Piccadilly Cafeteria: Longtime Regency Square Restaurant Closes

[thelakelander]

Piccadilly Cafeteria, a fixture of Regency Square Mall for decades, has closed.

On Wednesday, work crews, including some from Johnson City, Tenn.-based A-1 Restaurant Equipment, were busy emptying kitchen and other equipment from the restaurant. A tractor-trailer parked nearby, ready to haul away usable equipment for resale.

The standalone restaurant, located at 200 Monument Road, closed in the last several days, almost 21 years to the day of its Sept. 11, 1990 opening. According to a 1989 Times-Union article, the 14,000-square-foot, 425-seat cafeteria was constructed on the former site of the Regency Twin Theatre, which, too, operated for 21 years at that address.

Customers who stopped at the cafeteria Wednesday for lunch learned of the restaurant's closing via a printed sign on the door directing them two Piccadilly's two remaining locations: 5950 Ramona Blvd. and 3216 S. University Blvd.

Another small, handwritten sign directed members of a group that regularly met at the cafeteria to another meeting site.

Prior to the 1990 opening of the restaurant, Piccadilly was located inside the Regency Square Mall, a common practice for cafeterias and malls nationwide. A copy of the 1990 Bell South White Pages lists a Piccadillly Cafeteria at the Avenues Mall. But by the mid 1990s, however, that location had closed, leaving just three of the cafeterias in Jacksonville.

According to Piccadilly's website â€" which lists only the Ramona and University boulevard locations â€" the 67-year-old Baton Rouge, La.-headquartered company operates about 100 restaurants. Many of those restaurants are former Morrison's Cafeterias acquired In 1996.

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/423471/gary-mills/2011-09-21/longtime-regency-square-restaurant-closes

[ChriswUfGator]

I still fault Picadilly for buying out Morrison's and ruining it. Such fond childhood memories of going with my grandparents.

[Dashing Dan]

I miss Morrisons but Piccadilly wasn't bad either.  I ate at a Piccadilly in Baton Rouge in 2005.  There was a guy in there playing the piano.

[duvaldude08]

I havent ate a piccadilly in 7 years. Just not somewhere I ever go.

[thelakelander]

Growing up, my family used to eat at Morrison's nearly every other Sunday.  Back those days the lines would stretch outside the door in many cities.  I went to that Piccadilly a few months ago on a Sunday and you could walk right in and start selecting food without having to wait in any type of line.  I can't say this is surprising.

[ProjectMaximus]

I still meet my parents at the University Blvd location on occasion...like, every two or three months...and it's always mostly empty.

I can't remember Morrison's being all-you-can-eat back in the day, but apparently there are some that still remain that are indeed ayce, or so I've been told.

[ChriswUfGator]

Morrison's wamsn't all you can eat. But piano or not, Picadilly really didn't understand what they were buying, two different birds.

[Dog Walker]

I still fault Picadilly for buying out Morrison's and ruining it. Such fond childhood memories of going with my grandparents.

Me too, Chris.  I can still hear the doorman at the Hemming Plaza Morrison's singing out, "Short line on the ground floor" or "No waiting on the bottom floor".  Loved their fried shrimp.

[ChriswUfGator]

Yeah my memories were of the ones in Daytona, but the service was similarly good. First they had it on Beach Street and in the 1980s they built a new Morrison's a couple blocks away on Ridgewood. Both were very nice. I hate cafeterias, generally, but Morrison's had it set up with the food quality and whatnot that it didn't really feel like one. Picadilly has definitely not mastered that!

[gunasglass]

My Mother and her friends were regulars at this Picadilly, meeting there several times a week. They are very sad,  they are all in their late 70's through 80's, and it was like home for them.

[BIG CHEESE 723]

And now we lose the one on Ramona.  ):  How soon before they close down the only on left on University?

[thelakelander]

Enjoy them why you still can.  Looks like they are following the path blazed by S&S, Morrison's, Ryan's, Quincy's, etc. They are a dying breed.  Great memories but there are much better dining options out there available and today's consumer is determining their unfortunate fate by spending cash eslewhere.

[sandyshoes]

With all due respect to your mother and her friends, the Ramona Picadilly may have had much better cooks than the one over here on University;  and I am told by my MOI's dr that old people can lose their senses of taste and smell...one would have to, to actually enjoy the slop they serve over here.  Morrisson's was delicious every time and no other "cafeteria" can hold a candle to it.  The lasttime we ate at this Picadilly, my chicken and dumplings had an unmistakably fishy smell and taste;  I traded it in for another entree and we will never go back.  That's my personal experience; others may have been much more fortunate.  (A good indicator - when I tried to give  Regency Picadilly leftovers to a hungry cat in the parking lot, he walked away!!)

[BIG CHEESE 723]

Ramona had a very good beef stew.  My husband used to love their spaghetti.  It was one of the only things he had appetite for near the end.
Morrisons,  ah!.  To hear the words, "There's a short line in the carriage room" again would be wonderful.  lol

[thelakelander]

I gave up on Piccadilly here. It was hit or miss for me for a while. However, it costs about the same to eat what I was getting at Soul Food Bistro, so I switched to the bistro.