Tops Drive-In

I miss the Tops Drive-In in Arlington, VA, and Giffords Ice Cream.

Since there is, apparently, a Tops Drive-In in California (although their menu isn't anything like the old Tops), I wish that they would make the corporate decision to release the "secrets" of some of their old recipes. I'll bet that a book of these "vintage" recipes would be a best seller...!

I notice from the various postings that a lot of you miss Hot Shoppes. Me too...

Me, too. I grew up in McLean, and remember going to Tops in Falls Church, listening to WEAM, and cruising across Key Bridge to Dixie Liquor, and getting a cooperative person to buy me a six of Country Club. I also miss the Little Taverns, cheap oysters off the boats down by Maine Ave. My dad and I used to walk from boat to boat for free samples. He'd pick up a six of Black Label, and after a dozen or so free oysters, we'd go back and buy a bushel for $5 or so!

Growing up in Silver Spring, MD, our Tops was in Langley Park and our Giffords was on Georgia Ave. in SS, down near the DC line. I was a steady customer of both (or as steady as I could be nagging my folks to take me there until I got a dirver's license and could take myself).

I'm pretty sure Tops was a DC-area local business so I doubt any Tops elsewhere in the country would have any connection.

Hot Shoppes, of course, was definitely local until it went nuclear as Marriot Hotels. Mr. Marriot, the founder, was a banking customer of my grandma at the downtown branch of the National Bank of Washington and he got her in on the ground floor--made her a nice little retirement nest egg.

Don't know how old you are, Pancho, but I am 59 and we used to get our oysters down on Back Creek in Annapolis. I'm accusing you of being older than me just because I think they were more than $5 a bushel then (around 1960) but not so much more that my dad couldn't afford a peck or two for him and mom to polish off on a Sunday evening.

Indidentally, my dad's father ran a marine railway on the Potomac in the 20's and 30's but the Depression finished it off. I vaguely remember talk that suggests to me it was at or near Maine Ave.

quote:

Originally posted by BT

Growing up in Silver Spring, MD, our Tops was in Langley Park and our Giffords was on Georgia Ave. in SS, down near the DC line. I was a steady customer of both (or as steady as I could be nagging my folks to take me there until I got a dirver's license and could take myself).

I'm pretty sure Tops was a DC-area local business so I doubt any Tops elsewhere in the country would have any connection.

Hot Shoppes, of course, was definitely local until it went nuclear as Marriot Hotels. Mr. Marriot, the founder, was a banking customer of my grandma at the downtown branch of the National Bank of Washington and he got her in on the ground floor--made her a nice little retirement nest egg.

Don't know how old you are, Pancho, but I am 59 and we used to get our oysters down on Back Creek in Annapolis. I'm accusing you of being older than me just because I think they were more than $5 a bushel then (around 1960) but not so much more that my dad couldn't afford a peck or two for him and mom to polish off on a Sunday evening.

Indidentally, my dad's father ran a marine railway on the Potomac in the 20's and 30's but the Depression finished it off. I vaguely remember talk that suggests to me it was at or near Maine Ave.

BT, I'll be 60 in January. I know they were $5 because my Dad would leave a single five in his front pocket and tell the Capt. that's all we had. I loved those times.