Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I got a bit of a surprise today when I decided I wanted a JJ BLT for lunch.

It seems that yesterday, somebody drove a car into the front of the Woodhill Jimmy John's. I presume it was an accident, since you would not expect to find a lot of cash in a sandwich shop. According to the door sign, nobody was hurt, which is the important thing, and they expect to reopen as quickly as possible.

Pita Pit on Main Street featured here two years ago, and I was unaware at the time that there was a Five Points location.

It appears that this one, just up the hill a bit from Papa Jazz may have closed previously and then come back under new ownership. It looks to have gotten good reviews, but to have closed sometime this Spring. (There is no date on the door sign).

(Hat tip to commenter Deanna)

I believe the last time I did a closing for this place was as Uncle Ozzy's, although I did not have any pictures of that actual incarnation. This old Popeye's location has been the site of many short-lived operations since the original tenant closed, and I know I have missed several of them.

Noisy Wings seems to have had several locations, and continues to run on Clemson Road. 3315 Grille is I think the most recent to close and I don't really know anything about it. I could have sworn there was a Chinese restaurant in the spot fairly recently, but I don't see anything online about that.

UPDATE 9 June 2022 -- Found a few more pictures:

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Since I am not a seafood person, and definitely not a raw seafood person, I wasn't really aware of Sushi Yoshi in Five Points. Online reviews suggest it was a quirky little place with a small staff and idiosyncratic seating arrangements. As nearly as I can tell from those reviews, they probably closed late in 2021, as a January review mentions that a "temporarily closed" sign had been up for several months by that point.

(Hat tip to commenter Deana)

Cod Tail (a name, which I've said before, I really do not at all like) was the follow-on in this space to Rush's, which closed in 2019. Cod Tail opened sometime after February 2021, meaning it lasted a bit over a year.

Since I don't like seafood, I never checked the place out, but judging by the sign on the drive-through, they were having issues before they actually shut down. It appears that the Charleston location is still open, or at least the web site still works.

(Hat tip to commenter Haley)

[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:

Jimmyz moved into this former KFC sometime after 2015, and seemed to do a decent business. I think COVID hit time pretty hard though, as they never reopened for dine-in service after it hit.

I can't find any definite info on the closing date, but it was open in January, and given the still fully equipped state of the place, I think the end of March is probably the logical time to guess.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you look closely at the first picture, you can, barely, see the Fuji Cafe signage still on the marquee of Suite G at Kennerly Crossing back in September of 2018. As nearly as I can tell from the Google reviews, it closed around 2019, and the suite is still empty.