Astoria’s Greek establishment Neptune Diner, serving up short-order classics on Astoria Blvd. since 1984, has joined the ranks of beloved city diners closing their doors. On Sunday, it shut down permanently to make way for a new high-rise development.
“Everybody’s sad about it,” Neptune’s manager Chris Maniatis told the New York Post. “People came to say their goodbyes.”
The Katsihtis family-owned business could not renew its lease on the property, which is being sold by its current owner, the Thomas Anagnostopoulos Family Trust.
A sprawling residential development will replace it.
Neptune Diner served up its final plates of eggs and pancakes on Sunday, ending a decades-long run for the business.
The current version of the diner opened in the early 1980s, but the building — with its red-tiled roof and stone facade — dates back to the 1960s.For many longtime customers, the demise of the diner — where one time David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve ate together — feels extremely personal.
In its heyday huge queues formed around it with expatriates waiting to get in, mainly on Fridays and Saturdays after attending Greek American events or meetings.
Greek diner in Astoria follows trend of closures
The Neptune’s closure follows a rash of other classic borough diners shuttering — a trend that has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic — including the East Village’s Odessa, Flushing’s Kane’s Diner, and Rego Park’s Shalimar Diner, all of which closed in recent years.
A New York Times report from 2016 estimated the number of diners in the city fell by half in the prior 20 years.
Like many diners across the city, Neptune was open 24/7 until the pandemic. Since 2020, its hours have been limited from 7 a.m. to midnight.
Sabrina Karpe, an Astoria local who visited Neptune Diner for the first — and last — time on Sunday, lamented that “there were diners every few blocks” just a few decades ago.
“The city is losing something that I think really defined what the city was,” Karpe told The Gothamist. “If you think about Seinfeld, where did they hangout? They hung out at a diner. That is like this quintessential New York television show.”
The two other locations the Katsihtis family opened — Brooklyn’s 12-year-old Neptune II and Bayside’s four-year-old Neptune Diner — will remain in business.
Astoria: The Greek town in NYC
Located in the northwestern corner of the New York City borough of Queens, Astoria was the place to be for Greeks who moved from their homeland to the United States around the turn of the last century.
Of course, the city of that time was nothing like the densely-populated Astoria you will find today. Back then, Greeks found themselves at home in Queens, as much of the borough was made up of farms and grew into what reminded many residents of a European cityscape.
“The Greek community in 1955 was living in Manhattan. From 1960, we started moving to Astoria. We liked it because there were not very high buildings. We felt like we were in Europe—in Greece,” Vasilios Gkatzonis, the owner of Akropolis meat market in Astoria, told Greek Reporter.
Related: Meet Elpida Vasiliadis, the Souvlaki Lady of Astoria
