Not only is Kim’s Classic Diner back in operation, owner Kim Starr is back at the helm. After years of wanting to own a diner, a few more years shopping for the right one, and another year moving and rehabbing a 1946 Silk City, Kim seemed to be living her dream. That dream, however, was put on hold about a dozen years ago so that Kim could devote all of her energy to helping her daughter deal with life-threatening heart and lung issues. Now it is those threats that have been put on hold — hopefully forever — as daughter helps mom bring her diner back to life.
There were attempts to keep things going without Kim’s involvement. Over the years, the diner was leased to three different operators but all three failed as a business, a responsible leasee, or both. I remember two of them but must have missed the third one entirely. I know it can’t be easy to make a classic diner go in a town of well under 3,000, but every time I drove through Sabina and past the closed business, I thought to myself that this place would be hopping if Kim was still here.
Well, Kim is here now, and while the place may not yet be hopping all the time, it apparently is some of the time. Employees spoke of being “swamped” on occasion and a scan of the diner’s Facebook page shows that the daily specials have “SOLD OUT” more than once since the August 20 reopening. I was there on Friday for breakfast. It wasn’t swamped but I sure was not alone. I did my normal dawdling while other customers came and went and I think there were always between five and ten people eating with me.
My Friday visit was just one day shy of the eighteenth anniversary of the original opening. One of the reasons Kim had picked the second anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks for her opening date was the diner’s New York history. I was happy to see articles about that history back on the walls and especially happy to see that three mugs from those days (delivered to Kim by a visiting waitress) were back on the shelf. These were among the items that had gone home with Kim for safekeeping during her absence from the diner.
In addition to being one of the coolest diners within my extended neighborhood (It’s about 40 miles straight up US-22), Kim’s is special to me for another reason. It was the subject of the first of four Diner Days articles I wrote for American Road Magazine between 2006 and 2008. It was, in fact, the very first thing of mine published to the general public. In that article, I spoke of the use of car names for breakfast selections, and I am happy to report that that is once more the case. This time I had a Mercury.
