Latest News

Lou-Roc: Say good-bye to Hollywood

Category: Lou-Roc Award

Published Date

Written by Randy Garbin

The "new" Hollywood Diner is a big dope-slap at all of us who have worked so hard to spread the good word about the special place the diner has in our culture. (Photo by Ida Doolan)

Some people will look at these two photos and wonder why we picked the Hollywood Diner in Dover, Delaware and its owner for such ignobility. After all, the end result of this renovation produced a nice shiny diner, right?

No. The end result of this travesty produced a cheap, ridiculous cartoon of what a true diner should be. Bearing in mind that hardly anyone exists today that can fashion stainless steel panels in the fashion that Fodero once did, and you start to understand the grievious affront to our heritage that this diner now represents.

Yes, I know that highly polished stainless steel doesn't come cheap, but all that money might have gone to better use hiring an actual chef to turn out meals to truly remember. That's what packs in the customers. Instead, what I'm sure you will now find here is yet another pretense to diner traditions in meals served up more or less by Sysco or its ilk after a quick nuking or bag boiling. I would be very surprised to find anything better once this joke reopens. The fact that the owner would even consider doing something like this to such a gem indicates how little regard he has for his customers or his community.

The Hollywood Diner before: Note the curves and the subtle yet striking lines of the classic Fodero diner. No one living today can recreate this.

There was nothing wrong with the original Hollywood Diner. In fact, it was one of the best examples of a late-1950s Fodero diner still standing. Inside, about the only thing its former owner Bud Jarboe ever changed was the vinyl on the booths. Its degree of originality after more than fifty years in service stood as testament to Mr. Jarboe's good sense and Fodero's quality of workmanship.

The new owners could have simply had some better landscaping, a new sign, a good cleaning, and had replaced the Flexglass and could have easily had himself a near-showroom quality diner. These renovations were simply a waste of time, money, and regard for the greatness that is the great American diner.

Say good-bye to the Hollywood. Say good-bye, my baby.

See more interior photos at the Diner Finder and here.