From the outside, the UFO Restaurant on a side street off King West looks like a bit of a mystery.

Unusual name aside, it resembles a regular, old corner convenience store in any downtown neighbourhood. But the blue-and-white sign out front says “3 stars food groceries & restaurant” and in the window there’s a neon sign with the word “pho” glowing in red.

Inside, first-time diners would be surprised to find a diner counter with vinyl stools and tables, and menus that offer eggs Benedict, pho or both.

One of the first things Tina Nguyen would say about her family’s restaurant is that it’s not a breakfast place that also serves pho, but rather a place that serves two kinds of breakfasts.

“Pho is actually eaten at breakfast in Vietnam, so you can order it like you would with bacon and eggs when we open in the morning,” she says. “This is normal for us, but we think it’s a learning opportunity for people who don’t know a lot about Vietnamese food.”

Just over a year and a half ago, the Nguyen family took over the UFO Restaurant on Niagara Street, between Queen and King streets. Since the early ’80s it operated as an all-day diner with a small convenience store on the side selling chips, lottery tickets, ice cream and drinks. About a month in, the family decided to add a third element into the mix: Vietnamese food.

Now, hanging above the counter are menu boards listing bacon-and-egg specials, burgers and club sandwiches alongside banh mis, pho and rice dishes served with grilled meat. It’s not unusual to see a table with both pancakes and tofu fresh rolls, or someone ordering Vietnamese coffee to go with their French toast. At lunch, nearby office workers either go for a burger or a banh mi to go.

Menu aside, the UFO Restaurant is an oddity, or rather, out-of-this-world considering it’s just steps away from the ultra trendy boutiques of Queen West and the new and incoming condos along King West. It is a relic, but also a sign of change as the diner’s current owners are adapting to a diversifying city in both population and appetites.

“We wanted to introduce part of our culture to the area, but still have something for everyone,” says Tina, who works at the restaurant along with her aunt Hanna, typically seen working the cash, making smoothies and juices, and taking orders; her mother Thuy who works in the kitchen; her uncle Liam who is the chef; and her cousin Duc Tran, who runs the business side. It’s how the family is able to hold on to the diners who have been coming here long before their takeover.

Thuy asks one of the construction workers if he’ll ever deviate from his regular burger and fries and try a Vietnamese dish for once. They both laugh knowing it was a rhetorical question.

At the same time, a new wave of diners are coming in for big bowls of pho, made by Liam who simmers the broth for 17 hours using beef bones and essential herbs and spices such as cloves, star anise and cinnamon. Before coming to Canada he spent 30 years working at catering companies in hotels and theme parks in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), getting used to cooking Vietnamese and Western food.

“It’s a challenge when we train staff because you have to teach them how to make both menus,” Hanna says of the diner.

Over the decades the UFO Restaurant has inadvertently become a community hub. Regulars come in to buy lottery tickets and lighters and grab a seat at the counter for a quick bite, but they always see a familiar face and tend to stay longer than they intended.

Children and their parents drop in during what would usually be a restaurant’s downtime in the late afternoon thanks to the elementary school on the other side of the street. Tina and her family know all their names as they come in for a quick dinner, get candy from the convenience store side or just to say hi to the staff.

“We know their usual orders, how they like the food, any allergies they have,” Tina says. “If we don’t see them for a while, we start to wonder if they’re sick or on vacation.”

Hanna adds, “We feel very happy to be here and have a lot of affection for our customers ... I call them customers but they’re also my aunts, uncles, sisters and brothers. I hope they love us as much as we love them.”

But despite the restaurant being busy, it’s hard to imagine how a place charging $9 for a large bowl of pho or a club sandwich and fries can survive in downtown Toronto.

Tina points out the faded posters depicting Greece hanging on the makeshift walls separating the dining room from the convenience store. They are the remnants of the UFO’s original owners, Zambia Papadakis and her husband, Mike, who opened the place originally as a diner in 1983 and lived in the upstairs apartment. Mike died in 2006, and soon after Papadakis sold the business to the next owner, Lien Ly.

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Tina’s mom Thuy was already working as a cook at the restaurant for five years when Ly decided to sell the business. Thuy told her family about the opportunity to start their own restaurant.

Today, Papadakis still lives upstairs as the owner of the building and the restaurant’s landlord, something that Tina says is key to the restaurant’s survival — the family has a place to serve their food while the retired widow has a steady source of income.

“It’s mutually beneficial because we’re accommodating each other,” Tina says. “Every Christmas she’ll bake us cookies and we still have customers that ask for her. It’s great that she’s still around.”

“Everyone here calls me Mama,” says Papadakis over the phone from her home. “We’re very happy here and have great support from the neighbourhood. It’s important for me to keep the place open, it was something that we spent our whole life on. Downtown is very expensive and more taxes are coming, so I can’t survive all by myself. We needed to keep the place open and do what’s best for everyone.

“To survive, you have to support each other.”

The only remaining mystery is why the Papadakis family gave their breakfast diner an otherworldly name. “My husband and my kids gave it that name,” she says. “They were teenagers, so who knows?”