Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Here's an interesting little restaurant building in Lexington. It was last a San Jose until that operation relocated to 115 North Point Drive, but the building obviously predates that. It has a familiar look, but I can't quite place it. I would say the front extension was not part of the original building.

The building looks a bit forlorn now, but the murals are a nice touch.

UPDATE 22 April 2013: Added Taco Cid to the post title based on the comments and the 1985 phonebook.

UPDATE 29 NOvember 2017 -- as mentioned elsewhere by commenter ED, this building has now been razed:

UPDATE 30 August 2022: Updating tags and adding map icon.

UPDATE 25 January 2023: Add tag.

I was quite surprised to see this Hardee's, more or less at the corner of Percival Road and Forest Drive, closed.

As far as I could tell driving by daily, it seemed to do a reasonable amount of business. What's more, this section of Forest Drive is now an Interstate exit zone, so it should have been drawing from more than just the local area.

My first thought was that the opening of Cookout just a few slots down the road was the cause. The problem with that theory is that Hardee's does a brisk breakfast business, and Cookout, as far as I know, doesn't have a breakfast menu.

The more daylight shots above are from commenter kholler: Thanks!

(Hat tip to commenters Mr. Hat and Kholler)

UPDATE 12 July 2013 -- As mentioned in the comments, this is to become a Sonic:

UPDATE -- The place opens for business this morning (9 Sept 2013) at 6AM. Here is some more of the work from a few weeks ago:

UPDATE 19 June 2021: Adding tags and map icon.

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As mentioned in the comments on the Lexington Blockbuster this adjacent old-school Taco Bell moved to a new store a couple of years ago. Personally I like these Southwestern style locations more than the "modern" style they have adopted recently. Several in Columbia have been repurposed recently (though the one on Knox Abbott is still vacant), but this one looks as though it may be too far gone for that.

UPDATE -- Work is underway:

UPDATE 17 February 2014 -- Now a Cook Out:

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Although this Steak 'n Shake was open well past the time I moved back to Columbiana, I can't recall seeing it open at all. Indeed, I didn't even realize until it came up recently in Have Your Say that this building was the former location.

Steak 'n Shake is one of those chains I've always been meaning to try but somehow never get around to. I guess I've been closest once in LA when I used Yahoo Travel to book myself a hotel for a Van Morrison concert and found myself in an almost totally non-english speaking part of Koreatown (the hotel room phonebooks were in Korean [though the staff couldn't have been nicer!]) and it looked like a place I could understand. Somehow that didn't quite happen, and somehow I've never connected in Florida (where they have a big presence) either.

At any rate this store listed in the Feb 2008 phonebook, but not in the Feb 2010 one, so I'm saying they shut down in 2009. The building has really delapidated quickly since then, and it looks like it would take major work to get a standard second-use restaurant (Asian buffett, Lizard's Thicket etc) into there.

UPDATE 2 May 2013 -- Some of the boards have now been prised off the windows, and we can take a bit of a look inside:

UPDATE 14 March 2016 -- Somewhere I have some pictures of this lot as vacant after the tear-down, and will post them, but as of now, it is rebuilt and open as M Kitchen (and has been for a while):

Every now and then, I go down Afton Court for the theater at the bottom of the street, which sometimes seems to have slightly different selections from most in town. Nonetheless, I was pretty much unaware that there was a Restaurant/Pool Hall just a little up from there. According to their closing sign, Bailey's had been there 18 years, which is a pretty good run, especially with all the turnover on Columbiana Drive.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

This is the follow-on operation to Carolina Famous Hotdogs & Wings (though curiously, Ihave that one at 6303 Shakeespeare), and was one of a number of Chicken & Waffle restaurants opening in Columbia last year. That's certainly a trend that seemed to come out of nowhere for me. I'd gone my whole life without hearing about that particular food combination, and suddenly I seemed to hear about it a couple of times a week. It almost sounds like a punchline. "Why did the chicken cross the road? To get a waffle.."

With a name like Senor O'Malley's this place sounds like Columbia's answer to Charleston's Jaunita Greenberg's. I have to admit though that I was completely unaware of it, despite having been in the area multiple times recently.

From the local blogger reviews here and here, it souunds as though I probably would have liked it, though perhaps not when the college crowd was out strong.

(Hat tip to commenter MB)

I thought for a few minutes about this place the first time I saw it, and decided that I hoped it meant meatball sandwiches, and not actual meatballs. Either way, it seemed like somewhat of an off-the-wall concept and I was saddened but not surprised to see it done up with butcher paper over the windows recently.

(Hat tip to commenter Justin)