By admin 
If you spent any time in Columbia between the mid-2010s and 2022, there’s a good chance you have a Del Taco memory tucked away somewhere. Maybe it was a late-night crunchy taco run after a Gamecocks game.
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Maybe it was the drive-thru breakfast burrito that got you through a Monday. Maybe it was just the novelty of having a California Tex-Mex chain in the middle of the Midlands.
Then, in 2022, it was gone.
For the past few years, Palmetto State fans of the chain have had to settle for memories — or road trips out of state — to get their fix. But there’s news worth passing along to anyone still nursing that particular grudge: Del Taco is back in South Carolina. And according to USA Today’s 2026 Reader’s Choice 10Best rankings, it’s not just back — it’s officially the best fast food chain in the country.
The chain Columbia lost
Del Taco operated in Columbia for about six years before closing in 2022. If you’re doing the math, that means it opened around 2016 — right in the sweet spot when the chain was making a push to expand east from its California home base. Regulars remember it as a hybrid you couldn’t quite find anywhere else: a menu that could hand you a stuffed quesadilla taco and a cheeseburger in the same order, plus fries on the side.
The lineup hasn’t really changed. Del Taco is still known for its Mexican-leaning fast food — burritos, tacos, tostadas — alongside the burgers and fries that separated it from a straight Tex-Mex competitor. There’s a dedicated breakfast menu, which was one of the things that made the Columbia location a genuinely useful stop rather than just a novelty. And for anyone who’s shifted toward plant-based eating in the years since the Columbia location closed, the chain also maintains a vegan and vegetarian menu.
So the food you remember is more or less the food that’s back. The question is where you have to go to eat it.
The (only) SC location
The Palmetto State went without Del Taco for several years before the chain finally returned. As of this summer, there is exactly one Del Taco operating in South Carolina, and it’s not anywhere near the Midlands.
The new location opened July 1 in Myrtle Beach. That’s roughly a three-and-a-half-hour drive from downtown Columbia — long enough that “grabbing Del Taco” is no longer a Tuesday-night decision. It’s a day trip, or a stop worth building into a Grand Strand weekend.
There is more Del Taco coming to South Carolina, though. The company plans to open a second location in Little River later this year. Little River sits just up the coast from Myrtle Beach near the Carolina border, so from a Columbia perspective, it doesn’t dramatically change the math. Both new locations are firmly in the coastal corner of the state.
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The obvious question for anyone who ate at the old Columbia store: does the Midlands get one back? Nothing in the current announcements points to a return. For now, if you want Del Taco in South Carolina, you drive east.
Named the best in the country
The reason all of this is bigger news than a single restaurant opening is what happened after the Myrtle Beach location started serving customers. Del Taco topped the USA Today Reader’s Choice 10Best list for 2026, an annual reader-voted ranking that pits fast food chains against one another nationally. Out of every chain in the running, Del Taco took the No. 1 spot.
That’s a striking result for a brand that, until this summer, had no presence in South Carolina at all — and it puts the Myrtle Beach opening in a slightly different light. If you’ve been curious whether the chain still holds up, or whether your Columbia-era memories are doing some of the heavy lifting, the national vote suggests the food itself is doing fine.
Every restaurant in USA Today’s top 10 has at least one South Carolina location, which is worth noting for anyone who wants to comparison-shop closer to home. Columbia isn’t exactly starving for fast food Mexican — other taco chains have locations throughout Richland and Lexington counties, and Moe’s Southwest Grill and a handful of local taquerias round out the options. But none of them are Del Taco, and that’s the whole point for the people who remember the original Columbia store.
Is the trip worth it?
That depends on how strong the nostalgia runs. A crunchy taco and a side of crinkle-cut fries are not, on paper, worth 200 miles of I-20 and Highway 501. But paired with a beach day, a concert or any other reason to be on the Grand Strand this summer, the detour is easy enough to justify.
And if a Little River location really does open by the end of the year, there will soon be two chances to find out whether the food matches the memory — or whether the Columbia version was always a little better in your head.
This report was produced with the assistance of a proprietary tool powered by artificial intelligence and using our own originally reported, written and published content. It was reviewed and edited by our journalists.
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