Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

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.

The State had the story on the closing of this doll shop on Broad River Road next to the old The Whale's Tail. Basically, the owner decided it was time to retire, and it sounds well deserved.

I know it's just the antique style, but I do have to say I would hate to wake up and find that doll staring at me..

UPDATE 18 June 2013: For some reason I had the name as Jake's, not Jacs.

Once upon a time, this building was The Whale's Tail and then Rubino's Italian Restaurant. More recently it has been the second location for Alpine Road's Little Pigs Barbeque -- in fact, after the Alpine Road store caught fire, and before it was repaired, this was the flagship location, though it's hard to imagine a place further away from Alpine Road but still "in the Columbia area".

The building does not seem to be up for sale, and is still furnished, so perhaps the owners have plans to re-open, or open a different restaurant here.

(Hat tip to commenter Nobody).

UPDATE 17 June 2013 -- Cletus' Roadside Grille is now operating in this building (and has been for a while):

We never ate at The Whale's Tail growing up. I wasn't a big seafood fan (which is to say I refused to eat the stuff), and my parents didn't push the issue too often (in fact we used to go to Oliver's Lodge before 5pm because I could get spaghetti before 5 but not after. (Which really sounds odd to me at this remove, but I'm pretty sure thats right..).

Anyway, while I never went there, I used to see the billboards from time to time, and I decided to go looking for it today. The old phonebooks (the above ad is from the 1977 one) never give a real street address for it (it was pretty far out in the boonies back in the day) but I took exit 97 both ways and didn't see anything that looked probable. There's certainly a lot of new construction in the area, and I suspect the building must have been torn down long ago. Can anyone confirm or refute that? The only possible place I saw was Little Pigs barbecue which looked to be the right vintage, but I always imagined The Whale's Tail as a bigger building.

UPDATE 27 May 2010: Added shots of Little Pigs which turns out to be the old Whale's Tail building.

UPDATE 15 February 2012: The Italian restaurant was Rubino's Italian Restaurant and I have added it to the post title along with the full Broad River Road street address.