The full question:
“There were a couple of restaurants on Dawson street in the early ’60s. One I think was close to where the Dairy Queen is now and one was a drive-in restaurant about where the current restaurant Two Fat Ladies is. Can you tell me the name of these two restaurants?”
And the answer:
A review of Wilmington City directories from the early 1960s lists only one restaurant near the Dairy Queen, Winnie’s Drive-In at 1601 Dawson St., Wilmington [Map this]. This is the same building that currently houses the Two Fat Ladies restaurant, which has been in operation for four years. The directories show that the Winnie’s restaurant building housed several different drive-ins in the 1960s, including Winnie’s Drive-In, Merritt Drive-In, Linnie’s Drive-In, and E&J Drive In. It became a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in 1970. You can still see where the drive-in window was.
There was a Dairy Queen restaurant across the street at 1620 Dawson St., Wilmington [Map this], but it was moved in the 1970s to its current location at 1515 Dawson St., Wilmington [Map this]. There is a photo of the Dairy Queen – in its previous location – in the lobby of the New Hanover County Government Center.
Date posted: December 6, 2011
User-contributed question by:
Lenwood King
The building that houses Two Fat Ladies was a KFC but before that there was another building. The current building was built as a KFC. The Dairy Queen was not a Restaurant like the one that replaced it. It only had window service and only sold ice cream, it was an ice cream stand.