The Dining Car: All day, every day in the Northeast

We always hear about the shiny, new food companies. The Spot is a series about the Philadelphia area's more established establishments and the people behind them.

Philadelphia native Joe Morozin launched his first diner in 1940, when he was just 16 years old, said his daughter Nancy. Over the next two decades, his luck fluctuated as he opened and closed more than a dozen other spots, including the GI Inn and the White Way seafood house.

Then he decided to give the Northeast a try. Refusing to heed friends who said it was crazy to pick an area that was mostly orchards and farmland, Joe ordered a custom-made car from Swingle Diners, and in 1960, opened the Torresdale Diner at 8828 Frankford Ave.

The 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week, comfort-food eatery turned out to be a hit. In 1976, its name officially changed to the Dining Car.

As the end of his 20-year lease neared, Joe bought the property next door and made plans to open a full-service restaurant and disco. Just months before it was to launch, the restaurant's building was destroyed by a fire. Taking the catastrophe as a sign, Joe scrapped his plans for a fancier place. He ordered another car from Swingle, and in 1980, opened the second incarnation of the Dining Car at 8826 Frankford Ave.

Soon after the new location came online, Joe, now 91, decided to retire and hand the business over to his three children, Nancy, Joseph and Judy, who still run the place today.

Nancy, 59, the oldest of the Morozin kids, acts as the Dining Car's general manager. On a recent afternoon, she sipped a cup of Ellis coffee and talked about how to serve upward of 10,000 customers a week, and why her chef makes just about everything from scratch - down to the maple syrup. She also dished on what it was like to work with Guy Fieri, who featured the Dining Car on a January 2008 episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

Is it true that your dad ran more than a dozen restaurants before the Dining Car?

Well, in the 1940s, when he met my mother, he was running a place called the White Way, and that was his 13th restaurant. He would get a little place, lose it, sell it, stay on as a dishwasher and start again. Just one foot in front of the other for a lot of years. Until the White Way, and that did pretty good. Then he heard about the Northeast. There was nothing here; it was all orchards. But he took a gamble and opened the Torresdale Diner. At first it was just a little L-shaped spot, but it did really well, so he started adding onto it, expanding the dining room.

And then he moved it to the adjacent spot?

We were going to put a restaurant here. There was a big, beautiful Victorian home, and he had the same fellas that did Windows on the World design a restaurant and disco for us. But then it caught on fire. During construction, when the building was more or less empty, some neighborhood kids got in there and started a fire to keep warm. The firefighters had to crawl all over it and it just got tore up. We had to knock it down. So my father took that as a sign that he wasn't supposed to own a restaurant. We had a big family meeting, and he was like, "We're doing what we know how to do. We're diner people. We're opening another diner."

What makes a diner, a diner, in your view?

To me, a diner is always something that's built in another location and shipped to the spot that it's in. It always has a counter. Usually it has longer hours. Also, the menu is usually big, with a lot of comfort food.

Have you always been open 24/7?

Yup. We're closed on Christmas; that's it. It's always been that way, back to the Torresdale Diner. I don't know how much longer it will be, though...

Is there not as much 'round-the-clock business?

Not like when I was young. We used to go nightclubbing and we'd come here after and there would be a line 45 minutes long to get in the place. But things are still good. There was a time in the '90s when all the chain restaurants came in; that kind of hurt us a bit. They pilfered guests and staff. All of a sudden, the lines weren't as long, and they didn't last as long. So now when I see that we still do sometimes have lines during the day, I'm thankful. You have to earn your right for that guest to walk through that door every single day.

Do you do that by offering good value?

I think our prices are pretty good. We get the best of both worlds. Because, when times are good, the fast-food customer's moving up to the Dining Car, and when times are bad, the tablecloth customer is moving down. In '08, I remember once walking onto the floor and saying to my manager, "Whoa, look around. Nothing but business suits, pearls, ties. These are all your Center City people." It's a pretty good niche to have; we get them coming and going. We're pretty lucky.

What are your best-sellers?

Last week, we went through 80 gallons of French onion soup; that's always popular. But since it was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, the chicken croquettes just really took off. We just can't keep them in. We sell about 300 orders a week here.

How did you get on the show?

It's a crazy procedure. In 2007, a scout called me up and asked me to put together a bunch of recipes  and get some info to them. And let me tell you, when these people say jump, you say how high, because they are moving fast - everything is yesterday with these TV people. You can't say, "Well, I'll call you in a few days," because they're like, click, on to the next place. I was getting ready to go to Paris with a friend, and I remember I canceled my trip.

So then you give them all that information. They say thank you very much, we're gonna give it to the producers. So the producers look it over. Then they call you and say, "Yes, fine, you passed. Now we want this, this and this for the next set of producers." Here we go again. You do everything you need to do, get it all together, give it to the next set. They look at it - "Yup, great, you passed, now we need this, this and this" and then they give it to the executive producers.

Then Guy Fieri actually walks through the door, and changes everything.

So he didn't choose the dish you had prepared?

No, not all of them. But he really was a lot of fun. He was a little bit more off-color than he is on camera; he was funny. He's pretty genuine. What you see is what you get. Every single thing they do is on camera. Everything. Like you know how some shows you bring all the ingredients, and then you bring the finish product? Nope. We had a crepe batter that needs to sit overnight, so their camera people sat with it overnight. Nothing gets done off-camera. Nothing.

Do you expect to be here 10 years from now?

I hope so. But I'm not getting any younger here, so please don't make me work any longer than that. My brother and sister and our chef, Larry Thum, just opened a cafe in Broomall, Pa., called the Apple Walnut Cafe. It's named after our famous apple walnut pie - we sell thousands of pies here every week. We call it the pie that built a cafe. So we're planning to open more of those. We'll see.

The Dining Car

8826 Frankford Ave., 215-338-5113

Open 24 hours a day