It’s 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. Though hardly rush hour, a steady stream of customers is filtering through Tally Ho Restaurant in the Potomac Village Shopping Center in downtown Potomac. Some, clearly on their way to work or a pressing appointment, hurriedly walk to the register and order a breakfast sandwich or a bagel to go. Others grab a four- or two-top table in the restaurant’s dining area, which is decorated with paintings of foxes in snow and hunters on horseback, a nod to the restaurant’s name that is also a sporting rally cry. Tally Ho’s manager, Andreas Vellios, is the only server on the floor, and he handles the traffic with ease, greeting each customer by name and asking if they’d like “the usual.”
In one corner of the restaurant, several well-heeled ladies chat excitedly while sipping mimosas, their furs and Louis Vuitton handbags draped over the wooden chairs. A solo diner enjoys a plate of eggs and a cup of coffee at the mint-green counter while reading The Washington Post. Occasionally he looks up from the paper to talk to Andreas as he passes through the open kitchen to deliver order tickets to the cook and grab plates of steaming food to bring to hungry customers. Across the dining room, Lauren Lynch Schuster is having breakfast, an egg and cheese sandwich, with her colleague Miranda Levin, 28, who ordered a steak and eggs platter.
Schuster, 34, grew up down the street from Tally Ho. Even though she now lives in Baltimore, where her luxury handbag resale business is based, Schuster makes sure to stop by for a meal during her monthly buying treks to the area. “It’s the nostalgia that keeps us coming back,” says Schuster who recalls making trips to the diner with her parents for a snack after soccer and dance practices. “Childhood memories.”
Schuster is one of many who have been patronizing the family-run diner for decades. “Our customers are like family,” says Andreas, 46, who lives in Potomac with his husband, Keith Spangler-Vellios, 58, and their two teenage children, Peter and Georgia, who occasionally work as servers and delivery drivers at Tally Ho. “We watch them grow up. We watch their kids have kids.”
Tally Ho got its start in 1968 as a 10-seat soda fountain serving burgers,homemade sodas and ice cream floats in the back of the old Potomac Village Pharmacy, where the Citi bank now sits on River Road. “Back in the day, every drugstore had a fountain counter,” says Pete Vellios, 72, Andreas’ father, who was 13 when his family emigrated from the mountain town of Karpenisi in central Greece and came to Montgomery County to join other family members who had settled among the area’s large Greek community.
Pete started as a busboy in Georgetown, launching a restaurant career that would span more than half a century. In the late 1960s, his brother, Chris, was looking for a partner to take over ownership of a soda fountain founded by another set of entrepreneurs a few years earlier. Pete jumped at the opportunity to go into business with his brother, and from there the two siblings and Pete’s wife, Youlla, began the process of turning Tally Ho into a Potomac institution.
It was a family affair from the start, with Chris and Pete manning the grill while Youlla, who emigrated from Cyprus with her family as a child, waitressed, managed the register and charmed the guests. “She was a talker, a schmoozer,” Andreas says of his mother. “She made people feel like family.” The rest of the family pitched in, with Youlla’s cousin Tina Fragoyannis and sister Christina Xenohristos waiting tables. Christina, 65, started washing dishes at Tally Ho at age 12 and eventually was promoted to waitress. “I enjoyed working there so much,” she says, recalling the decades alongside her family members.
Christina describes Tally Ho in the 1970s and ’80s like a scene from the sitcom Cheers, with a group of regulars affectionally named “The Coffee Club” coming in every morning for some breakfast and banter with Pete. “He was the fastest cook ever,” Christina says, remembering Pete frying up eggs and hotcakes with unmatched quickness. She recalls that lunchtimes meant lines of construction workers out the door looking to get a steak and cheese sandwich or a burger to take back to their jobsites. The afternoon shift would bring private school children in uniforms for an after-school milkshake and locals looking to take advantage of Pete’s daily specials, which included a rotating menu of hot dishes such as Salisbury steak and other mid-century staples.
John Stock, 85, a landscape contractor and designer who used to be based in Bethesda, has been coming to Tally Ho since it was part of the old pharmacy. “I’ve never had a bad meal at Tally Ho,” he says, recalling decades of trips to the lunch counter for a late breakfast or a sandwich when he had business in the area. These days, Stock drives almost 40 miles from his home in Middletown, Maryland, to the new location in the Potomac Village Shopping Center to visit his old friend Pete and enjoy his favorite item on the Tally Ho menu: the Potomac Satisfier, a hearty sandwich with grilled ham, melted Swiss, bacon, lettuce, tomato, onions and mayo. “The portions are very generous,” Stock says. “I eat half [of the sandwich] one day and half the next.”
The Vellios family’s younger generation was also put to work in the restaurant. Andreas remembers washing dishes on weekends with Christina’s son Ted Xenohristos—who is now 47 and the co-founder and chief concept officer of the Mediterranean fast-casual chain Cava—to earn spending money. “We’d wash a couple little dishes and my dad would give us maybe $2,” says Andreas, recalling memories from Tally Ho’s original location. “Then we’d go buy baseball cards in the pharmacy.” Christina often would bring Ted with her for shifts at Tally Ho, and he would bus tables, wash dishes and chat with customers, who would give him a quarter as a tip. “It was my first experience in the restaurant business, and it led me to where Cava is today,” says Ted, who also co-owns North Bethesda restaurants Melina, Julii and Bouboulina. “I enjoyed it from the first moment.”
Ted also soaked up his uncle Pete’s approach to food and hospitality. “I used to watch my uncle make food from scratch, which really stood out to me. In Greek cuisine, it’s all about the quality of the food,” says Ted, who still returns to Tally Ho for hotcakes—the dish he’s loved since childhood—now with his young son in tow. “He would say hello to everyone who came in, welcoming everyone into the restaurant like you would your home.”
Ted isn’t the only Tally Ho alum who went on to open a restaurant. Tina and her husband co-founded the Mamma Lucia Italian restaurant chain with a partner in 1992. In 2005, Christina and fellow Tally Ho employee Agie Ziotis opened Greek Islands Grill, which operated in Silver Spring for more than a decade before closing in 2017.
In 1989, the Vellios family moved Tally Ho to a new space after learning that the pharmacy would be closing.The timing was fortuitous as the family “wanted to go bigger” with the business, according to Andreas. They were able to secure a location nearby on Falls Road, where two adjacent businesses—a TV repair shop and a bookstore—were closing. The Vellioses combined the two spots to create an L-shaped space with ample room to accommodate the growing business.
The location’s redbrick exterior is adorned with a forest-green awning that displays Tally Ho’s circular logo—a horse trotting through a field—emblazoned in white. Inside, Tally Ho’s history is documented on a wall in the vintage photos of the Vellios family working at the original soda fountain. The family’s Mediterranean heritage is apparent throughout the restaurant, from the baklava in the dessert case to the imported Mythos beer in the mini-refrigerator to the framed photo of the Acropolis that Youlla took during one of the family’s many trips to Greece.
With the larger kitchen, the Vellioses were able to showcase their heritage in their food as well, moving beyond burgers and breakfast to offer Greek specialties, including moussaka, chicken souvlaki and roasted leg of lamb. Avgolemono—a lemony chicken soup of Greek origin—was Tally Ho’s biggest seller during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, soothing Potomac residents who were ill or stressed out by the community lockdown. These days, Tally Ho’s menu reads like an encyclopedia of options, with dishes ranging from submarine sandwiches to Italian specialties such as chicken Marsala and eggplant parmigiana. “It’s all homemade here, using family recipes,” says Andreas, who is partial to Tally Ho’s stuffed grape leaves, which he describes as “the best I’ve ever had.”
The new site made it possible for Tally Ho to accommodate larger groups of diners, offer catering services and host events, such as gatherings for local high school sports teams. Tally Ho also started offering delivery services. Ted, who grew up in nearby Silver Spring, delivered takeout orders as a teenager in the 1990s. “I still know all the roads in Potomac by heart,” he says.
Perhaps the most dramatic post-move shift in Tally Ho’s business came from the introduction of its now-famous pizza to the menu in 1990. The homemade dough, expertly spiced sauce and bevy of topping choices made Tally Ho’s pizza the stuff of local legend, putting it in families’ permanent meal rotation and drawing the area’s teenagers for a snack after school or sports practice. “Our pizza is a big thing, especially with young kids,” says Andreas, adding that the boom in business resulting from the popularity of its pizza and the other post-move adjustments resulted in Tally Ho doubling its profits in the new Potomac Village location.
One of Tally Ho’s menu items comes with a word of caution: The blueberry hotcakes, which have been known to induce labor. The “pregnancy pancakes” legend was created a decade ago, when one of Tally Ho’s regulars went into labor after eating their hotcakes. When the same customer had the same result during her second pregnancy—this time three weeks before her due date—the reputation was cemented. After word got out, Tally Ho had very pregnant customers traveling from as far as Capitol Hill, attempting to kick-start their labor over breakfast. “I now warn anyone pregnant who orders the pancakes,” Andreas says.
Fortunately for its longtime customers, the Vellios family kept its all-day breakfast, which features the likes of omelets, hotcakes and eggs, all served with a choice of bacon, ham or scrapple—a fried pork patty that’s a favorite for many. They also kept some of the original sandwiches from the lunch counter. “There’s some things on the menu that we’ve been making for over 60 years, like the Potomac Satisfier and the OK Treat [a burger with two beef patties, cheese, slaw, tomato, lettuce, onions and mayo],” says Pete, who co-owned Tally Ho with his brother until the 1980s, when Chris moved back to Greece and Pete and Youlla became sole proprietors. “We’re good at what we’re doing, so we have repeat customers. They love the family business.”
Pete Vellios with his son, Andreas. Photo credit: Courtesy Andreas Vellios
One of those customers is Debbie Simon. Tally Ho was a regular dining destination for Simon, 44, who grew up in Potomac in the 1980s and ’90s. She first ate at Tally Ho as a child with her parents, and later, as a teen at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Simon would come to the diner with friends for pizza. After she had her own family, Simon moved back to the area and now brings her young son to Tally Ho for omelets or scrambled eggs, which he always orders with a side of fries. “I’ve fallen in love with the place even more as an adult with my own child,” says Simon, an advertising professional who lives within walking distance of the diner. “It’s such a family-friendly environment.”
Nearly 60 years after serving his first burger, Pete still can be found working the grill from time to time, preparing his famous chili and engaging with customers. “We appreciate everything that the town of Potomac does for us,” says Pete, who still lives with Youlla, 71, in the same Potomac house that they purchased in the 1970s and where they raised their two children, Andreas and his sister, Christina.
Andreas has become the heart of Tally Ho since being named manager in 2002, though his parents’ presence still looms large. “Customers are always asking, ‘How are your parents doing?’ ” he says. “That’s the kind of establishment we are. It’s for family.” The line between family and customers has blurred over the years. When Andreas and Keith, a hairstylist at Tres Jolie Salon in Friendship Heights, were expecting their children in 2008, the baby shower at Andreas’ sister’s house was full of customers—one of whom was slated to be a godparent—looking to share in the happy event.
“[The restaurant’s atmosphere has] a lot to do with Andreas. He keeps it easy and makes you feel at home, like one of the family,” says Susan Shinderman, a Potomac resident who has frequented Tally Ho for more than 10 years. Now a retired government analyst, Shinderman patronizes Tally Ho at least weekly, either dining with her family or bridge group, or ordering pizza for delivery. “You see everyone there—construction workers, Supreme Court justices, retired football players—and everyone talks to everyone.”
Tally Ho has seen its share of famous faces. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, former NFL player Chris Samuels and celebrity chef José Andrés regularly dine at the restaurant, according to Andreas. Signed pictures of celebrity patrons, including actors Lynda Carter and Sylvester Stallone and singer-turned-Congressman Sonny Bono, are mounted on the wall. They hang next to autographed trading cards of former NBA players Gheorghe Muresan and Patrick Ewing, whose love of Tally Ho’s fresh-squeezed orange juice is legendary. “He used to drink glasses and glasses of the stuff,” Ted says. Stock recalls once seeing Ewing downing glasses of juice while dining with some fellow basketball players, all four men struggling to fit their long limbs around one of Tally Ho’s four-tops, their knees visible above the table.
Some might say that Tally Ho has had its own 15 minutes of fame. Restaurant regulars include several cast members from The Real Housewives of Potomac, which has filmed the Bravo series twice at Tally Ho, giving the diner—and Andreas, who made a cameo—some national TV coverage. Beverly Hills, 90210 creator Darren Star also dined at Tally Ho while growing up in Potomac, according to Andreas. The TV series, which was originally going to be called Potomac, 20854 based on Star’s hometown, features a diner called the Peach Pit, which according to local lore, is based on Tally Ho.
As you leave Tally Ho, there’s a collection of framed pictures hanging next to the door: various operating licenses, a painting of a fox in winter, and a wooden sign that says, “You can’t make everyone happy. You’re not pizza”—a sentiment that usually rings true, but somehow the Vellios family seems to have done it with ease for the past six decades.
Amanda Cherrin lives in Chevy Chase and is a former reporter for Sports Illustrated magazine.
This appears in the May/June 2025 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
