MATT KATZ / Staff
Elgin Diner in Camden, closed in 2007, has new owners who plan to reopen by the end of this month. They've started interviewing servers for the Mount Ephraim Avenue location.
Elgin Diner, down on Mt. Ephraim, rising again
In depressing economic times, the reopening of a small restaurant on a nondescript commercial strip may be meaningless to the financial analysts on Wall Street and in Washington.
But this is a diner reopening. A real Jersey diner, born in 1958, with red stools at the counter and working jukeboxes ready to rock out Tony Bennett and Otis Redding.
And it's returning to life in a city, Camden, that doesn't get a lot of reopenings, even in good times.
So tuck that napkin in your collar and get ready to be called "hon" by a kindly lady with a pencil in her hair, because the Elgin Diner on Mount Ephraim Avenue is coming back.
"Everybody is anxious and hopeful that when it opens, it's the same old place," said George Vallianos, whose family owned the business from 1961 to 2003.
Vallianos, 60, sold it to two men. After that partnership dissolved, the diner went into foreclosure. Since 2007, the stainless steel-and-brick building has been vacant, its lot a dump for broken furniture.
Then, last week, two messages were hung under the classic Elgin Diner sign: "Under New Management" and "Hiring Server."
Inside, behind faded pink window blinds, prospective hires found a three-year-old Tomato Florentine soup special still listed on the board.
"I have child care. I have everything in place, so I'm good," said Leslie Pinder, a Camden mother of eight who was applying for a part-time waitress position.
New co-owner Ali Yardim gave Pinder his cell phone number and told her to be in touch.
Yardim, 55, and his son bought the diner from the bank because "we got the right price," he said. Yardim owns the Bear (Del.) Diner, so he knows the trade - though he's Turkish, not the traditional Greek, like Vallianos.
"People are waiting for it" to reopen, Yardim said. He hopes to serve the first piping-hot cup of coffee in a white mug by month's end.
The neighborhood, near Woodlynne, is one of Camden's most thriving and safest. But around the time Yardim signed the papers to buy the place, vandals broke through the back door and stole the copper pipes. He has spent $50,000 on repairs, he said.
More work is needed. In one corner of the parking lot, there is still a pile of trash - broken table legs and even a small boat.
Yardim said he would update the menu. Asked what the best item will be, he said assuredly: "Everything."
When Vallianos' father bought the diner in 1961, Camden was a different place. Thousands worked at the city's factories.
"It was amazing. . . . At 4 o'clock, the whistle blew and the guys with their lunch pails would line up at the counter," Vallianos said.
In 1963, Camden Lanes, a 60-lane bowling alley, opened across the street. Malls, with their food courts, were in their infancy, so Christmas was a boom-time. Before and after holiday shopping downtown, the Elgin Diner was a leading place to refuel.
The Elgin's name was inspired by the brand of watch Vallianos' father wore. Its first owners called it the Fairlynne Diner for its proximity to Camden's Fairview neighborhood and the borough of Woodlynne.
It was constructed by Kullman Industries, a prominent builder of prefabricated roadside diners in the 1950s style.
Vallianos worked at the Elgin as a teenager, then went to the University of Pennsylvania, the military, and culinary school before returning to the family business.
By the 1980s, the place had become retro-fabulous among buffs who traveled the country visiting iconic diners.
Larry Cultrera, who writes the blog Diner Hotline, remembered visiting it during a diner symposium run by a commercial archaeology group in 1993. "It was in an extreme state of preservation, and the food, service, and atmosphere made it a highlight of the tour," he wrote in a post last year.
Vallianos said yesterday that he only served food that he would give to his best friend. Local health officials would eat there, he boasted.
With the rise of fast-food chains, the business grew less profitable, he said. Suburbia lured the restaurant crowd. Headlines about the "most dangerous" and "poorest" city in America hurt, too, he said.
"Hopefully, they bring it back to its former glory, but it's going to take the people of Camden and the people who work in the area to make it happen," he said.
Vallianos hopes a diverse crowd will return, take a stool, and "talk about anything."
And if the conversation turns sour, "you can always move down a counter seat," he said.
Contact staff writer Matt Katz at 856-779-3919 or mkatz@phillynews.com.
