Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Village Idiot is the follow-on operation in this storefront to Paulie's Pizzeria, which succumbed in 2009 to a kind of "If we have ingredients today, maybe we'll make pizza" syndrome. I never found the space a good sit-down restaurant in that incarnation, and since I never really warmed to Village Idiot in Five Points, I never tried this location.

The chain remains ongoing, but with the sale of this strip-mall, and the end of their lease coming up, they decided not to continue in this location.

The State has the story here, as does the Free Times here. I'll note that The State describes Forest Acres as ritzy, which is not a word I'd ever associated with our little community before.

The closing date is not firmed up yet, but will be by the end of the year.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry)

To my memory, I only ate at Scatori's once, probably about five years ago, and it was fine, though not any better than my normal Strand pizza venues. I did think whenever I heard of it that the name was a bit unfortunate.

The Sun News says that the place had been open 15 years, which would have made it an early storefront in this shopping center, which I still think of as 'new' itself. The chef, who featured on TV's Cutthroat Kitchen has gone on to West Virgina to run a food truck which seems like an odd progression, but I guess that's what he wanted to do.

Both news articles say that Scatori's was sold in January (though it did not close then), but it appears that as of yet, the new owners have not done anything to the interior setup or furnishings.

(Hat tip to commenter Dan R)

Aside from the Hungry Howie's in Myrtle Beach, this is the only other location for the chain that I was aware of. I'm not much for take-out, and of course it's all the way out in Irmo, so I never tried a Hungry Howe's pizza. Just from the web-site, it sounds like it could be pretty good: several of those crust flavors sound promising.

I am a little fuzzy on the details, and can't find anything online right now, but this location first came to my attention several years ago when the news broke that it had been sold to a rival chain. I don't know what happened, but obviously that deal never came to fruition, and operations continued for many years after that, until mid-September of this year, when it closed for repairs, a state which officially morphed into a permanent closure recently as reported on their Facebook page.

I notice that the store is not listed on the Quail Valley marquee. That seems pretty quick -- I wonder if it were ever there.

(Hat tips to commenters Heath, Andrew & Tom)

I ate at this Pizza Hut several times over the years while hanging around Baptist Hospital for various reasons. Like the books you read in a hospital waiting room, meals you eat in a hospital context are never really that good, but I suppose it was a standard Pizza Hut, well enough executed.

The move to the old Church's Chicken location should give them some parking, and some traffic from the development that is replacing the old Gonzales Gardens. Curiously, they will still be near a hospital as well. The long period between closing this location and opening that one does seem kind of odd though.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry)

Ultimate California Pizza is one of the Grand Strand based Divine Dining Group's many concepts, and it's a good one. Their pizza is excellent, and they brew the iced-tea strong. I usually go to the one in Surfside Beach, but in the past I used to hit the ones in Murrells Inlet, or at Market Common fairly frequently. Unfortunely, those later two may feature here at some point as they are now gone.

I never made it to this one, in the Kroger-anchored Galleria plaza in North Myrtle Beach, though I kind of wish I had now, as it appears to have been their Chuck E. Cheese concept, except with more to offer adults. There are some quite nice pictures of the place on website, which is still up. I quite like this one. You can see the place in the daytime with the branding still up on the real estate listing. I find it quite amazing the the whole building is pegged at $11,250. Perhaps it's a typo.

As far as I can tell, it was COVID-19 that did them in. The last post on their blog is from March of 2020, and their last Facebook posts are from April of 2020, where at some point they mention combing operations with the Barefoot Landing location. The real estate listing apparently went up in mid July of 2020.

UPDATE 25 June 2023: There seems to be a consensus that this is a former Showbiz Pizza location as well, so I'm adding that to the post title. I barely ever got up here during the period mentioned, so I don't believe I ever saw it then.

Speaking of Krystal, Franco's was the Krystal follow-on in this Murrells Inlet storefront, and if you look closely you can still the Krystal signage label-scar.

I never tried this place out as I have plenty of go-to pizza joints on the Grand Strand, and I've always found pizza described as "New York" to be underwhelming. I can't find any media reference to the place closing, but looking on the dates of Google reviews suggest it closed early this year.

UPDATE 9 July 2023: To become Mulberry Street NY Pizzeria

I tend to hit his place, a follow-on to Pie-Tanza & Embers, around once a year as I forget about it in-between times, but I don't think I have been since the pandemic started.

Anyway, according to their signage and ColaDaily, they are stopping dinner service for the nonce, due to the staffing issues afflicting the whole restaurant sector.

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.

[In happier times, 9 March 2014]

Well, this one hits closer to home than most as Uno has been one of my go-to places over the years to a greater or lesser degree.

I first got acquainted with Pizzeria Uno (the actual name of the place seems to have been given in different ways in different places) in the Georgetown section of Washington DC back when I was often working projects in that area. We were generally on some sort of deadline, and working late, and I knew that Uno would be reliably open until, I believe at that time and place, Midnight, so I would break out the rental car and head on over when I got back to the hotel (No Metro to Georgetown..)

I had no idea the Lexington location existed until well after it opened. Before I started this blog, Lexington was as remote to me as Columbus, and I had no clue what might be found in its untracked wilds. In the event, one of my cousins mentioned it and eventually I tracked it down. For a long time, like the Georgetown location, it was regularly open late, in this case until 11PM, and I would generally find myself there about once a week 9:30 or later. It got to the point that one of the waitresses would put in my order when she saw me come in the door. Then they moved the weeknight closing back to 10PM, and I was generally unable to get over there from Forest Acres. In retrospect, this was Sign #1 and it should have tipped me off.

I still went every now and then on the weekend until the pandemic hit, and it took longer than a lot of other places for Uno to reopen dine-in, and when they did, they were closing so early (8PM in some cases) that once again I was unable to make it over there. They never did get back to an 11PM closing, even on the weekends though they were open until 10PM then by the end.

As I mentioned in Have Your Say, I was actually there Saturday 23 April, the penultimate day of operation. At the time, there was no sign of anything wrong, and the staff were joking around with each other as they started winding down for the evening.

I really enjoyed the deep dish Chicago pizza, and they had some of the best iced tea in the area.

Here is the announcement on Facebook and here is an article in the Lexington Chronicle. Additionally, this Franchaise Times article gives some background on the chain including the observation that:

“I think the company got too far away from pizza,” said Erik Frederick, CEO of Uno Pizzeria & Grill.

I think there may be some truth to that as a lot of the menu (which I never sampled) was standard casual dining.

(Hat tip to commenter Mr. Hat)

UPDATE 28 June 2022 -- Some post-closing pictures:

UPDATE 14 August 2022: *Well!* -- This building has been razed! That surprises me some, and suggests that Uno could probably have continued for longer, but someone made them, or the property-owner a better offer:

I was unfamiliar with this healthy eatery on Two Notch near Popeye's, but I do note that the storefront has featured here twice before as both Jimmy John's and Quiznos. I was a little surprised that they featured pizza, next door to a Papa Johns, but I suppose they had a dine in space to make that make sense.

As you can see, the interior is being actively torn down, so that may mean that the next idea for this spot is already on the way.

(Hat tip to commenter Mr. Hat)

UPDATE 1 March 2023 -- Now The Baked Potato Factory: