o the die-hard diner lover, it’s getting harder to find places that are not only close to their original condition, but that also have the same old-town feeling that greeted you the first time you walked in.
Brigid and Richard Gore’s monitor-roofed Central Diner is one of those places. Located in the center of Millbury, a town that sits about five miles from downtown Worcester, Massachusetts, this Worcester Dining Car feels (and looks) just like the same place I used to sneak out of fourth grade lunch for to get hamburgers loaded with catsup instead.
Brigid fell in love with diners as a teenager, when she visited every diner in Worcester, which had well over a dozen to choose from at the time. “If I was late for school – I went to nearby North High School – we went to the Blue Belle Diner [now sadly idle and in storage in Milford, Mass.]. When the school moved to Harrington Way [on the other side of the city], we went to Charlie’s Diner.”
Her passion continued into adulthood, and one weekend, she and her husband were drawn into the fraternity of diner owners. “We used to drive-by [the Central Diner] all the time, and it was always closed,” Brigid recalls. “I wanted to see what the inside looked like. We went by on a Sunday afternoon and I noticed the hours sign had been turned around and said ‘For Sale.’”
After nearly three months of intense cleaning, the Central was back in business. The Gores love the closeness they have with their customers. “It’s one of those things where everything’s up front,” Brigid says. “There’s no room to hide in a diner. If you’re good, you’re really good. If you’re bad, you’ll get immediate feedback.”
Richard’s grill is overlooked by a series of Marine-related bumper stickers and related “Semper Fi” items. Of course, not every serviceman and woman is a Marine, and once when Richard was away on business, the customers had a little fun. “The natives brought in lots of Navy stuff,” Brigid laughs. “They decorated with Navy water bottles and put a Navy banner over his Marine poster. And when he returned on Friday after being out of town for a week, they sang “Anchors Away” as he came in.”
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About the only time Brigid Gore will take orders from anyone is from behind a counter. Below, the original Central Lunch was placed on this location in 1910, and replaced by the current diner in 1930.
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The breakfast and weekly menu board features the daily specials – meatloaf or beans and franks on Tuesday, pasta on Wednesday, shepherd’s pie on Thursday, and American chop suey on Friday. It’s the basics, which fits the Central perfectly.
“We eliminated what we’re not good at,” Brigid says. “We’ve got a small kitchen downstairs, so Friday’s meal is catch-as-catch-can. It varies from creamed salmon to clam chowder to pouched salmon with mayonnaise dressing.”
There’s one item on the menu that almost every first-time visitor asks about. But even after asking what the “SOS Plate” entails, you can’t fully understand what’s involved unless you’ve served in the U.S. military. “SOS is a white sausage gravy with dried beef from Hormel – it’s along the lines of Spam where nobody knows what it’s made of,” Brigid explains. “It’s what a lot of military people got aboard their ships, though most of them had hamburger and milk. Richard makes it with cream and sausage and puts the dried beef in it.”
Brigid thought the SOS was going to be a disaster. She was wrong. “Before we opened, we had a knock-down argument over it,” she admits. But Richard, in this instance, was right. “On the weekend, he has to make a double batch – a couple of gallons – and we have people who are disappointed if we don’t have it.”
As your eyes survey the dining car, you can’t help but notice the souvenir coffee cups for sale ($5) and even more obvious, the extensive display of ducks. “That happened because one of our regular customers used to bring in her granddaughter and asked if she could bring in a couple of toys for her,” Brigid explains. “She brought these four rubber duckies with names, and it just multiplied from there. They’ve gone on trips, seen the Alaskan Pipeline, been in hot tubs, and been duct-taped to a UPS truck.”
On the mid-September Saturday when we dropped in, there were only a few customers in the counter seats around 11:15 a.m., approximately three-quarters of an hour before closing time. Five minutes later, all the counter spaces were taken. Kids in their youth soccer shirts and young tykes in their baby carriers shared the counter space, while Brigid kept customers updated on their orders, telling one, “Your pancakes are on the grill.” If you’ve ever spent what seems an eternity waiting for a meal, you know how appreciated this kind of service is.
The secret to long-term success in owning a diner? “You need to maintain it, it has to be clean, and it has to have a comfortable atmosphere,” Brigid declares. “And, you also have to be an unlicensed psychologist and not reveal a word people say to anyone. You learn an awful lot about the people in town you don’t want to hear.”
As the Central Diner location celebrates 90 years of serving the people of Millbury, she’s heard plenty of history about its previous owners. The original diner, a barrel-roofed structure, was established by the O’Connors in 1910 before being sold to the Gillert family, who served the townsfolk of Millbury from 1924 until 1987. The current Worcester Dining Car (#673) arrived in Millbury on October 30, 1930.
Brigid says the Gillert reign came to the end when the diner was sold to a woman from Rhode Island. But “she couldn’t cook” and leased it to Lorraine, who kept the tradition alive through the late ‘90s. A couple of other owners took over the diner, but seemed to have suddenly lost interest. “When we bought it, it was still stocked as if they had walked out the door like they were coming back,” Brigid says, “but it had been a few months at that point.”
The townspeople of Millbury, and all diner aficionados, can be thankful the Central Diner is now in the loving hands of Dick and Brigid Gore.
“It’s a communal experience where you also get to have your privacy,” my wife Louise declares upon exiting out onto Millbury center, in front of the locally owned Elm Draught House movie theater. “It exemplifies the whole reason people go to diners.”
The Central Diner is located at 90 Elm Street, Millbury, Mass., Tel.: 508-581-9140. It’s open from 6 A.M. to 2 P.M., Tuesday through Friday, and 6 A.M. to noon on weekends. The Central is smoke-free but is not handicapped-accessible.
