Gourmet Live Blog

Photo: Kemp Minifie

“The Mighty Mo tasted like no other burger you’d ever had,” reminisced my eldest brother, Nick Miles, wistfully. “At the time it was so innovative. It was double-decker, like a club sandwich, with a bun layer in between two thin hamburgers, and it had this great sauce.”

Boomers who grew up in the Washington, D.C. area get particularly nostalgic about the Mighty Mo, one of the signature offerings at Hot Shoppes, a local chain of casual family restaurants that began in 1927 as a single A&W root beer stand by J. Willard Marriott, Senior, whose name is much more familiar to Americans today as the founder of the global hotel giant, Marriott International. The Hot Shoppes we knew were places where you could either eat inside, in booths, or outside, at the drive-in, but the last one closed in 1999.

There was a Hot Shoppes restaurant halfway between our house and Nick’s high school and frequent refueling stops on the way home only solidified his devotion to the Mighty Mo. Did you happen to notice that my brother’s description of it sounds a lot like MacDonald’s Big Mac? Chronologically, Nick was eating Mighty Mos way before the Big Mac was even introduced in 1968, and plenty of rumors have been flying around for years that the Big Mac was inspired by the Mighty Mo. The similarities are close enough to make it difficult not to believe it. Continue reading →