The Ployes are back in Town

By Randy Garbin

Whenever I sit down to talk to Don Levy, I sense a wheel turning behind that subtle grin and soft-spoken demeanor. The man’s mild-mannered ways conceal a highly active mind that’s constantly generating ideas. Though a man of few words, the ones he chooses hit their mark. I rarely emerge from a conversation with Don without considering a fresh new thought relating to publishing or food service.

The evidence of this fertile mind appears throughout his Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown, Massachusetts. The menu graphics, the décor, the music in the background, and most importantly the food on the plates, all indicate someone unafraid to set a new standard for a venerable restaurant concept. Grafting “Deluxe” to the diner’s name hardly overstates the achievement here.

Having once lived in Watertown, I vividly remember this diner before Don stepped up to the grill. A breakfast-and-lunch-only affair, serving a basic and predictable menu, its former owners underutilized the splendid streamlined product of post-war optimism. Though it could seat about a hundred people, the Town Diner of those days missed a growing dinner market right at its doorstep. Prosperous and densely populated, Watertown really needed a good dinner spot. Night-owls seeking pancakes or maybe a cup of coffee and a good bread pudding just kept moving. The Town’s glorious neon signage, dark and decaying from years of neglect, beckoned to no one.

No more. When Don called me last summer with the news that he had become the diner’s new owner, several thoughts immediately crossed my mind. Remembering Don’s previous achievements at the Blue Diner, Boston’s answer to the upscale diner trend, I enthusiastically blessed this marriage. The Town needed someone with his marketing savvy and degree of culinary sophistication. Since the diner’s construction in the late 1940s, Watertown has evolved from a blue-collar Greek and Armenian enclave into a bedroom community for Boston’s young professionals. The diner could finally catch up with its market.

“We call it fine dinering,” Don grins, a concept that definitely appeals to the locals. “There are a lot of video production studios in this area, and those people come here all the time. I see one place having meetings here almost daily.”

For anyone nostalgic for the Blue Diner when it operated out of a blue diner on the corner of Kneeland and South Streets in downtown Boston, the Deluxe Town’s menu should induce déjà vu. Remember the ployes — that Acadian pancake made from corn meal? Miss the side order of “wets” — the fries with gravy, or the daily specials featuring mac and cheese, real roast turkey, or meat loaf? Still hankering for a plate of that homemade corned-beef hash made with fresh ingredients and expertly grilled? Step inside, friend. Nodding to the realities of a location far from the epicenter of hip, the Deluxe Town Diner has made a break with the Blue’s reputation for top shelf pricing. Even Don acknowledgs (with a hint of a wince) that he doesn’t dare attempt to fetch the same prices.

Technically speaking, the Blue Diner still exists, though in a different building about two doors down from the original. Having started the business in 1986, Don rode the wave of prosperity that propelled Boston into a center of creative, high tech and financial-service industries during that decade. Optimism for the future inspired Don to expand operations by opening up the adjacent Loading Zone, a restaurant doing for Southern-style cooking and barbecue what the Blue Diner had done for the diner.

At this point, however, his sense of timing failed him. The Zone opened just in time for the recession and the outbreak of the Gulf War. “People tended to stay home and watch the news rather than go out and eat,” he surmised. While the Blue Diner continued to do well, the new venture hung like an albatross around the whole operation. Don eventually sold out and left the scene. The new owners closed the Loading Zone and eventually transplanted the Blue Diner into that space, selling off the actual diner to new operators.

Ten years later, will history repeat itself? “Business dropped off 20% after September 11 … but it’s come back. We’re luckier than the restaurants in downtown Boston that depend on the tourist trade.” Like the Blue Diner. Unlike the Blue, the Town serves a real neighborhood, and by my reading, such places hold their own in periods of crisis.

Of course, time hasn’t stood completely still. Since it opened, the Town has added several new items, such as the lentil vegetable soup and a fine chowder in the land of fine chowders. Lunchtime sandwiches, hearty and served with side salads of fresh greens (the menu boards promise “no iceberg here”) compel repeat visits to eventually sample the whole menu. And I’ll go out on a limb here and declare that from my experience of eating in nearly 400 diners across the country, that no diner serves a better cup of coffee.

The diner aficionado has other things to love about this place. Though not a true diner in the sense of its on-site construction, this roadside gem wraps around an original 1930s Worcester diner that now serves as its kitchen. The patron can see hints of this in the access to the rest rooms, up in the ceiling. This lends itself to a further bit of irony since Don’s last diner, though conforming closely to the construction of a real pre-fab unit, was also built on its site about the same time as the Town.

Preservationists should also appreciate the restoration of the diner’s interior. Don removed the faux-wood grain paneling that covered the azure-blue porcelain tiles, and in a bit of inspired remodeling, he replaced the ceiling laminate panels with attractive brushed aluminum. He’s also steadily restoring the exterior neon, dimmed for years. Stylish lighting treatments, shoe-blacked vinyl booths and an obvious appreciation for diner heritage make the Town an instant favorite in my book.

It’s good to have Don Levy back on the scene. The area’s diners once again run the full gamut from the basic meat-and-potatoes joint all the way to the envelope-pushing Deluxe Town. Perhaps its time to return to Watertown.