Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This place is now called Veneziano's. Looking at the Google reviews, it's hard to say exactly when this happened, but apparently the ownership changed about a year ago, and the name probably changed around October of 2024. I had eaten several times at Papa Gio's, and it was not my favorite place. I found that consistently the garlic knots had very little or no garlic on them, and since they did not have 10 inch pizza, I would order a calzone, which would generally have cold ricotta in the filling.

I decided to try Veneziano's, and found the interior much the same with the exception of some tables being removed in the area directly behind the hostess stand. Service was good and friendly, but I still found that the garlic knots had no garlic, and the calzone was filled with chilled ricotta...

I mentioned this was happening earlier, but Brooklyn Express Pizza & Pasta has now completed their move from Friarsgate Plaza to this (now upfitted) freestanding Ed Robinson building.

Here's one I always wanted to visit, but it was very far North from my usual Grand Strand stomping grounds, and the one time I made an actual effort to get there, I found it closed (they apparently were always closed on Monday, and some years Monday & Tuesday). When I heard it was to be sold, I thought I would make one more effort, but as is usual, could never remember to do it when I was on the Strand until it was way too late to drive up there. In fact even the day I took these pictures I was there too late for decent light.

The Sun News has the story on the closing though the details were a bit vague at the time, in particular whether it would close in February of 2024 or July was unknown, and I don't see any follow-up story. What I do see has the ironic detail that the parcel was being sold to a development company who did not care to run a restaurant there, except now the plot is being resold again with nothing apparently having come to fruition, so the restaurant might as well have stayed.

The building looks as though it would welcome a little work, but still seems to be completely tabled & equipped. Even the computer is still up, sort of.

You can see a cached web page here, and Yelp reviews here, and a USA Today 10 Best post here.

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New York Pizza & Pasta was the follow-on in this little US-1 building to another pizzeria, Palmono's, which was a follow-on to Reds On Augusta.

According to their Facebook they appear to have closed on 31 August. The menu looks decent, but I was never in the area at the right time to try it out.

(Hat tip to commenter JamesR)

Palmano's was in the small building below KJ's, formerly occupied by Reds. Judging from the google reviews, it was open until a few months ago, but has since transitioned to another pizza place (with mostly the same signage): New York Pizza & Pasta Factory. Google suggests the phone number is the same for both pizza shops, so perhaps this is more of a re-branding.

Before we picked out The Parthenon as our favorite, my father and I used to go to the location of The Villa which was in the building that now houses Pawley's Front Porch. After that, I kind of lost track of it, as Bush River Road was a good distance to drive at that time. I did get out to that location once later, and found the food and service to be good, but for some reason I just felt antsy in the dining room with no windows anywhere and I did not go back.

Recently they have announced that they are closing and that 22 December 2021 will be the last day, and reported in this ColaDaily story. As of this writing, that is next Wednesday, so you still have a few days to catch up with them if you like.

(Hat tips to commenters Heath & Ed)

I used to go to this Pizza Joint location fairly often when they were open late on Thursdays for Service Industry Night, but when they stopped that, I kind of drifted away. I had noticed driving by several times lately that they were not open when I would have expected it, but I put it down to covid + staffing, and didn't think much about it until commenter Larry noted that they had had a fire there.

Looking at the place last Sunday, I am happy to report that repairs are obviously underway, so hopefully they will be back soon. The building must be surprisingly durable as it has been a number of different operations since starting life as a Hardee's.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry)

UPDATE 18 January 2023: The place has been sold, so I have removed the "Temporary" notation from the title. The next tenant, according to The State will be a breakfast/brunch place: The Vicious Biscuit.

I have never been to either Alodia's, though from looking at their menu once, I decided if I were ever in the right place at the right time, I would like to try it. The Irmo location is a bit removed from what I generally think of as Irmo: Way out on North Lake in the Publix strip mall.

There have certainly been a lot of staffing shortages on the path out of the pandemic. In fact we found one restaurant in Myrtle Beach we were considering going to that said up-front on their web page to expect poor service! Some of that seems to be at issue here, though I am not sure what the "product shortages" would be. The only one I have heard of is chicken wings, which wouldn't be much of an issue for an Italian restaurant (and which would affect the Lexington branch as well, I would think).

Anyway, they are apparently teed up for a July re-opening here, and I certainly hope that comes to pass.

(Hat tip to commenter Ellen)

UPDATE 31 January 2022 -- Open again:

UPDATE 4 October 2023 -- Closed again:

UPDATE 6 March 2024 -- The storefront is now empty and for lease:

Also updated tags.

Ristorante Divino left their location at 803 Gervais Street in mid-2020, to move next door to the Dupre Building at 807 Gervais street (which you can see fully in the last shot). As part of that move, the owners rebranded the restaurant as Di Vino Rosso. WLTX has the here.

It was certainly an audacious time to move a restaurant, but it seems to have worked out.

This spot at the Flight Deck complex has gone through a number of pizza restaurants since I became aware of it. In particular, I have done closings for Brix Bistro / The Bistro. I noticed only fairly recently that Papa Gio's was there, finding them while I was there to get pictures of something else.

Early during the COVID-19 crisis, I saw another pizza restaurant advertising by the roadside when I drove by: Ferrara Pizza & Pasta. Judging from the Yelp reviews, they started in early March 2020, so I'm guessing probably Papa Gio's moved out with the end of the year in 2019, though it could have been later.

Papa Gio's continues to have locations on Broad River Road and farther out on August Highway (US-1) in the old Allstar Pizza location.