New England's diners

By Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent, 04/13/03

		The original baked enamel neon sign announcing the Boulevard Diner was restored along with the rest of the famous diner in 1999. (Globe photo / Lane Turner)  More on New England  Eat your way across New England  Providence area diners  New England diners  Massachusetts diners
		Printable version Fare and lore What follows is a list of historical diners, mostly culled from Kathleen Kelly Broomer's article written for the Massachusetts Historical Commission, but with a few additions. For more listings in Broomer's article, go to www.state.ma.us/sec/mhc/mhcidx.htm and click on "Massachusetts Diners." Agawam Diner 166 Newbury Turnpike, Rowley 978-948-7780 Open Sunday-Thursday, 5 a.m.-11 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 5 a.m.-midnight. $2.10-$15. Stainless steel diner, manufactured by the Fodero Co., 1954. Boulevard Diner 155 Shrewsbury St., Worcester 508-791-4535 Open 24 hours. $1.60-$9. 1936 Worcester Lunch Car Co. diner. Casey's Diner 36 South Ave., Natick 508-655-3761 Open weekdays, 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m.; Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. $1.80-$3.10. Worcester Lunch Car Co. diner, 10-stooler, no booths. Built in 1922, and run by succeeding generations of the same family, it's one of the oldest operating diners in Massachusetts. Club Diner 145 Dutton St., Lowell 978-452-1679 Open daily, 5 a.m.-2 p.m. $1.75-$7. 1933 Worcester Lunch Car Co. diner. Joe's Diner 51 Broadway, Taunton 508-823-2193 Open weekdays, 6 a.m.-3 p.m.; overnights (11 p.m.-1 p.m.) from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. $1.90-$6. 1940 Sterling diner. Kenmore Diner 250 Franklin St., Worcester 508-792-5125 Closed Monday. Open Tuesday, 5 a.m.-3 p.m.; overnights (11 p.m.-3 p.m.) from Tuesday night to Friday afternoon; overnights (11 p.m.-1 p.m.) from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. Earliest stainless steel-clad diner in Massachusetts, manufactured by the Jerry O'Mahony Co., 1940. Modern Diner 364 East Ave., Pawtucket, R.I. 401-726-8390 Open Monday-Saturday, 6 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; Sunday, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. $1.25-$8.50. Moran Square Diner 6 Myrtle Ave., Fitchburg 978-343-9549 Open weekdays, 5 a.m.- 2 p.m.; Sunday, 7 a.m.-noon. $1.75-$5.75. 1940 Worcester Lunch Car Co. diner. Rosebud Diner 381 Summer St., Somerville 617-666-6015 Open weekdays, 8 a.m.-10:30 p.m.; weekends, 8 a.m.-midnight. $4-$13.95. 1941 Worcester Lunch Car Co. semi-streamliner diner. Salem Diner 70 Loring Ave., Salem 978-741-7918 Open weekdays, 5:30 a.m.-3 p.m.; Saturday, 5:30 a.m.-2 p.m.; Sunday, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. $2.70-$6.99. 1941 Sterling Streamliner Diner. Sisson's Diner 561 Wareham St., Middleborough 508-946-0359 Open Monday-Saturday, 6 a.m.-2 p.m.; Sunday, 7 a.m.-1 p.m. $1.95-$6.95. A streetcar operated by the New Bedford & Onset Street Railway Co.; originally built 1926-8. "Diners: Still Cookin' in the 21st Century" Johnson & Wales University 315 Harborside Boulevard, Providence 401-598-2805; www.culinary.org Open Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission: $5 adults; $2 students; $1 children under 18.

Late Saturday afternoon is slow at the Boulevard Diner on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester. The neon sign blinks on over the shiny, stainless steel-sided dining car. Some college students fill one of the six booths, an older couple sit at another. An old man in a felt hat and sagging corduroy slacks sits on a stool and sips coffee. Waitress Ronnie Bello swabs the counter near an old sign that proclaims "Chocolate Pudding 20 cents."

A woman comes in, a stranger in town. She's looking to buy a house, and her real estate agent dropped her at the Boulevard to get the lay of the land.

"Buying a house! I wish I was paying rent again," Bello sighs. "The taxes! The water bills!"

The couple in the booth ask the woman what neighborhoods she's looking in. They know a broker - she's 82, but she's plugged in. Maybe she'd like to call?

Even if you've never been there before, the folks at the Boulevard welcome you like an old friend. That's the way diners are. Everybody's welcome. Pull up a stool and have a cup of coffee and a chat.

"The counter is a leveler," says Richard J. S. Gutman, author of "American Diner Then and Now" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, paperback), the bible of diner history. "No matter who you are, you're welcome there. Rubbing elbows, you can strike up a conversation."

In the last 20 years, thanks in part to a nostalgia sparked by the 1982 Barry Levinson film "Diner," diners have experienced a renaissance. Rickety old dining cars have been bought up and restored to their former luster by entrepreneurs with a taste for simple food, served fast, and service that is warm and friendly. Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island have more old diners than you'd care to count. That's because diners started here.

The first diner was a horse-drawn lunch wagon that Walter Scott put into service in Providence in 1872, and from which he served sandwiches, boiled eggs, pies, and coffee. He worked in the wee hours, after the restaurants had closed.

The city of Worcester is as legendary in diner lore as Providence. In 1884, Sam Jones opened a night lunch cart there. Three years later, he built one that had a complete kitchen inside and room for customers to sit while they ate. Lunch cart manufacturers sprang up in the city; in 1906, the Worcester Lunch Car and Carriage Manufacturing Co. came on the scene. Many of the diners still serving up eggs and bacon at dawn today are Worcester-built cars, although the company shut its doors in 1959.

In Providence, the museum at Johnson & Wales University last week opened "Diners: Still Cookin' in the 21st Century," an exhibition curated by Gutman. The Massachusetts Historical Commission recently published an article by architectural historian Kathleen Kelly Broomer detailing some of the best-maintained and architecturally and historically accurate diners in the area.

The Boulevard Diner, one of the only diners around that's still open 24 hours, is named there. The Boulevard, built in 1936, is also one of a few that have been owned and operated by the same family for decades. John C. George, also known as Ringo, came to work at the Boulevard in 1945 and bought it in 1961. When he died in 1993, his son James George took over. A painting of Ringo, a Tony Bennett look-alike, hangs over one of the doors.

Another son, Michael Wheeler, manages the Boulevard, and in 1999, he oversaw its restoration.

"It was starting to get old. It was known as an old diner," Wheeler said. "I hate to use the word greasy spoon, but that's what it was. So we closed it down for three months."

They washed the place from floor to ceiling. They reupholstered the stools. They had the creamer and the pie case dipped in chrome. Wheeler took each window latch from the beveled windows, stripped them down, and had them dipped in chrome. Then he replaced the stained-glass borders in the windows. Don't ask about the latches on the ancient refrigerator - he had to send them to California for restoration.

The coffee urn, Wheeler says, is original to the diner. It brews a strong and flavorful cup. The day the family reopened for business, they charged 1936-era prices for food: Spaghetti and meatballs went for a quarter.

The standard Worcester diner sported a barrel roof, porcelain ceiling, and stainless steel siding. Floors were tiled. They were modeled after rail cars. (Sisson's diner in Middleborough actually did operate as a streetcar. Today, it sits on Wareham Street, and has a kitchen and dining room extension built onto the back of the original narrow car, which has a headlight at one end.)

Chris and Mary Gianetti bought the Moran Square Diner in Fitchburg, a 1940 Worcester Lunch Car, nine years ago from the Vitelli family, which had owned it since day one.

"It was closed, sitting here," Chris Gianetti recalls. "They wanted to sell it, but not move it. I'm from Fitchburg, and I wanted a neighborhood place. They had the thing paid for a million times over."

Like many diners, Moran Square is a small-scale operation. Gianetti does all the cooking, figuring that once the place is paid off - this year for the diner, four or five years off for the land beneath it - then he'll hire another cook.

It's easy to see the charm of diners at the Moran Square, especially after the breakfast rush. Gianetti mans the grill, right behind the counter. Although many diners now have kitchen extensions, it was the rhythm and jive of the action behind the counter that once drew the customers in.

One of the highlights of "Diners: Still Cookin' in the 21st Century" is an actual dining car: the old Ever Ready Diner of Providence, which was donated to the university's culinary school in 1989. In a Providence Journal article that year about the donation, an old-time customer is quoted: "It always had the most funny guys running the place. Like a floor show every noon, and it was like free entertainment with your franks and beans."

Today, if it's not the cooks at the grill, it's the often wisecracking waitresses behind the counter who keep up the song and dance. When a customer asks the waitress at the Club Diner in Lowell for a receipt so she can expense it at work, the waitress eyes the $4.95 ticket and says, "That will be $24.95, then."

Another company, Sterling Diners, had its heyday in the late 1930s. Sterling adapted a streamlined design - a look that spoke to aerodynamics and speed, and was emblematic of airplanes and trains. Joe's Diner in Taunton is a Sterling. Owner Ken Babbitt bought Joe's 18 years ago in Everett and took five months to restore the building from the ground up.

"We have a new roof, new tiles, we did all the booths up," Babbitt says. "We have the original porcelain ceiling, and most of the original equipment. We have a gas-fired coffee urn. We replaced it once, but kept it as original as we could get."

The Modern Diner in Pawtucket, R.I., also a Sterling Streamliner, was the first diner recognized by the National Register of Historic Places. Frank Aguiar and his brother-in-law Nick Demou bought the place in 1985, when the city put it on the auction block. Unlike most older diners, which have a counter that runs down the center and booths against the outer wall, the Modern has a counter on one end and a horse-shoe assortment of booths at the other.

"Our main draw is breakfast," Aguiar says. "On weekends, we have everything from lobster benedict to a loaded Belgian waffle to filet mignon. The line goes out into the parking lot."

Breakfast is the gold standard at diners, most of which are open from 5 or 6 a.m. to 2 or 3 p.m., daily. Fast-food chains opening in the '50s, '60s, and '70s put a stop to most diners' 24-hour business.

"But here's a happy story," says Gutman. The Agawam Diner in Rowley, a fixture on Route 1 since 1954, was threatened when a McDonald's opened across the street in the '90s.

"It had no impact on their business at all," Gutman reports.

Before "fast food" you could get your food fast day and night at most diners. When the Salem Diner, a Sterling Streamliner, opened in 1941, Gutman reports, the crowds were so big that the staff flipped omelets, pancakes, and burgers for three days and nights until things slowed down, and then they locked the door just to catch their breath.

Today, James and Stella Georgakakis run the Salem Diner, which can't be moved from its Loring Street location in Salem because it's on the National Register. It's the only Sterling Streamliner left in the state since My Tin Man Diner in Bourne was destroyed three years ago in a fire.

"The grandfather came, then the son, and now the grandkids are coming in," says Stella, as a customer sips hot cocoa at the counter. "It's the same hot meals, the same food. Fast and homemade at good prices."

The Georgakakises are the third family to run the Salem Diner. They bought the place just two years ago. "It's easy to run and compact," says Stella. "And the people are so friendly."

Back at the Boulevard Diner, Michael Wheeler's brother John, better known as Junior, hand-shapes a burger and throws it on the grill. Ronnie Bello, the waitress, pops a slice of apple pie in the oven to heat. The woman looking for a house has the 82-year-old broker on her cellphone. The old man in the felt hat and corduroy pants has finished his meal at the counter. He stands up.

"I'm leaving!" he announces.

"I'll see you later," he tells the woman on the cellphone, who smiles at him. To Bello, he says, "I love you." She waves. "I love you too, honey."

Cate McQuaid is a freelance writer who lives in Haverhill.