A few weeks ago I walked into Angie’s Café in Buena and the place was packed.
That surprised me — not because Angie’s isn’t good, but because we’ve spent the better part of this year watching Jersey diners disappear. The Stelton Diner in Edison is closing Memorial Day weekend after 48 years. The Red Lion in Southampton has been dark for nearly three years, the lot full of weeds, the marble lion pedestal sitting empty at the Route 206 and Route 70 circle. I wrote about both of them last week and I haven’t stopped thinking about them since.
So walking into Angie’s — the red awning, the neon, the bench out front, the kind of place that looks exactly like what your brain conjures when someone says Jersey diner — felt like catching my breath. These places still exist. Some of them are still busy. Not all of them are gone yet…