The order is up along with the lease.
Astoria’s Neptune Diner — which has been slinging short order classics on Astoria Blvd. since 1984 — is about to become the latest beloved city diner to shut its doors, when it closes forever Sunday to make way for a new high rise.
“Everybody’s sad about it,” said the Neptune’s manager Chris Maniatis. “People are coming to say their goodbyes.”
The Katsihtis family-owned business was unable to renew their lease on the property, which is in the process of being sold by its current owner, the Thomas Anagnostopoulos Family Trust. It will be replaced by a sprawling residential development.
For many longtime customers, the Neptune’s demise feels extremely personal: The institutions served as a throughline for their lives.
“I started going to Neptune with my family around 1989, when I was 7,” said 42-year-old funeral director Dimitrios Fradelakis, who grew up nearby and would “walk over to celebrate a special occasion or when my mom didn’t feel like cooking.”
For Fradelakis, the Neptune “was a place where many great memories were made. I visited Neptune with people who have passed on and with new friends, too. It was a neighborhood staple that many generations patronized and supported.”
Brooklyn resident and 37-year Neptune patron George Stavropoulos feels similarly.
“I still come out here sometimes but it’s only a few spots left,” Stavropoulos, 54, told The Post over a plate of cheese fries on the Neptune’s final Thursday.
“It’s upsetting because Astoria used to be a destination for me and I’d be out here every weekend, and it’s pretty much stopped now.”
Indeed, even the Neptune, once open 24 hours a day, began closing at midnight following the pandemic.
“It’s an official bummer — at this rate diners will soon be extinct in Queens,” grieved Astoria native and UX Designer Joe Anastasio, recalling how “You never had to overthink a Neptune outing. It was just a great place at any hour or occasion,”
The Neptune’s closure follows a rash of other classic borough diners shuttering — a trend that has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic — including the East Village’s Odessa, Flushing’s Kane’s Diner, and Rego Park’s Shalimar Diner, all of which closed in recent years.
The Anagnostopouloses bought the Neptune Diner’s address for $10.3 million in 2018 and are slated to close on its sale within the next two months, their attorney Nick Tsoromokos confirmed to The Post.
The two other locations the Katsihtis family opened — Brooklyn’s 12-year-old Neptune II and Bayside’s four-year-old Neptune Diner — will remain in business.
But while they’re nice, Fradelakis said, the Astoria spot had his heart. “It saddens me that an Astoria landmark is shuttering its doors after so many years of serving the community. Neptune Diner will always be my favorite diner in NYC.”
