Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

To the best of my recollection, I've never eaten at any establishment in this Five Points storefront, to include San Jose, though I have certainly eaten at other local San Jose locations, and found them to be perfectly OK.

Commenter MB noted the closing, and pointed out that until fairly recently it was Mucho Margaritas, something I must have driven by many times without it registering at all. Already today the sign was down and folks were carting off the fixtures. With the recent closure of Dreams Of Bombay, there are now two adjacent restaurant vacancies in this building. (I don't know what, if anything, is in the upper storey).

(Hat tip to commenter MB)

UPDATE 1 July 2014 -- This will next be the bacon themed restaurant Sizzle. Mmm, Bacon!:

UPDATE 25 January 2023: Add tags and map icon.

This Sammi's location was way out on Broad River Road, just across Lykes Lane from the Publix plaza. I took these pictures when I originally thought it was closed, back in June of 2012.

As it turned out, they weren't closed, but just having some work done. They opened again and carried on (with an 'A') until last month.

Now it's Touchdown's Wings & Things.

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When the original Biscuit House on Bluff road closed, there was an announcement that someone had bought the brand rights so as to open new Biscuit House locations inside convenience stores, much as Subway and Blimpie do. I believe that this one, in a Corner Pantry at the corner of Garners Ferry Road and Lower Richland Boulevard was the first such, and it opened sometime after March 2012. Somewhere, I have a picture of this location in operation, but can't put my hands on it right now. At any rate, as far as I know, this just leaves one other, in Irmo, from this initial roll-out.

(Hat tip to commenter Midnight Rambler)

UPDDATE 8 October 2013: As promised, I have found and added the pix of the place in operation.

UPDATE 4 August 2025: Add map icon and update tags.

I have got to say that their marquee mascot looks the least like a Chinese chef of any illustration I've seen. (Not that there's anything wrong with a European in a floppy hat dilligently applying himself and learning Chinese cooking..)

UPDATE 6 October 2021: Adding "North" to "Woodrow Street" in the title and tags. Adding map icon.

As reported by commenter Mike, The Diner on Fort Jackson Boulevard just behind the new Whole Foods is closed for "renovations". I believe this place has been open for a bit over a year and a half, launching in January 2012 in the old Jesudi's etc location.

Given that they did extensive renovations on the place before opening, it's hard to imagine what needs upgrading now. While I certainly hope it is not the case here, it seems to me that more than half the times a restaurant closes for "renovations", that turns out to be more of a hope than a plan, and the closure becomes permanent.

UPDATE 24 October 2013 -- Well, looks like that's it for The Diner:

I've taken the "remodeling" tag off the subject line.

I was not aware of this Palmetto Pig location before commenter Beth pointed out that it had closed.

AJ AMick Road is off of US-76 in Ballantine, across the street from the local Food Lion. I'm not exactly when they closed, I take it that it was a recent surprise to Beth, but the place has been closed long enough for all the Palmetto Pig signage to be taken down and for the interior to be stripped.

(Hat tip to commenter Beth)

UPDATE 24 September 2013: Commenter Mike R. puts the closing at 1 September 2013, so I have updated the post title to reflect that.

Interestingly, while I never really heard of Mac's On Main (I was vaguely aware it was there in the Walker building), the upcoming closing of the place was big enough news to make both The State and The Free Times, with The State story apparently one of their most popular for the last few days.

Clemson Road eatery CW's Grill will be opening their second location in the Mac's building while Mac's owner (whose name is "Barry", not "Mac") will be concentrating on his fruit cobbler and catering businesses.

I had no idea this little sunken plaza was there on Saint Andrews Road until I went looking for Huller's a few weeks ago. It's quite a ways out, North of Lake Murray Boulevard, and I don't think I had ever been in the area before.

Although Huller's announced their closing on Facebook back on 14 July 2013, the place still looks like someone could fling the doors open any minute. All the signs and menuboards are still up with the weekly specials still posted. For that matter, the main web site is still available as well.

I've been to Germany, but about all I recall about the food is the hotel breakfast had limp bacon and the one time we tried to break away from work and go to a real restaurant, the hostess stalked off in front of us leaving us to weave between tables until she had totally lost us. We never saw her again, and ended up at a Chi-Chis, as I recall it.. So anyway, I was never moved to check out Huller's though I did like their I-26 billboard which was very much in the spirit of our old State Fair friend:

(Hat tip to commenter jason)

I first was aware of this restaurant space in the Adesso condos at the corner of Main & Blossom Streets when it had just closed as Baker Brothers American Deli (although I got the space conflated with the Yoghut suite which is in the same building). After that, I kind of lost track of it.

To be specific, I had no idea there was ever an Italian operation called Brioso Fresh Pasta there. In my defense, as far as I can tell, it didn't last long: The Feb 2012 phonebook has the only listing. The reviews are extremely mixed.

After that, I was somewhat aware of Tropical Grill though I never considered stopping there. My impression was that it was an Asian buffet, but I'm not positive about that. At any rate, they only listed in this year's (Feb 2013) phonebook, and I started seeing construction for the new pizza operation Maddio's Pizza Joint some months ago (I have pictures somewhere, but can't lay my hands on them now and it would seem that they have now started operation.

(Hat tip to commenter Payne for reminding me about this).

UPDATE 10 March 2025: Fix odd formatting due to restoring from Google cache. Add map icon, update tags.

Not sure what happened to my pictures here -- it looks like maybe I forgot to reset from a nighttime ISO to daylight before starting to shoot. The essentials are clear enough though, if more than a bit washed out.

The Atlanta Bread in North Myrtle Beach closed either last year or in 2011, I'm not really sure anymore. The only other ABC at the beach was this one on SC-54 just west of the US-17 bypass interchange. For a number of years, it sat sort of all by its lonesome (though the sideroad it was on obviously implied grander plans), but finally this last year Target started building behind it, and finally opened in late 2012 or early 2013.

I had had some concerns about the place -- it was the sort of operation which seemed to have no idea how many cookies to bake to last out the whole day (I'm pretty sure your loss in day old cookies is smaller than the loss you have from not making a sale..) and had the infuriating habit, which is pretty rare in chain stores, of not honoring their posted hours if things were slow. Still, it was nice to have a bread-bowl of soup there for lunch every now and then, and I figured that if they had hung on until Target opened, they were home free. That proved not to be the case, and the place was closed when I went by in late July.

The rest of the little strip mall has a gym, fro-yo, and a party shop. I had to include some pictures of the punch-me-pirate, including the one below from a few years ago.