A eulogy for The Corner Restaurant in Westport

Did I shed a tear when a friend called to tell me that The Corner Restaurant had finally closed its doors for good after a remarkable 30-year run in Westport? In a word, no. But I do confess that I felt a twinge of nostalgia for what the place had once been in its heyday. But that was back in the 1980s, when people would stand outside for as long as an hour to get a table in what had been the hippest morning gathering spot during those wild and crazy Reagan years.

The food was pretty good, back then, when the original owner Stephen Friedman was still running the operation; Friedman, who passed away in the 1990s, was a charming and vivacious restaurant owner and set the tone for those early, vibrant years. 

The Corner Restaurant would have turned 30 years old this month: Friedman opened the restaurant on a cold February day in 1980. While doing research on the building for a review of The Corner Restaurant back in 2001, I learned that Friedman’s restaurant wasn’t the first restaurant of that name in this space. In the years after World War II, the Meltis family ran a soda fountain and snack shop in this building called The Corner Grill. In the 1970s it was one of the city’s first vegetarian venues: The Golden Temple Conscious Cookery.

Since the last incarnation of The Corner had gotten so dowdy and dull, it’s hard to imagine that in the early 1980s, this same location was one of the most popular places to eat in midtown.