This is not your average home, where a party might mean two dozen friends over for steamed crabs and grilled steaks, or the in-laws descending for Thanksgiving.
This is a place where a 12-foot-high, 8-foot-wide foyer closet holds 150 coats, with one long rack on top of another.
Where a lower-level butler’s pantry is stocked with china for 250, and wineglasses for 700.
When Hamid and Tammy Darvish Fallahi moved into their dream house in Potomac’s Avenel neighborhood last summer, the 15,000-square-foot, European-style country manor signaled Entertaining writ large.
The scale of the couple’s hospitality is apparent in the pared-down but stylish catering kitchen across the hall from the heavily decorated family kitchen.
Last December they hosted 300 employees from the Darcars Automotive Group, a three-state, 31-franchise empire founded in 1977 by Tammy’s father, Iranian-born John Darvish.
According to family lore, Darvish was on vacation from Elon College (now Elon University) when he and a pal found they could make money selling used cars in Hyattsville (he still carries that first 1962 check for $2.94). Realizing he liked working with automotive customers, he got his father’s blessing from Tehran with the addendum that he was “to go out there and not just be a used-car salesman, but a Henry Ford,” Tammy Darvish Fallahi says.
Darvish bought his first dealership 15 years later, Glenmont Chrysler-Plymouth off Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring. Today at 47, his daughter works six days a week for the company and travels extensively as a vice president—along with brothers John and Jamie—overseeing sales associates and automotive and community partnerships.
