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Is Charles Milte a moron?
- Category: Eat in Diners
- Published on Friday, 29 July 2011 00:10
As the diner world now knows, the iconic and historic Empire Diner in Manhattan closed and became the Highliner. We held out some hope that the new owners might be sensitive to the diner’s role in our heritage and leave well enough alone. But no. Several New York City media outlets have come out with stories about the diner of late, which of course means that the owners have ramped up their publicity campaign.
We certainly hope that the diner does well in its location — no small feat for a small restaurant in such a high value location — but descriptions of what new owner Charles Milte have done to the diner’s admittedly not-quite-original interior lead us to question his aesthetic sensibilities. In short, if what the papers printed about him is true, we can only conclude that this guy’s an idiot.
Does any of this make any sense?
To achieve that timeless effect, Milite gutted the venue, which was built in 1946 by the New Jersey-based Fodero Diner Co. Anything that was vintage (i.e., stainless steel) was temporarily put into storage, and he scoured old diner books and eBay for period details, such as conical aluminum light fixtures. Still, he did make some subtle tweaks. “All that linoleum and Formica is classic, but we wanted to warm it up,” he says, noting that the addition of mahogany is meant to evoke a train car on the Orient Express.
Read more here.