Editor’s note: We are living in a much different time from when this piece was written in late February 2020. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the world has been turned upside down for the Richmond community, its dining scene and the McLean’s Restaurant family. On April 9, onetime owner Fred Wagner died due to complications from COVID-19. We send our deepest condolences to his loved ones. Dionna Kelleher, Fred’s daughter and current owner of the restaurant with her husband, Barry, says the picture in this feature is the last she and her father took together. Beyond highlighting a local establishment that has remained in the same family for decades, we hope this story showcases how sometimes your true calling finds you, and how a reliable plate of homestyle diner fare can bring comfort.

McLean’s is currently open for takeout from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. Call ahead at 804-358-0369 or order online.

McLean’s Restaurant is the kind of place where change comes slowly and no one seems to mind. In fact, that may be the secret to its enduring appeal. For the past 55 years, McLean’s has been serving simple country-style food on Broad Street, dishing up classics like chicken-fried steak, pot roast, and fish roe and eggs, while all around it, Richmond’s nationally praised restaurant scene continues to evolve, and trendy, chef-driven concepts have become the standard.

Within the nondescript, beige, nearly windowless building at 3205 W. Broad St., a regular crew of contractors alights at the counter every morning, congregating over coffee before heading off to work. Some die-hards show up twice in a single 8-hour shift. They don’t have to bother telling anyone their orders; the food just shows up, like it would at your grandma’s house.

McLean’s dining room is alive at lunchtime, with almost every table occupied by a diverse cross-section of Richmonders — bankers with their ties flipped over their shoulders, the chief of police in his favorite back corner booth, construction workers in dusty Carhartts on their 30-minute lunch break — while waitresses roam the dining room with plates stacked from wrist to elbow and steaming pots of coffee dangling from their fingers.

× Expand Breakfast plates at McLean’s

The Rev. Chuck Craddock, a Baptist pastor, has been coming to McLean’s for over 30 years. “I’ve married off some of the waitresses that have come through here,” he says, “and buried some of the cooks.” Craddock remembers when owner Dionna Kelleher was a waitress at McLean’s while she was in high school. “I’ve seen her grow up and have her babies, and now they’re working here,” he adds.

A sturdy man with a white beard and easy smile, Craddock was working as a contractor when he first started coming to McLean’s. “You could come in and sit for an hour, make your plans, drink your coffee, before you went on out to work,” he continues. Now, he’s like one of the family. “I’m their friend,” he says, nodding at the waitresses working behind the 12-seat bar, “and I think I’ve sort of become like their grandfather, too.”

In an old-school diner like McLean’s, the waitresses still call everyone “honey” and take the time to make small talk, but if a customer starts causing trouble, they know to move on. They’ll pocket their tips and think nothing of it, flipping the table for the next customers and moving through their shift like sharks in the open sea.

“If people feel like they can walk all over you and no one has your back, you don’t want to go to work,” says Meredith Mangigian, who has been working at McLean’s off and on since 2004. “I’ve worked other places where management wasn’t that great and I didn’t have support, and that’s one of the reasons why I’m back here.”

Mangigian grew up across the street from Kelleher and babysat her kids. After studying optometry and working in the field, Mangigian found herself back at McLean’s, where she says she makes more than the $21 an hour she was earning while working at a private optometry facility, and quicker, leaving her more time to spend with her 2-year-old daughter.

“I watched Meredith and her sister grow up,” says Kelleher, “and when they needed a job, they came here.” It’s a formula that’s worked for years, and McLean’s employs several sets of siblings, cousins and even a married couple in the kitchen. “I trust them,” she continues. “I get applicants, but really, I listen to, ‘I’ve got a friend,’ or ‘My sister needs a job.’ It keeps it easier. It’s less to worry about, to have a staff I can trust.”

× Expand Barry Coker

Perhaps no one on the staff embodies that idea more than McLean’s salaried cook of four decades, Barry Coker. A man of few words and a dogged work ethic, Coker is the first to flick on the lights and fire up the griddle. While the rest of us are bracing for the alarm clock, he’s frying strips of bacon and cooking batches of home fries, which are sliced and cooked on the flat top until soft with crispy edges. He starts the grits and checks the buckets of salt herring before setting up the line for the other four cooks who arrive by 7 a.m. After that, he starts on the following day’s specials, dishes like beef tips, pot pie and fried chicken. His spaghetti, which is served on Wednesdays, has its own loyal following.

Coker’s been working at McLean’s for the better part of 40 years, but if you ask him, he’ll round down to 30. His sister was cooking at McLean’s when he, an Army-trained cook, was working at Denny’s. When she said they needed help, Coker came to work with her, and he’s been there ever since. His recipes, he says, were all passed on to him by his sister.

Coker holds down the kitchen at McLean’s without fail seven days a week, and after his shift wraps up around 1:30 p.m., he works the 2 to 8 p.m. shift at Aunt Sarah’s Pancake House. He says he’s proud to have been able to put his daughter through nursing school on his salary.

In Coker, Kelleher has someone she can trust to run the place when she’s not there. “I mean, we know each other. We understand each other,” she says, “It’s really a family affair.”

Coker says, at 62 years old, he’s looking at a few more years in the kitchen before he hangs up his apron for good. He claims his secret to keeping the same job for so long is to stay positive: “I don’t let the negative bother me,” he says with a shrug. When it comes to the changes he’s seen during his time on the line, Coker says, they’ve come, of course, but most importantly, “we’ve kept things simple.”

× Expand Server Bri Sowers carries plates of food at McLean’s.

Southern Staples

Indeed, simplicity is the hallmark of the McLean’s menu. Breakfast offers a classic lineup of eggs and bacon, sausage, pancakes, biscuits — the major food groups of any Southern breakfast. The “Biggest Breakfast in Town,” known as the “BBIT” to staff, a pants-tightening combination of three eggs; bacon or sausage; home fries, apples or grits; toast or biscuits; and an 8-ounce juice (no substitutions), rings up at $9, up from $2.99 when the restaurant opened in 1965. For a couple extra bucks, you can add meats like thick-cut bologna, kielbasa and scrapple to the plate.

The bygone, Southern classic, pork brains and eggs, is something you’ll only find at McLean’s. It’s been on the menu since day one, and Kelleher says the dish has its devotees. “We have one customer who eats a double order every time he comes in,” she says.

“Salted herring, fish roe, fat back,” Kelleher rattles off McLean’s steadfast Southern-tinged staples, listed on the menu under the heading “Change of Pace,” though maybe it’s the lack of change that appeals to this specific audience.

“People come in here just to order a box of fatback to go,” Kelleher says. “It’s just a country thing.” For lunch, there are juicy, griddle-cooked burgers, homestyle meals of chicken livers and fried catfish, and soups like Brunswick Stew, served with fresh cornbread. “I try to be the cheapest place in town,” Kelleher says, and despite raising prices to balance her own mounting food costs, McLean’s remains a consistently affordable option with most dishes hovering around $10.

In 1979, when Kelleher was 9 years old, her dad, Fred Wagner, following a job with the Department of Transportation, moved her; her mom, Sheila; and siblings Danita, Darren and Derek, to Richmond from Bristol, Tennessee, where country cooking was the only kind of cooking there was.

The menu at McLean’s felt like what he had left behind.

While reminiscing with his daughter, Wagner pauses for a minute to think about some of his favorite meals at McLean’s, and a customer sitting nearby pipes up: “Fish roe and eggs! It’s the only place in Richmond to get fish roe and eggs!”

“I don’t eat the fish roe and eggs,” Wagner confides in his quiet, Southern drawl, “not that I would have a problem with it, but I like the country-style steak.” “With a side of mashed potatoes, right?” Kelleher prompts. “Yeah, and gravy,” he offers.

× Expand From left, Dionna Kelleher, Trent Kelleher, Fred Wagner and Miranda Kelleher

All in the Family

Mack McLean opened McLean’s at 4001 W. Broad St. in 1965. Homesick, McLean sold his namesake restaurant soon after and moved back to Zebulon, North Carolina, to open McLean’s Ole Time Cafe. Since then, the restaurant has had three sets of mom-and-pop owners — Hyde and Pat Ingram, the Wagners and current owners, Kelleher and her husband, Barry. They bought the business from Kelleher’s parents in 2008 after she had managed the restaurant for a decade.

Kelleher began working at McLean’s in 1985 at 15 after her older sister, Danita, who was waiting tables there while attending VCU, convinced her that waitressing would be a good way to earn money. At first she just worked weekends, but the longer she hung around, the more shifts she picked up. Turns out, it was good money, and Kelleher liked the people she worked with. When she graduated from VCU, Danita moved on, but Kelleher was hooked.

At McLean’s, Kelleher says she learned about more than simply waiting tables. Career waitress Ann Hicks took Kelleher under her wing when she started and taught her the values of hard work and accountability. “[Ann] worked the night shift,” Kelleher says, remembering the days when McLean’s was open 24 hours. “She and I would work it together, and there would be a dead time between 4 and 6 a.m., and she would say, ‘Why don’t you go on back there in the booth and lay down? I got this.’ ” A teenager and sophomore in high school, Kelleher took her up on the offer, catching a quick nap curled up in a booth.

Wagner remembers a time when Hicks, who died before seeing Kelleher take over the restaurant, was stiffed by a customer. “She ran across the street after him and made him come back and pay,” Wagner recalls, shaking his head and chuckling to himself. “She thought as much of the restaurant as we did. That’s the only way she ever worked.”

When Pat Ingram decided to sell the business in 1988, Kelleher convinced her parents and older brother, who were patrons at the restaurant, to buy it. It was a profitable, turn-key operation, which they mostly left unchanged. “They didn’t have restaurant experience,” Kelleher says, “but my mom grew up in a time when all meals were prepared at home, and being from the mountains, comfort food was what families ate. My dad said it seemed like a good investment because it had a good clientele and lots of repeat customers.” Wagner kept his job as chief appraiser for VDOT, and her brother maintained a full-time position at Circuit City until he eventually relocated with the company, selling his stake to his parents. Kelleher’s mother, who died in 2018, went to work in the diner full time. “Mom worked there every day,” Kelleher recalls. “She did the ordering, kept things organized. Dad did the books. He came in at the end of the day, got the receipts and a meal.”

Kelleher continued to work at McLean’s while attending college, but when she graduated in 1992 with a degree in business management and administration, she took a position at Signet Bank in the foreign exchange department. “I worked in a cubicle,” Kelleher remembers. “I [couldn’t] do it. Certain personalities can, but it was too mundane for me,” she says, “After less than a year, I went back to waiting tables.”

Kelleher knew deep down that McLean’s was her home, and that she wanted to be more than a waitress; she wanted to be the boss: “When I was 30, I realized that I didn’t want to be 50 and be a waitress at McLean’s,” she says. “If it wasn’t in the books for me to have an ownership in it, then I told my parents I’d get a teaching degree. They agreed that when I turned 40, they would retire and I would buy it from them. So I ran it for them for 10 years, and when it came up, I bought it.”

After managing the restaurant for so long, the transition was an easy one, but there was still plenty to learn. “When I took over, I had to learn the books,” she remembers. “The first month, Dad asked me, ‘Did you reconcile the books?’ ‘Yeah, I did it,’ ” she lied, and then ran out to find out what “reconciling the books” meant.

But in spring 2010, just a few years after acquiring the business, Kelleher faced a new challenge: Her landlord at the time, Ed Christa, charmed by visions of his own potentially successful restaurant (what is now Vinny’s after having briefly been a Quizno’s) decided not to renew her lease. After having made the biggest purchase in her life, Kelleher was in a bind. She needed to find a new location in just six months, but she had very specific criteria — she wanted to stay in the area, preferably on the same side of Broad Street.

“I was looking at [potentially] not having a place,” Kelleher remembers. “It was a pretty stressful time.” She looked at the former Byram’s Lobster House location at 3215 E. Broad St., but she says it wasn’t the right fit. Scandal ensued after the deal fell through and Byram’s owner Konstantinos “Gus” Nikiforos dumped an acidic substance on the building next door, which Kelleher had decided to buy instead. Nikiforos ended up pleading guilty to two misdemeanor charges of property damage about a year later.

McLean’s new home formerly housed Victorian Fireplaces, which wasn’t doing enough business to justify the large space. The owner at the time, a McLean’s regular, sold half of the building to Kelleher, and less than a week after closing McLean’s original location of 45 years, she opened the new restaurant and held her breath. “We bought the building, and the people came.”

“I can remember my mom saying how proud she was of my ambition to move the restaurant and keep the name going,” Kelleher notes. “She said if they still had the business at the time the lease was not being renewed, they would have just closed the doors.”

× Expand From left, Donna Hilton-Heath; her mother, Rozalia Hilton; grandmother Doris Jones; and aunt Joyce Christian talk while waiting for their food at McLean’s.

There have been a few McLean’s offshoots over the years, a Maclean’s on Staples Mill Road opened by Mack’s original business partner, and a second location of McLean’s at the Hanover Industrial Air Park, owned by Hyde Ingram. But when those outposts eventually closed, Kelleher saw her window and copyrighted the name. There would be no more confusion: Now hers is the only legal claim to the name in Virginia.

Kelleher is a frank, straight-shooting woman, with lingering traces of her Bristol accent inflecting her candid speech. At 50, she’s not on the floor waiting tables anymore, unless someone calls out sick. She handles the ordering and schedules staff, and when the restaurant finally transitioned from a cash register to a touch-screen point-of-sale system last year, Kelleher was there from open to close making sure the change was a smooth one. She says a key to running a business for so long is to hire trustworthy people and let them do their thing.

Like her parents, Kelleher now employs her own children. Her son, Trent, a senior at Randolph Macon College, and 20-year-old daughter Miranda both work as servers, though she’s yet to convince her 14-year-old, Jade, to join the fold.

“I enjoy it because I get to see them more. I love to see them work together,” Kelleher says. “On a personal level, my daughter is just like I was when I was her age — very stubborn, hard-headed, independent — which I know in the long run is a great quality to have, but at the moment, as a mother-daughter relationship, it can be tough. I remember it with my mom. Nobody knew anything but me. [Miranda] does a great job, but she gets on her horse a little bit, just like I did.”

Not only will that stubborn streak serve Miranda well in the years to come, it will sustain her if she decides to take on the family business. A diner owner needs a strong resolve to weather the tempest of change outside the restaurant’s doors. While Scott’s Addition erupts with restaurants, breweries and apartment buildings, just across Broad Street, past the new Pulse bus stop, McLean’s is a defiant holdout — a true diner, with endless refills of coffee and a tight-knit family running the show.

× Expand The original McLean's Restaurant (Photo courtesy Dionna Kelleher)

OVER THE YEARS

1965: Mack McLean opens McLean’s Restaurant at 4001 W. Broad St.

1970: Maclean’s on Staples Mill Road opens.

Through the ’70s: Mack McLean sells McLean’s to Hyde and Pat Ingram. The Ingrams open another location at the Hanover Industrial Air Park.

1980: A short-lived outpost of McLean’s opens on West Grace Street in the Fan.

1985: Dionna Wagner starts working at McLean’s on Broad Street.

Fred and Sheila Wagner

1988: Following a divorce, Hyde and Pat Ingram divvy up the McLean’s locations, with Hyde taking the Hanover location and Pat taking Broad Street. Pat sells her location to Fred and Sheila Wagner.

1998: Dionna proposes buying McLean’s from her parents in 10 years.

2008: Fred and Sheila Wagner sell McLean’s to Dionna and her husband, Barry Kelleher.

× Expand Photo courtesy Dionna Kelleher

2010: McLean’s moves to 3205 W. Broad St.