed the closing of the place before Universal: Bits & Pizzas.

It's been a few years since I noticed this, but somehow I never got around to mentioning it: The Pizza Hut attached to the Columbia Travel Center plaza closed up shop a couple of years ago. As I recall, it was not a full Pizza Hut, but one of the "express" type operations.

I suspect it was a highly unpleasant job, but someone apparently climed the sign tower to elide the "Hut" portion of the Pizza Hut placard!

UPDATE 26 June 2023: Updating tags and adding map icon. Also, just noticed I apparently have this Pizza Hut listed twice, once on the Wilson Boulevard address, and once on the Plumbers Road address. Oh well.