Flashback Monday: Meet the New Chains, (Almost) Same as the Old Chains

From Reston's earliest days au primitif, even before the McTacoHut arrived to satiate the early pioneers' needs for brand-name comfort food, we loved us our bland, fast food chain eateries. Behold this oddly familiar monument to stucco and grease off Sunrise Valley Drive!

Of course, Burger Chef would beget Roy Rogers, which would (eventually) beget Popeye's. And so the circle goes unbroken, by and by.

Here, the fine folks at Jack in the Box managed to get around pesky DRB regulations by replacing their signature orange signery with something more in keeping with the local color pallette at its Hunters Woods location (Sandblasted Battleship was the official paint name, we believe). Of course, Jack begat McDonalds, which, in time, begat a perfectly lovely sushi place that's been given the unfortunate nickname of McSushi despite the Zen garden out front.

Even years later, as Reston's list of eating options began to grow, it still leaned heavily towards chains. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth today, the end.