Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This little building sits more or less on the Northeast corner of Beltline Boulevard and Forest Drive, across from the Walgreen's. As commenter Dennis pointed out when he noted this closing, it is sort of turned backwards in that the side of the building which faces Beltline has very little signage. Given that all the parking is in the back, locating the "front" signage back there may have made sense to the designer, but it's bad for business as folks driving by on Beltline have very little way to tell what businesses are located here. In fact, I did not realize there was a Subway here for quite a while.

Any time a business, especially a restaurant, puts up a note that they are closed "temporarily", it is a very bad sign. Of course there are times when it's necessary, such as for a serious illness (which I certainly hope has not happened here), but in general once a bad situation is exacerbated by adding "no money coming in" to whatever problem existed, these temporary closings tend to become final. In fact, this happened in this very building in the case of Bruster's Real Ice Cream.

(Hat tip to commenter Dennis)

UPDATE 16 April 2011 -- Well, it did re-open. Good for them!

UPDATE 8 March 2012 -- The sign on the side facing Beltline has been replaced, but I'm hard pressed to find any differences between the new one and the old one..

UPDATE 2 March 2020 -- This has closed temporarily on several occasions since I first listed it. It is now closed for good:

UPDATE 17 June 2022: UPdating tags.

This Quiznos is in the Barns & Noble plaza on Harbison, right in-between where Sesame Inn used to be and Barnes & Noble itself.

Normally I'm a little sceptical when a place claims to be closed on a temporary basis as these periods without money coming in have a way of becoming permanent. On the other hand, in this case, the pickles are still in the pickle jars, so there's some evidence that, at the least, the store hasn't been unstocked.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

UPDATE 10 March 2011 -- As mentioned in the comments, the closure looks pretty permanent now:

b>UPDATE 15 March 2013 -- It's now a Yoghut:

Paul's Philadelphia Eatery was on Senate Street in the Vista, in the same building as 5 Guys and The Flying Saucer, right next to the former Alan Ray's Salon, and on the same block as the former Damon's.

Once you get past "Philly Chese-steak", my knowledge of Philly cuisine is a bit thin, and although I do get to Very's on Two Notch once or twice a month, I never managed to make it to Paul's.

I suspect the environment for restaurants in this part of the Vista is a bit mixed. It's not Gervais Street, so you're not going to get the casual passers-by. 5 Guys does well, because people specifically go looking for a 5 Guys.

(Hat tip to commenter Badger)

Although I've never eaten at a local Quiznos, I believe I did eat at a DC area location once, and recall it as pretty good. Of course that may be partly because one of the other guys I was eating with was a nice guy but had an interesting personality quirk such that he was never completely satisfied with anything, so at least I liked it better than he did! I find it a little bit interesting that the name they use in their signs has no apostrophe and has the singular, "Sub", not "Subs". You almost have the image that if you were the second guy to get there, the sub would be gone.

This Quiznos, the latest of a number of the chain's outlets to close around town, was at the intersection of Airport Boulevard with the Charleston Highway, across the street from Piggy Park and at the edge of Airport Square with the closed Food Lion. The building looks to have been some other type of fast food outlet before the Quiznos.

I think the door note in this case is pretty straight-forward and classy.

The main Airport Square building is like two sides of a square, with one side parallel to the Charleston Highway and the other parallel to Airport Boulevard. While I was taking these pictures, I noticed a family picking some sort of fruit from trees growing at the end of the building that comes closest to Airport Boulevard. I can't think what is in season now, and I didn't want to bother them by heading towards them and maybe make them think I was some sort of Airport Square guy coming to say "stop that" -- I'll have to go back and see what that was.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

UPDATE 4 Feb 2011 -- It's now open again as Best of China restaurant:

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

Well, today marked the end of another Columbia institution that I somehow never managed to visit. In this case I attribute it to not spending any time downtown coupled with the parking issue, but that's no real excuse, I suppose.

The details were in the Free Times a few weeks back. It seems that SCANA's exit was a factor, as with some other places.

The Palmetto Sandwich Shop was on Sumter street just across from the old RCPL location and the YMCA. This is actually a much-restauranted block, and I was surprised to find Greek Boys, Palmetto Sandwich Shop, some new restaurant setting up, Miyo's and Quizno's all together like that. 26 years is an eternity in restaurant terms, so they made a good run of it, and they made a classy exit with the "Gone Fishin'" banner.

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According to this Loopnet posting, there were three Larrry's Giant Subs up for sale at the same time, either retaining the Larry's franchaise, or as restaurant space. I would guess then that they were all run as part of the same operation.

I have not checked the Sunset Boulevard location, but both the Broad River Road and Garners Ferry locations have already been taken on by Steve's #1 Sub Contractor. In the case of the Broad River Road operation, this puts Steve's back very close to to their former location at Broad River & Saint Andrews.

I find it a little odd that the places flipped from one "guy's first name" chain to another "guy's first name" chain!

Also look how Steve's has pulled the "Giant" from the Garners Ferry sign. I know that it's just because it's not part of their branding, but it almost leads one to think that perhaps the size of the subs will be decreasing..

(Hat tip to commenter Alicia.)

UPDATE 28 Oct 2010 -- Well, Steve's didn't last long at all:

UPDATE 23 October 2011: Well, I wish I would have done this post as two separate entries, one for each location, but the Garners Ferry Steve's location is set to become Japan Grill:

UPDATE 3 November 2011: Well, it turns out I did do a separate entry for the Garners Ferry location, but never indexed it. What a mess! I'll copy the Japan Grill pix over there too and index it, but it will still be a mess!

UPDATE 25 October 2018: Add tags for both locations, but still a mess.

I only ate at Duke Sandwich Company, on Forest Drive between Lizard's Thicket and Zesto, once. Frankly, I didn't think it was very good. This was due to several factors. First of all, I have certain expectations from anything calling itself a "sandwich company" and those weren't fufilled. I went in thinking I would probably get some sort of chese sub, maybe with some bacon or salami, and I found the menu almost entirely made up of "spread" type sandwiches that I had no desire to eat. I suppose the name should have tipped me off, but the only "Duke" product I know of was mayonaise, which I figured was ok for a "name" draw, but was not going to figure in the majority of sandwiches. Anyway, the fact was the menu was not at all to my taste, and I ended up with a grilled-chese sandwich which was pretty much processed-american-cheese-food between two slices of Sunbeam.

Second, I drink a lot of tea, and the store setup was the worst sort for that. "Normally" you either have table service and the waitress keeps you topped off, or you have an ice dispenser and tea urns on the restaurant floor so customers can self-top. The day I was there, at least, they had no urns, one *pitcher* of tea on the restaurant floor and no ice machines. That meant that every time I wanted an unsweet refill or ice, I had to go to the counter, which was very annoying. Also, if I recall correctly, my table turned out to be a "wobbler" that sloshed my drink a couple of times before I adjusted.

Anyway, that's a "Ted" centric apprasial (which is all I have..), if you liked deviled-egg sandwiches, perhaps this was your favorite place. In the event, I never went back. I hadn't known the place was closed until AJ mentioned it in "Have Your Say". I don't think it was open more than a year or two.

It looks like the next tenant for the building is already lined up, "Yummy Good -- Fresh Food With A Hip Attitude". I wish them well, as the building has been somewhat ill-starred since it was a Sub Station II and there was a murder there.

UPDATE 4 Feb 2010: Well, looks like Yummy Good won't be moving in, but you can still lease the building.

(Hat tip to commenter AJ)

UPDATE 7 March 2011 -- Look's like it will be Tokyo Grill:
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UPDATE 3 September 2011 -- Tokyo Grill is open:

UPDATE 32 March 2022: Updating tags and adding map icon.

The bakery which was the first tenant I can recall in the Triangle Rent-a-Car building must have set some sort of record for opened and closed. I barely had time to notice that it was there, and then it wasn't. I think the concept was sort of Atlanta / Panera but with a drive-through. From this Richland County delinquent tax spreadsheet for 2004, which lists the business entity as Buns Spring Valley LLC, I'm guessing that the place was probably called Buns, though I can specifically remember that.

I don't know why they didn't make it, but my own theory, based on seeing the place but yet not stopping, is that the location was too hard to get too to make an attractive drive-through combined with the fact that the strip mall it's in is not really a "destination", and the fact of it's having a drive-through kind of devalued it if you were in the mood for a Panera type sit-down experience.

UPDATE 5 May 2009: Consensus in the comments is that this place was also a Schlotzsky's deli at one time, so I have added that to the post title.

UPDATE 7 Sep 2010: Got the correct name for "Buns" and updated the post title with Panino Bakery and Cafe. Also added Hardee's -- see the comments!

UPDATE 19 June 2021: Adding tags and map icon.

My high school didn't have a cafeteria, so you either brown-bagged lunch, ate off campus if you had a car, or ate microwaved Stewart Sandwiches from the canteen. These were universally acknowledged to be awful, but they had a strange fascination, and we ate them anyway even as we joked about them. I for one, never could tell the difference between the Stewart "Steak Sandwich" and the Stewart "Hamburger".

The company was apparently originally called Stewart In-Fra-Red Commissary of Minnesota and their slogan was the dubious "Sold Almost Everywhere". After my encounter with them in the 1970s, they bought a couple of other companies, changed their name to Stewart Foods, Inc. then merged with Blevins Concession Supply, Co. and changed their name to Stewart Blevins, Inc.. That was in 1992, and I can't seem to find them after that.

Anyway, I was driving around off of Huger Street in the 1980s, and came across their local office. It was something of a revelation as in my mind, Stewart Sandwiches more appeared than were made and distributed on purpose!. The place now appears to be yet another barbecue restaurant: The Palmetto Pig. It may well be a great place, but while the location seems reasonable to me for a food distribution operation, I think it would be a bad place for a restaurant.

UPDATE 1 June 2011: Commenter Andy says this was Shealy's Sandwiches, not Stewart, and that Shealy moved here from the Assembly Street location (now TakoSushi).

Well, I'll try to verify that it was never a Stewart in old City Directories when I get a chance, but in the meantime, I'm leaving all the Stewart's memories here. (Similarly to what I had to do when I screwed up Krystal..)

Here's the thing. If you're going to call yourself The Grilled Cheese Company, you ought to have really great grilled cheese sandwiches.

I was feeling pretty low last year with a bad cold (which wasn't getting any better as in the end it turned out to be a sinus infection and to need antibiotics..), and I wanted some comfort food. A good grilled cheese sandwich sounded like it would really fill the bill, so I went out to Sandhill.

I guess what I was subconsciously expecting was some sort of deluxe affair with two or three kinds of cheese grilled between Texas toast. What I got was apparently a Kraft Processed American Cheese Food single between two slices of Sunbeam, and it was a considerable disappointment in a day that was already not going well.

Read whatever you'd like into my judgement given my general maliase and grumpiness that day, but I see the place is now gone, so I'm thinking that even if everyone else liked what they got, they also realized they could do the exact same thing at home with the ingredients they already had.

Antibiotics on the other hand, are great.

UPDATE 15 May 2010: Added full street address, tags.

UPDATE 25 February 2014 -- It's now a kids' gym, My Gym:

UPDATE 10 March 2021: Adding map icon.