'A family diner like no other': Ottawa breakfast fixture John's to close after 51 years

After 51 years, the folks at John's Diner are about to fry up their last slabs of bacon.

The venerable Wellington Street W. breakfast spot — with its two-storey tall mural of original owner John Hatoum proudly presenting a cup of coffee — has been a longtime fixture of the local streetscape, ever since the first of countless customers walked through the doors decades ago.

"They're all good people. They support us, and we support them," said a busy Hatoum on Thursday morning, juggling a quick CBC interview with the demands of a packed restaurant on its second last day in business.

Hatoum emigrated from Lebanon in 1967. Seven years later, he opened his eponymous diner, initially at a different location a few blocks east.

He's now mostly retired, but with the family-run restaurant down two employees yesterday, he was pitching in again, helping get club sandwiches and three-egg omelettes onto the tables of hungry customers like Paul Marshall.

"[It's] pretty sad, pretty sad," said Marshall, who's been eating at John's on-and-off for the past 30 years.

"We're going to have to find another great little diner. Diners are the great institutions of North America."

'You don't feel like a number here'

The place was so packed Thursday that customers had to queue up on the sidewalk outside.

The lineup included married couple Mary Ella Keblusek and Andrew Drake, who moved to the neighbourhood two years ago.

"It's a family diner like no other. The extra care they put in — the way they put the cream in the coffee and they make a little swirl with it — you don't feel like a number here," Drake said. "You really feel like a person."

Keblusek recalled asking Hatoum's son Tony one day how the potatoes at John's always turned out so good — and how he pulled up a chair and shared their secret.

"He sat down and explained, 'They're all fresh. All of our ingredients are totally fresh, not out of a bag like most other diners [looking] to save money,'" Keblusek said.

"You could feel that when you got your food, how fresh and how healthy it all feels."

'A thrilling ride'

For Tony Hatoum, who's been co-running the diner with his brother Peter since their father stepped back in 2011, the blistering pace of the final few days means they'll be falling "face first into the finish line."

"It's been a thrilling ride, frankly, to work with your family and work with such a beautiful, engaged community," he said Thursday between orders.

"We realized early on you get out what you put in in life. And we immersed ourselves in this business and this neighbourhood, and we couldn't be happier."

That community, he said, has been wishing the end weren't in sight — from a three-year-old girl wondering why he didn't want to serve her breakfast anymore to an older gentleman joking that they should hold off on closing until after he died.

But after working there for decades, and with his own daughter at home, it was simply time to move on, Hatoum said.

The temptation to get back in the diner biz, however, might be hard to ignore.

"I have a little stand-alone garage at home that we're threatening to convert and take our coffee machine with us," he laughed. "I mean, it's just part of our DNA at this point."