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A little girl holds her mom’s hand as they look down into the giant pit of a construction site on Kingsway in 1972.

She’s confused.

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“I couldn’t understand how a restaurant was going to come out of this hole,” Helen Taraviras Zambus says 44 years later.

Come out a restaurant did — and Tops became an East Van fixture.

All good things and all that, however. On Sunday, Aug. 28, Tops will serve its last meals to the public, as 80-year-old owner Steve Taraviras, Helen’s father, hangs up his oven mitts and retires after spending pretty much every day at the restaurant since it opened.

“I hate to leave this place,” said Steve, sitting with his three children in the family booth by the restaurant’s entrance. “I’ve met so many people and 95 per cent of my customers are repeat customers.”

Over the years the family has seen kids in the 1970s become parents in the ’90s and grandparents today.

“My customers, they are crying,” Steve said.