Things change. We all know that. Especially when it comes to the restaurant industry.

But recent years have seen Tampa landmarks drop like flies:

• Jimmy Mac’s Restaurant, which opened in 1974, closed in 2005 to make way for a 1,750-residence development after nine years at the Imperial Yacht Basin off Gandy Boulevard. (It moved there from Armenia Avenue near Kennedy Boulevard.)

• Malio’s, for 36 years the hangout of influential Tampa figures including George Steinbrenner, closed in 2005 to make way for redevelopment. (The restaurant re-opened in 2008 on the Hillsborough River inside the “Beer Can Building” downtown.)

• Palios Brothers’ secret chicken recipe made the restaurant a popular fixture on South MacDill Avenue for 41 years before it closed in August 2003.

• Cafe Pepe was a lunchtime haven for Spanish food for 42 years on West Kennedy Boulevard before closing in December 2002.

• Seabreeze, legendary for its devil crab, closed in 2001 after 78 years on the 22nd Street Causeway.

• Goody Goody, a diner on North Florida Avenue that opened in 1929 and served what some said were the best hamburgers in Tampa, closed in 2005 after selling to developers.

As the current author of the Recipes Lost & Found column, I get a gauge every week on how much people love these restaurants. I get a steady stream of requests for favorite dishes from restaurants long-gone. The chicken from Palio’s. The devil crab from Seabreeze. Baked good from Kirby’s in Plant City. At least a handful come in each month.

The latest casualty: The Valencia Garden on Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa, which closed Wednesday after 82 years in business.

This was a touchstone place for local diners. It’s where downtown power brokers broke bread and then dipped it into their Spanish bean soup. Its sea bass and yellow rice was legendary. So many big-wigs ate there that it was easy to walk into a wall rubbernecking it while making your way to a table. It was a great place to hold a wedding reception. If you were running for office, you glad-handed through the dining room at lunch and then, hopefully, held your victory party there on election night.

I think Steve Otto nailed it today in his front-page column in the Tribune about his years dining at the Valencia. It was the people as much as the food that made eating there a unique experience:

The Valencia was almost as well known for its waiters as for its food. Most famous was the legendary Gasolino.

Gasolino’s real name was Jose Martinez. He picked up his moniker when he ran a coffee stand in Cuba. To keep people from stealing coffee when he wasn’t around, he reportedly spiked the coffee with gasoline. I don’t think he ever tried that at the Valencia, but what he could do was take the orders of eight or 10 people without bothering to write anything down. Even more remarkably, he got them right.

Many of the regulars were so regular if you walked in for lunch and didn’t see them sitting in a particular spot, you worried something might be wrong.

In recent months, as I get closer to geezerdom, I’ve been invited to sit at the Wednesday afternoon gathering of a half-dozen regulars whose average age is somewhere around 90. The group includes former Congressman Sam Gibbons and Buck Setzer, who claims to have built the first house in Beach Park. They all order cups of black beans and rice, maybe half a Cuban sandwich, and spend the afternoon going through the history of this town.

Where do people like that go now?

I asked [owner David] Agliano about the possibility of the new owners re-opening the Valencia. ““I have no idea,’’ he said. “All I know is I’m available and if I had the opportunity I would hire every one of these people back today. You can get bean soup in a lot of restaurants. I truly believe the Valencia is made up of the spirits of people like my grandparents and waiters like Gasolino. They are what make the Valencia Garden what it is.”

Here’s a gallery of photos we shot over the years at Valencia Garden. You might recognize a face or two.

UPDATE: What we suspected on Wednesday is true: The University of Tampa is partnering to purchase the property.