![]() ![]() Publicity from the episode helped steer new customers to the diner, he says.If you’re looking for an inexpensive property to own in Wilton Manors, FL, a mobile home could be exactly what you need. Then Curry submitted an application to Food Network’s “American Diner Revival.” That winter renovation expert Ty Pennington and chef Amanda Freitag visited and gave Andrews Diner a facelift, replacing drab wood-paneled walls with palm-tree wallpaper and robin’s-egg-blue paint. But as the city’s youthful LGBT population moved in, the diner struggled to court fresh faces, and by 2016 was on the verge of closing. Perched on the northern edge of Wilton Manors, Andrews Diner, at first, attracted legions of older snowbirds and locals from nearby trailer parks. “They say, ‘Want some soup to take home?’ and ‘Do you have gloves yet? You need to come here and get some gloves.’ “ “They call to check on me every day,” says Curry, 57, and one of several employees laid off since the pandemic started. Longtime server Chuck Curry, who started as a customer until Angelo and Gerry hired him 20 years ago, jokingly describes himself as the “son they never had and the daughter they never wanted.” But their longtime greasy spoon may close if new ownership isn’t found before the end of the month. Gerri and Angelo Karaliolios, the owners of Andrews Diner in Wilton Manors since 1991, are retiring on April 30. “My dad talked to you about sports, my mom talked to you about musicals, but both would bite your ear off about politics,” Marla says. Gerri kissed her favorite customers on the lips and loved to talk with customers about her stuffed miniature schnauzers perched on the diner counter. Regulars often had coffee waiting for them when they sat at their usual booth. It was a family affair from the start: Marla, then 11, helped as hostess and cashier. After I was born, my dad liked to say to my mom, ‘I knocked you down.’ They’re very funny together.”Īfter they moved to Florida and bought the diner, Angelo and Gerri’s charm instantly enchanted locals. They went to Coney Island and had a hot dog. “So my dad said to mom, ‘I think we go out,’ in this very caveman-style voice. “My dad’s English at the time was poor and broken, but he was a fan of American idioms,” Marla recalls. As a cook in Queens he summoned the nerve to ask out his future wife Gerri, who worked at a restaurant across the street. A goat herder in small-town Greece, Karaliolios immigrated to New York at age 22 and became a dishwasher in Manhattan, although he liked strolling the city with a Wall Street Journal tucked beneath his arm. Leaving his diner without a successor is hardly what Angelo imagined when he bought it in 1991. “They’re disappointed, but you know, my dad just turned 68, and my mom just turned 77, and they’re ready to move on. “Originally we were supposed to fly down and plan a big going-away party, but of course that has all faded into the mist,” says Marla, who lives in New York. Her planned blowout party for Angelo and Gerri at the end of April had to be scrapped. Since then the Karaliolios have spent their mornings in an empty dining room, packaging turkey clubs to go.įor their daughter Marla Karliolios, who worked at the diner when her parents bought it in 1991, it is a bittersweet sendoff for her parents. That’s how every order has trickled in for the past month, after the coronavirus shutdown in March forced the couple to reduce staff to a single cook. After 28 years of dishing gyro omelettes and spinach pie at their longtime greasy spoon Andrews Diner, owners Gerri and Angelo Karaliolios plan to serve their last meal and retire on April 30. ![]()
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