Changing of the guard at old-time eatery in Millville

Change comes slowly to Jim's Lunch, and folks around Millville like it that way. Tuesday's special is always liver and onions, and until a few years ago, takeout orders rang in on a rotary phone.

"I still miss it," says owner Rochelle Maul, whose grandfather James Arnes founded the place in 1923.

When this downtown institution, now closed for the season, reopens in October — summer closings are another Jim's Lunch tradition — Maul herself will be missed, along with her husband.

She and Jim Sr. are retiring; their children Jim Jr. and Nichole Maul Catlett are taking over.

"I started working here when I was 12," Rochelle, 64, says. "I remember when hamburgs were four for a buck." (More about the hamburgs in a moment.)

They're $2.60 each now, hot off the grill in the East Main Street window, which overlooks the heart of an old glassmaking town striving to reinvent itself as an arts center.

There's a second grill too, past the 11 stools along the counter and the row of booths in the main dining area. Jim's Lunch seats about 65 and serves breakfast, lunch, and early dinner; famous customers include former Gov. Christie Whitman, entertainer Al Alberts, and L.A. Angels centerfielder and Millville native Mike Trout.

"He comes in and eats five hamburgs at a time," Rochelle says.

No wonder: The "hamburgs" (an old-school colloquialism still current at Jim's) are served on powdery little rolls, with a unique sauce invented by the founder himself; the ingredients remain a secret.

"If we tell you," Nichole says, "we have to shoot you."

Should such an event occur, it's equally unlikely anyone at Jim's Lunch could hear it above the din of cooking, serving, and dining.

"It's a nut house," says Jim Sr., 65, showing me around the kitchen. It's where he cooks breakfast from 6 to 11, daily.

"If you don't work hard," he observes, "you don't work here."

Michelle Parliman, one of the 19 employees in perpetual motion, started as a waitress 14 years ago and has become "my right hand," says Nichole.

Knowing the territory helps. Parliman grew up and still lives in Millville, where the glass jobs are gone but many people work in one of the five correctional facilities in Cumberland County.

"Our customers are mostly people from Millville or who work [here], and everybody knows everybody. It's people you grew up with, and your kids know their kids," says Parliman, a married mother of three. "It's like being in your own kitchen, at home."

Kimberly Jones, of Port Norris, eats at Jim's "at least three times a week" and has for years. "I like the prime rib on Saturdays," she says.

The turkey-and-trimmings feasts on Fridays — Jim's has seven ovens and roasts 30 birds a week — keep Dan Haer coming back.

"For 20 years," says Haer, who owns a painting company in neighboring Vineland. "The turkey's the best. And the people are like family."

As a boy, John Redden, 59, visited Jim's Lunch with his father, often enjoying a milkshake on the house if he got a hit during Little League. Now the head of the city rescue squad, he's been a regular ever since.

"It's nice to get away from fancy," Redden says. "Here you get your sandwich on a piece of wax paper. And it's excellent."

Diners who yearn for branzino or grilled lettuce need to look elsewhere. Trendy, Jim's Lunch is not.

"We don't have lemon pepper," says Jim, who nevertheless is proud of the homemade dishes throughout the menu. (I can vouch for Rochelle's crab cakes. As well as the bread pudding. And the rice pudding).

"We never change it," Rochelle says, as the lunch rush subsides.

She begins to cry.

"It's the first time I've choked up about retirement."

Nichole takes a seat, and also tears up.

"I hope my brother and I do as good a job as my parents have done," she says.

No worries.