The Hilltop is Closing!!!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

After more than half a century in business, the iconic Hilltop Steak House, with its hundred foot tall illuminated cactus, is closing its doors. I can’t believe it.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/10/10/landmark-steakhouse-closing-north-boston/0tZj7QKf05k02luowcHV5I/story.html

This place really is a landmark, with excellent food and its Wild West-themed rooms. Outside on the lawn is a herd of fiberglas cows (one of which was stolen and found its way to the top of the Great Dome at MIT. It’s still in the MIT Museum). They dressed the cows for special occasions. It’s a sign of the times that they’re not now sporting their pointed black hats for Halloween – the restaurant will be closed before then.

Route 1 north of Boston, especially where it passes through Saugus, is a bastion of 1950s-style tackiness. When Pepper Mill first came up to visit, I drove her past the miniature golf course with the orange T Rex with fluorescent green eyes, Weylu’s Chinese Palace on a hilltop, Kowloon’s Chinese restaurant in the shape of a giant Polynesian thatched hut, the Sake Japanese restaurant, Prince Pizzeria with its Leaning Tower of Pisa, The Ship Restaurant, in the shape of a rigged sailing ship, the next-door Christmas Tree Shop built to look like the New England Fishing Village it docked at, the Full of Bull roast beef place ---- and the Hilltop.

Frank Giuffrida’s place started as a butcher shop, and the Hilltop continued to operate the butcher shop behind the restaurant. The entire store was refrigeratede – you had to wear a coat or a sweater in there. His restaurant grew over the years into a two-story center portion and two wings, each section named after some Western locale, so the wairess would yell “two for Dodge City” when your turn came.

And you DID have to wait. There were lines outside the building until very recently. The outside walkway where the line formed was enclosed many years ago, so you could wait in relative comfort if it was raining or cold outside. One reason I didn’t go more often was that wait, every day of the week.

But food habits change, and the Hilltop’s clientele has been going elsewhere or dying off. Route One has always had other restaurants, including other steak houses, but something has been eating into the business. Recent reviews have been complaining about the quality, as if they’re skimping to make ends meet. And they’ve been having more Special Events to pull people in. I’m surprised how fast it has fallen.

Giuffrida’s name is on the local YMCA, to which he was a big donor.

We’ll have to go sometime soon. if nothing else, this news will undoubtedly bring back the crowds until the Oct 20 closing (some places say the 21st) for one last dinner.

I assume they’ll tear it down. I can’t see anyone else making a go of a huge restaurant here. And it would be a shame to have it sitting empty and decaying.

2

Oh no! We’ve always meant to go but never made it because it would mean getting a car and driving up and there was always something more important or more convenient to do. :frowning:

3

No great loss-when the Giuffriddi family sold out, the new owners cut the quality. I don’t think they serve USDA “Prime” beef at all. I ate there once-my impression was that you got a huge quantity of low quality food. That and the barn-like interior, was a turnoff for me.
People I talk to tell me that the restaurant was good into the 1980’s-after that, downhill.

4

I remember eating there as a little kid!

I also remember going to the one in Nashua, NH, both to eat and to be dragged through the butcher department in the basement with my Mother.

I’m in my late 30’s and couldn’t imagine going there. I think the OP is right about the clients dying off.

5

I’m sad because I love driving by its glorious tackiness, but I have never liked the food. The last time I went, it tasted exactly like a mediocre version of its 80s food. They tried a bunch of things to be more consumer-friendly, like two weeks ago they did a Big Band night with a Frank Sinatra impersonator, and they used to do twice-monthly character brunches for kids, but apparently it wasn’t enough. The Big Band night was supposedly good, but not a lot of room to dance and a long line at the bar. Appetizers disappeared too quickly and the menu was limited. The brunches were ok, but nothing to wait in a 2-hour line for.

I wonder if it’ll be torn down, or if it’ll be a haunted-looking reminder of the way life used to be, like the creepiness of Weylu’s.

6

Actually, with the way gun shops are taking off like crazy and seemingly popping up all the place in NH, I think that place would be a huge success, without even a remodel!

7

It’s on my route to Logan, so I’ve driven past it many times. I never stopped though. I’ve heard that it was the inspiration for the Hungry Heifer on Cheers, Norm’s favorite restaurant.

8

Thanks Obama

er… make that

Thanks govt shutdown!

yeah that’s the ticket

Sorry your place you like is closing, I hate when that happens to me.

9

I haven’t posted when lots of places I like have closed. I posted this one because it’s a local institution of long standing. And we’re not likely to see anything like it opening for quite a while. There’s Jimmy’s Steer Room up the stret, but it ain’t the same.

10

Going Wed. for the final trip. Taking wife, son, mother and high-school friend who earned her nickname of “seagull” from my late father for the way she would demolish the huge salads they would serve.

It shall be missed.

In it’s heyday, Frank had so much cash floating around (no credit cards until the first time he sold it) that he bought a bank for the basement, to simplify matters…:eek:

11

Went there in the mid-seventies, had lobster pie and it was amazing. Went back in the nineties and it was crap. Still, sorry to see it shut down.

12

It says something about me – and Cal, for that matter – that I saw the thread title, and thought he was going to talk about The Dunwitch Horror, a rather different piece of Massachusetts history.

13

I used to go at least once a week when I lived in Boston. I always had the lobster pie. Huge chunks of lobster mixed with some bread crumbs and broiled in a casserole dish. Oh my, it was to die for.

14

It’d be a shame if Dunwich got closed down, too. But that’s another story.

(There’s a cadre of people who suspect Lovecraft based the story on Mystery Hill/America’s Stonehenge, which is actually in North Salem, New Hampshire. One even went so far as to draw up a map with the story locales identified with Mystery Hill locations. Lovecraft Scholar S.T. Joshi claims that it ain’t so, that Lovecraft’s first documented visit to Mystery Hill postdates his writing of the syory, and that he probably had some other similar site, like Gungywamp (which is in Connecticut), in mind. Me, I think the Mystery Hillers are onto something, but I haven’t done any research on it myself.)

15

Whew - I thought you were talking about the Hilltop Bakery (Kaukauna, WI)
http://www.hilltopbakers.com/

Brian

16

Thank God the Hungry Heifer is still open! :cool:

17

Meh. I want to go to Melville’s.

Local lore is that, at its peak, the Hilltop was the top-grossing restaurant in the United States, with the Kowloon, on the other side of Route 1, was #3, with Tavern on the Green at #2. TOG is out of business too, btw.

Yep, absentee ownership can be deadly. Too bad. Now, we’re going to have another extravagant white elephant in town to match the Weylu’s pagoda. And when the cactus and the cows are gone, another part of the strip’s kitschy glory will be gone too.

18

Haven’t been there since the early 90s. It must have been right after they sold because the food was nowhere near as tasty as I’d remembered it.

Their other butcher shop is down in my general area. My mother used go in there every so often because, back then, their meat was better yet less expensive than any of the supermarkets. The last time I was in there (again, ages ago) it was a very sad imitation of what it used to be, except for the refrigeration :brr:

19

Also per local lore, Frank Giuffrida ran the place on a straight-cash basis, no debt, no credit. A delivery driver would leave with a check in hand, and a patron (for a long time) could not use a credit card, either.

I know of part-time waitresses who would make more money in one shift there than in an entire week at a day job, too.

20

Well, that sucked.
Left the house near Providence at 1630, picked up all and sundry, arrived just before 2000, to be met by a Saugus cop and a CLOSED sign.
Seems there was 400+ people in front of us.
They can’t handle the kind of business that would have been referred to as a ‘slow night’ a score of years ago.