STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — On a recent morning, as the breakfast crowd melted into the lunch rush, Mike Moudatsos wrapped up a meeting with a friend and took a moment to talk. It was a typical busy day for him, bouncing between diners and checking on things—the daily drill. He started at Mike’s Olympic Grill Diner, 1637 Forest Ave., in Port Richmond. Later, he said, he’d head to his Great Kills spot, Mike’s Place. For now, his wife Cathy supervised the bustling Unicorn Diner—a full house inside with a steady stream of third‑party drivers picking up orders at the door.
On this Tuesday morning, Moudatsos settled into a booth near the entrance. Customers drifted in and out, offering him a hello or a handshake, each greeting him by name. There was a reverence to it—quiet, familiar, deeply respectful. Mike ticked off a variety of reasons for closing Dakota. The first sounded simple, “Because it was too close to here. I have one diner here, another 10 blocks away.”
But proximity wasn’t the only issue. As for the Dakota Diner that just closed, Mike explained a longer arc of ownership and operation. “First I bought the building. Then I ran it for a while. I was supposed to close it, but the people wanted me to stay. Things changed about two or three years ago.”
The change, he said, was access with traffic patterns. “You couldn’t get into the diner. You had to come around from the other end of Richmond Avenue to the parking lot. The lot was too small. People didn’t want to cross the street, even though I rented out the lot across the way.” He shook his head at the geometry of it all and added, “For me, it’s better to close and rent it.”…