The Weequahic Diner


by Larry Rozolsky

 

1940’s

I do not remember at what age when our family first started going there. We had in in at the “Diner”, mom was a waitress there. The stories she would tell us about the customers, the famous, infamous, the characters that came in and of course the Bauman Brothers. But it was the atmosphere and of course, if we children did not behave, a trip to the bathroom and the warning after if we did not behave, we would not come here again.

1960’s

So let us fast forward. I am now in my teens and driving. Friday and Saturday nights are spent with either a date or friends at a rear booth. The food was always great and sometimes mom waited on us. The monkey dishes filled with the “chef’s salad”, the dinner rolls, and the great cream pies and the most important item, the cheesecake! Pastry shell surrounding the very creamy cheesecake center, one could never find a better cheesecake anywhere.

Oh, have to go to work at the Diner Friday and Saturday nights, 6pm to 6am during the summer. Working alongside my mother, she is now the night manager is a trip. People know her, not just the regular customers, but people who have heard of her and the service she demands of the entire crew. It is a Saturday evening, 5pm, the parking lot is full and families are lined up out the door waiting to be seated. It is hot in the summer, so, and here is what people were amazed at; I would bring glasses of cold water and finger snacks out to those waiting.

Can’t forget the 3am crowd. A mix of every walk of profession mixing, cops, detectives, vise-squad, local Jersey mobsters, ladies of the evening, semi-drunks and well known singing artists having performed in NYC.

:Meet me at the Diner” and you know to go to the Weequahic Diner. It is gone now, I left NJ in 1972, returning to San Diego, CA where my final U.S. Navy station said, “no more snow here”. It is now 2014 and while dinning with my wife, one of the floor managers at the restaurant, being from NY, knew of the Diner. The history, warmth and friendliness that the Bauman Brothers created lives within us that have had the great fortune to eat and or work at the Diner.

P.S. I have the recipe for the cheesecake that Jeff the baker used.

 


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