Farewell, Magill’s Famous Pizza & Buffet
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| Mike Magill with Santa. The restaurant hosted a popular breakfast with Santa event every December. |
Magill’s
Famous Pizza & Buffet, an Annandale institution on Little River Turnpike
for 22 years, has closed for good.
“COVID got us,” says owner Mike Magill. The restaurant offered takeout and delivery during the early months of the pandemic, but “by the time we were able to open, it was nearly the end of summer.”
Magill’s offered a family-friendly, casual dining experience with a pizza buffet, salad bar, ice cream bar, game room, and boxed lunches. The restaurant attracted school groups touring D.C. and was a mainstay for kids’ birthday parties and sports banquets.
“We mostly did contract business for charter companies. All that businesses is canceled, and we don’t know when it’s coming back,” Magill says. He had hoped some of the school groups would be back in the fall, but that isn’t going to happen and school trips might not resume in the spring, either.
Magill used a federal Paycheck Protection Program grant to keep employees on the payroll for a while, but those funds ran out.
He had employed adults with disabilities through the ServiceSource program and also provided jobs for high school students with disabilities. “I’m going to miss all those kids and clients,” he says.
Meanwhile, Magill is selling everything – restaurant equipment, antique signs, games, Tiffany-style lighting, and much more – through Rasmus Auctions. The auction closes at 10 a.m. on July 22.
Meanwhile, Magill is selling everything – restaurant equipment, antique signs, games, Tiffany-style lighting, and much more – through Rasmus Auctions. The auction closes at 10 a.m. on July 22.
Magill is looking for another job. He would get back into the restaurant business “if the right opportunity came along.”
He opened the restaurant as Shakey’s in 1983 and changed the name to Magill’s Famous Pizza & Buffet in 1998. He says shutting down after so many years “is very difficult and sad.”
14 responses to “Farewell, Magill’s Famous Pizza & Buffet”
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Very sad.
Oh no Mike. this is so sad. You ran a very successful business for so many years. I am afraid we will see many more business shut down because of Covid. Thank you for all that you have done for the community. A most giving person. Stay well.
completely unnecessary….they should have let businesses that wanted to stay open stay open….and let people who don't want to go outside, stay inside and watch tv all day like idiots and let us healthy brave woke people keep this country going….amazing how Americans just bent over because the diabolical medical scientists told you to….thankfully their attempt to financially ruin this country doesn't look like its going to be successful but as we can cee there was casualties….Peace to Mike Magill!
was Magills pretty much the same as Shakeys?
No, not even close. Shakeys was a fabulous buffet w/ much better pizza!
My sister used to work at the Shakeys in Burbank back in the late '70s. Someone was stealing money from the cash registers, so they gave all of the $3/hour employees polygraphs. Eventually, it turned out the boss was stealing the money.
hah, now that's a story.
Wow that is sad that place was a big benefit for people, Magills was a great place for tour buses and big parties very clean and great run establishment.
I would have liked to seen that Trashy Diamond lounge next door to him close up,every time we go into that parking lot it reminds me of a ghetto scene on the side where the Diamond lounge is, with all the beer bottles and fast food containers all over the lot the us flag all tore up still flying out front at that the lounge. That place is a disgrace for Annandale I think if it wasn't for Magills no one would go near that area, we will definitely miss you Magills
Fully agree with the commenter above. This was completely unnecessary. Let’s make one thing clear, COVID didn’t cause Magills to close. The government’s lockdown orders caused Magills to close. Northam is directly responsible for this through his lockdown orders.
Democrats have inflicted more casualties in 2020 than any year prior. The tyrants at the top like Northam causing businesses to close with their lockdown orders or the rioters at the bottom literally burning down people’s businesses. Two sides of the same Communist coin. It’s Satan’s ideology and needs to be eradicated.
bullshit
Beyond sad to see magills go. As well as I was when Shakey's closed. Unfortunately with the crappy ass Nightclub next door it ruined the atmosphere. Families no longer wanted to go and I wouldn't have allowed my child to go on a school charter there. Would love to see them the able to reopen at some point. All of our good American fare restaurants are having to shut their doors due to the pandemic in this area because more people are prone to eat at the ethnic restaurants. It's a real shame when it comes to this restaurant my kids have so many memories here as do I and we wish the owner the best of luck.
Damn shame!!! I went there from 83-88 as my mother was a cheerleading coach at Jefferson. We went there every Mon, Wed, and Fri after the games. What a wonderful place to go. Great food, great atmosphere, everything was wonderfull. This was a landmark in Annandale for several years. Unreal. And it was great when the Smorgasbord was next door. GR8 place, now gone. Thanks Mr. McGill
God bless you Mr. Magill! My family used to go here for a big and affordable meal, my brother and I absolutely loved the racing games with actual pedals and steering wheels in the arcade. We’ve ended up being professional drivers years later and own 5.0 Mustangs now. We reference that arcade as the first place we found a love for racing and would always beg our grandmother or mom for quarters they surely could barely afford to give us just to give it another go. We loved winning prizes with our tickets, I admit I ran a couple balls up to the bowling lane games highest score to get more tickets to get the push jumping frogs and sticky hands and whatever other little toys we could afford to get with our winnings. I took my girlfriends there as a teen and younger adult in the past few years and they always loved the place. My mom took us out to Magills as a treat when we didn’t fight or after we won a custody battle against my very unhealthy father and got to stay in our beloved home in Annandale VA. Went there tonight to bring my fiancé to the old spot and the whole parking lot was full of glass and cracked. Of course the crappy new place next door was looking like something out of a dystopian society movie where the world just wasn’t the same anymore and the good family places were all boarded up and gone away. It was very very sad and upsetting for me to see Magills go. I no longer live in the NOVA area but every time I came back I’d go there or recommend it to people over the years and will always look back fondly on our memories, meals shared, and family bonding especially with my mother and grandmother who both are much older now and one has passed. I pray it can open back up someday and if not that the people working there and the owner find a beautiful life outside of those walls and a good job. God bless you all. The unnecessarily lockdown measures killed this place and now the unnecessary shots are killing the people. My aunt just died from a brand new ovarian cancer attributed to the mRNA gene therapy shots (not and never were vaccines). Stay safe and stay free my friends. -Burzio Family
You and your place was the best. My groups loved it. Thanks and good luck to you