I was at the Detroit Eatery for a late breakfast last week. It was a pretty unremarkable visit — a little chit-chat with the waitress and with owner Chris Antaras, scrambled eggs and sausages with just-barely-crisped fried potatoes, good coffee. News headlines were on the TV, all the familiar Red Wings paraphernalia on the wall.

What seems remarkable in retrospect is I was consciously grateful that it was there, after decades in operation, waiting for me after a long, cold news conference down the street.

“I’m so glad this place is still here,” I thought while eating comfort food and getting warm.

Which made it all the more of a shock this week to see it on the news as it burned down.

Hearing the news that a four-alarm blaze had engulfed one of the city’s great diner institutions, I felt concern for everyone’s safety and sympathetic mourning natural to the situation — for an independent business owner suddenly losing the place that held a lifetime of work and memories, for the staff suddenly out of work, for the community of regular customers who would feel the loss. But I also felt a shock of selfish personal sadness for the loss of a place I would visit for clubhouse sandwiches and soup and burgers and breakfast only a few times a year, but that would offer the comforting feel of a home away from home every time I did.

“Every neighbourhood needs a place like the Detroit Eatery,” Lloyd Davis wrote beautifully in the Star this week. Just so — the city needs places like this, and seems to have fewer of them all the time.

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Opinion | Every neighbourhood needs a place like the Detroit Eatery

‘A touchstone where goodness is measured.’ Diners mourn Detroit Eatery, after fire rips through restaurant on the Danforth

By places like this, I mean the kind of greasy spoon that is somehow simultaneously one-of-a-kind and intimately familiar. A menu of clubhouse sandwiches and burgers and fried breakfasts and maybe open-faced sandwiches smothered in gravy. Possibly a line of mushroom stools at a lunch counter and chrome trim and upholstered vinyl booths, though not always. But filled with the unique personal quirks of the owners and staff — their particular way of greeting you or pouring coffee, their souvenirs and photos on the wall, the accent of their voices and the seasoning on their home fries.

Once upon a time the city seemed to be full of them. There were a dozen to choose from in any given neighbourhood. I recall fondly bygone meals at diners long gone — a burger with onion rings on it at The Brothers on Yonge St., BLTs at The Stem on Queen West, hot turkey sandwiches at the Mutual Street Deli near Ryerson, greasy breakfasts at the Elvis Diner out at Queen and Dovercourt, liver and onions at the Peter Street Deli, clubhouse sandwiches at People’s Foods on Dupont. Maybe you could make your own list of the beloved spots that live on only in memory — Olympus Crow-Bar over near Corktown, The Suburban in Scarborough, Jim’s Best Westerns in Riverside, The Canary down near the Port Lands.

“These are simple, comfortable restaurants,” said Toronto-born author David Sax, whose book Save the Deli documented the slow decline of Jewish delis in Montreal and New York, and who sees some parallels in the slow disappearance of the greasy spoon diner. “They’re family-run, family focused. At a point in time they were the bedrock of what dining out was.”

During earlier eras in cities like Toronto, they were the working person’s lunch, and the working-class family’s dinner. Waves of immigration saw them evolve, sometimes in different distinct directions. Many former Jewish delis and greasy burger stops were bought up by Greek newcomers graduating from the dishwashing pit, which saw the addition of souvlaki and Greek salad to so many menus — which is still the case at remaining joints like Avenue Open Kitchen on Camden St., the Patrician Grill on King St. E., and Jumbo Burger in The Junction.

Many others were bought or run by Chinese immigrants who might offer diner-style “Canadian food” alongside a Chinese menu of North Americanized offerings like chicken balls and chop suey — Sax notes this is particularly true in smaller towns, but you can see the hybrid still standing at The Goof (formally the Garden Gate Restaurant) in the Beach.

Sax says it’s natural that as the city has become more multicultural, newer immigrants have realized the city will embrace their cuisines. So we see more falafel stands and pho rooms and roti shops instead of those entrepreneurs trying to learn to love the clubhouse sandwich.

The city is richer for that change on the whole, without a doubt.

At the same time, the mainstream restaurant trends, according to Sax, have seen a particular divide, between the high-end hipster and fine dining joints on one side, and the fast-food conglomerates on the other. At the working class end of the market, the food court has replaced the greasy spoon as the default lunch option.

This isn’t a phenomenon particular to Toronto — many other cities, particularly growing and gentrifying ones, have seen the same slow disappearance. “Urban renewal, astronomical rents, changing eating habits and the preponderance of no-refill coffee places like Starbucks have all contributed to the demise of the New York diner. There are roughly half as many as there were 20 years ago, according to records from the health department,” The New York Times reported in a 2016 story on that city’s “vanishing diner culture,” which wondered, “How will New Yorkers get along without these antidotes to urban loneliness?”

In Canada, times have been getting tough for every kind of independent restaurant for years, according to more than three decades of research on the industry by NPD Group. In reports over periods of years, it has noted the decline in business and locations of independent restaurants, and the increase in business and franchises for chains.

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“The full-service, casual-dining segment is still getting hammered in Canada,” NPD Group’s executive director Robert Carter told the National Post in 2017. His group documented how independent restaurants had gotten the worst of it, with a record 2,047 closing across the country in 2016, even as quick-service chains continued to grow slowly.

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All these big-picture trends playing out, across the country and the continent. But you notice them when they come to your street in Toronto.

“The diner in particular,” Sax said, “especially in the west end, they are few and far between.”

Last summer I felt that now-familiar lurch in my gut when I noticed that Dairy Freeze — a fire-grilled greasy spoon at St. Clair and Caledonia with hockey-arena-style fold-down chairs in its booths and a magical steak on a kaiser — had closed. I said a silent prayer of mourning for a favourite 24-hour destination for onion rings and sandwiches. I might have written about it at the time, but before I could they put up signs saying it would reopen after renovations.

It was a long wait. They tore the entire building down and rebuilt it. Driving by one night in December, I saw the lights on and the parking lot full, and raced around to park down the street on Caledonia. Walking up through the parking lot, a large man leaving the restaurant reached out his arms as if to hug me, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “Finally open! Finally open!” he shouted.

Which is to say that the greasy spoon hasn’t entirely disappeared. There’s the Purple Onion on Dundas West and The Tulip at Queen and Coxwell, the Bus Terminal at Danforth and Coxwell and OK OK in Leslieville, Vesta Lunch on Dupont, the Times Square Diner near Downsview, the Coach House on Yonge Street and the Bloor Jane Restaurant at the place where its name says it will be. There may not be dozens in every neighbourhood, but there are still a lot of greasy spoons in the city. I’ve probably left out your favourite. You’ll probably tell me about it.

Because loyal customers across the city are vocally grateful for their local joints — sharing that “I’m so glad it’s still here” sentiment I experienced at the Detroit Eatery often.

Scarborough still has a bunch of beloved destinations. The Markham Station in Malvern, The Amazing Ted’s out near Port Union, the Gingerman Restaurant near St. Clair and Victoria Park, the Wexford on Lawrence.

I called one of my favourites in the east end, The Bendale Diner near McCowan and Lawrence, to check if it was still open. The current owner, Manohharan Mahenvarajah, put a regular customer on the phone to talk to me.

“You have folks who have been coming here for years, who are now coming back with their kids,” Brahm Persaud said to me on the phone, recommending the soup and the good prices — but especially the management. “It’s amazing, this place. Everybody knows your name — the owners remember everyone, remember everyone’s names.”

This is a kind of intimacy with the restaurateurs you find when you start talking to people about greasy spoons. Like when a longtime Detroit Eatery customer told the Star this week that it was “a touchstone where goodness is measured.” This relationship with the diners is about more than properly turned eggs. It is the feeling of personal attachment that has led Detroit customers to set up a crowdfunding page that had raised $20,000 at the time of this writing to help the owners try to rebuild what they've lost.

While I was writing this, I went for lunch at tiny old Gale’s Snack Bar on Eastern Ave., where a cheeseburger still costs less than two bucks and one woman — Eda Chan — takes your order, cooks your food, and serves you at the counter or in one of the three booths.

I was just having lunch, I didn’t try to commit a lot of journalism by interviewing people or taking notes while I was there. But as soon as I stepped outside people started approaching me out of the blue to talk about it. “Is it open today?” a man asked as I walked down the front steps. “How do you like a club sandwich for $2.75,” he said. “You can’t beat that.”

Across the street at the bus stop, a woman smiled at me and said, “That’s a western sandwich made with love for $1.75. Made with a lot of love. It’s just amazing.” She started talking about the pride Eda and her father David take in the place, how they didn’t want to raise the prices because of the seniors and struggling customers in the area. She wished some restaurant makeover show would come and help them with the cracked floor tiles and creaking booth seats and the cobwebs in the washroom — give the Chans a bit of the generosity and help they give their customers.

If they did, of course, it wouldn’t quite be the same place. Warts and all, it is a reflection of those who run it. Which is part of the appeal of this kind of place — the kind of greasy spoon that is so alike to all the others and yet so different because of its history and personality.

“It’s the sum of its parts,” Sax said. These simple elements, classic uncomplicated dishes, food that is inexpensive and everyday but somehow has soul, or feeds your soul. “It’s the food — there’s something great about it when you hit it well,” he said, and went on to describe the elements of the simple yet delicious classic of a club sandwich at a place like the Patrician Grill. “It’s perfect. And part of what makes it perfect is the atmosphere, the guy who runs it, everything. You can’t recreate that in a new restaurant.”

You really can’t. Which is why those of us who love these places should feel grateful for all the ones we have left.