Maine Diner
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The Maine Diner is a diner in Wells, Maine.[1] It serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The diner, which has a seating capacity of 90 and a year-round staff of about 60, serves an average of 1,200 to 1,500 patrons on a peak summer day.[2] The restaurant is known for its seafood chowder and lobster pie and other Down East fare.[3][4] It serves breakfast all day. Many of its vegetables and herbs come from a garden behind the building.[4][5]
"Oft-hyped and popular with tourists",[6] the diner served its 2-millionth guest in 1999 and its 5-millionth on December 17, 2008.[7]
Socrates "Soky" Toton, an Albanian immigrant, purchased the original Maine Diner in the early 1950s. Toton did the cooking and his wife Margaret waited on tables along with another full-time waitress, Millie, and two part-time waitresses. The Maine Diner became well known for their made-from-scratch food; they grew much of their own produce behind the diner.[8]
During the mid-1950s, the old building was moved and a new building was built. The Totons lived next to the Diner, in the house that is now the diner's gift shop. The diner was open year-round until Margaret died in 1966. After she died, Toton closed the restaurant for a year. After that, Toton opened the diner from Labor Day to Memorial Day and closed it for the summer.
Toton ran the diner until he had a heart attack in January 1980; he died the following month.
Brothers Myles and Dick Henry purchased the Diner in 1983.[9] Their first customer was a man who crashed into a pole near the parking lot. He had mistaken the diner for a bar he was looking for.[7] Myles died in 2010.[10] The diner is now managed by Jim MacNeill.[11]