One last late night at Astoria’s Neptune Diner
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Neptune Diner closed on Sunday after 40 years of business in Astoria. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
It was one last hurrah, one last cheeseburger deluxe, one last cup of black coffee at Neptune Diner at the corner of Astoria Boulevard and 31st Street in Astoria on Sunday night.
It was one last service for the diner, a staple of the local community and the borough that officially closed its doors at midnight Sunday after 40 years of business in Queens.
All weekend long, lifelong and one-time Astoria residents came back to the iconic eatery to celebrate its history and the memories it made for them. For many, the old school diner was a home away from home.
In the final hours of Astoria Neptune’s life, locals came through its doors with family and friends, took pictures and ordered old time favorites while sitting in the eatery’s classic diner benches and along the bar to get one last bite in before the doors closed for good.
Though the restaurant’s two other locations in the city will continue to operate, the original Astoria location is slated to be demolished after its landlord decided not to renew the diner’s lease to make way for an apartment building.
But while the building may eventually disappear, locals say their memories of the iconic restaurant will not.
For some, memories of the diner span a lifetime, from birth to old age.
“My parents used to take me when I was a baby…and they would put me in the little booth,” Margarita Skourlis said, paying her Neptune bill for the last time. “As I grew up, I would be here all the time.”
Skourlis said she remembers eating fries and Greek avgolemono soup in the early hours of the morning after a party when she was a teen. She ordered the soup one final time on Sunday night.
“It's the way they make it, nobody [else] can make it,” she said.
Skourlis also said she remembers the diner being a place she spent time with her family, which lost its matriarch earlier this year.
“It's a place that I grew up in,” she said. “It reminds me of my parents. My mother just died in January, but it's a place that I felt at home.”
Residents from all over Astoria and Queens came to Neptune Diner to get one last meal at the iconic location before it closed for good on Sunday. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
Throughout the evening Sunday, many longtime staff members rushed in and out of swinging kitchen doors with armfuls of food, jotting down orders on paper like they did when the diner opened in 1984.
Nearly two decades ago, a young 25-year-old Miguel Ramirez began as a busboy at the Astoria Neptune, and today still works as a waiter at Neptune’s Bayside location – which will remain open. He came back to Astoria over the weekend for one final shift.
He said that all night and weekend people flooded in with well wishes, thank yous and memories of past visits.
“The place is good,” Ramirez said, drinking a glass of water in between taking orders and running food.
For others who came to Astoria and Queens later in life, the diner quickly became a place of solace and comfort – and amazing burgers.
“I get a burger with mozzarella, medium rare, deluxe, with a sunny side up egg on top and a side of gravy for my fries,” said Augustin Lara, who moved into the community a decade ago.
“When I first moved to Astoria, this was the first place that I went to have lunch,” he said. “I brought my mother, my best friends, when I can’t sleep during the night…I came here when it used to be 24 hours. I would come here and have a beer, just relax.”
On Sunday, Lara was standing up at the bar with a Corona and chatting with staff, happy to have made it for one final night. He paid someone to take his shift at his job so that he could enjoy one last meal.
Neptune is only the latest in a string of diners to close its doors in the area in recent years, including Mike’s Diner in Astoria, Shalimar Diner in Rego Park, Kane’s Diner in Flushing and T-Bone Diner in Forest Hills, which have all shuttered dating back to 2018.
Neptune has been “closing” for three years, after the City Council voted to approve a large-scale development of an 11-story residential building in its place.
Two other buildings will also go up on the land currently occupied by a Staples next door. In all, 278 residential units will be built, 69 of which will be affordable.
Patrons at Neptune on Sunday said that it wasn’t just their memories of the diner that they were prepared to mourn, but their memories of a New York that largely no longer exists.
“Everything good is gone, or it's going,” said Ann Marie Mikus, who was there with friend Michelle Koutsoubelis for a last Neptune meal.
Skourlis agreed with the sentiment.
“It's very depressing for the whole community, because they've torn down a lot of businesses here that were well known to make all these condos, and the community is very disappointed,” she said. “To have condos but not to have places of establishments, it just doesn't make sense.”
Staff at Neptune Diner served locals one last time on Sunday, before the location closed for good after 40 years of business in Astoria. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
Danielle and Luis Rivera, a married couple who have memories of post-high school lunches at Neptune, were taking selfies with staff as they made their way out the door on Sunday night.
“I'm sad, I'm heartbroken,” said Danielle. “We were shocked.”
The restaurant’s final weekend may have been its busiest in years. Locals Farhan and Shamila Malik were turned away twice in their attempt to have one final Neptune meal – and to give their son, Elias Alam their first one.
“We came twice already and were turned away, it was too busy,” said Shamila. “I thought we were not going to make it the last day and somehow we made it.”
Later that night, Neptune’s employees shut the door on the Astoria diner for the last time, leaving a sign on the door notifying passersby about the closure and redirecting locals to other locations in Bayside and Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, as well as a farewell message:
“Thank you to all our customers for 40 great years.”
