Rumors of a sale had been circulating for months. "It's time. I'm going to move on to the next chapter of my life," said Kubach, who will turn 60 later this summer. "Semiretiring would be the best way to describe it." He said he would help his son, T.R., open a pancake house near the Best Western hotel that his family owns in King of Prussia.
"It's sad to say goodbye to everyone," Kubach said. He declined to discuss terms.
Petrogiannis, 51, who came to the United States as a 16-year-old, has become a diner magnate in the last several years, snapping up the landmark Mayfair and the Country Club in Northeast Philadelphia, as well as the Tiffany in Northeast Philadelphia and the Warminster West in Bucks County. He also owns various Michael's diners.
With the Melrose, Petrogiannis gets a slice of Philly lore, with generations of stories on the side: the mobs of fans when a celeb such as Fabian or Al Martino showed up, the mob associate who was rubbed out in his car in the parking lot.
As the jaunty ad jingle says: "Everybody who knows, goes to Melrose."
"It's one of the few places you could go and see a nice mix of humanity, 24 hours a day," said Murray Dubin, a former Inquirer reporter who wrote the 1996 book South Philadelphia: Mummers, Memories and the Melrose Diner.
At 2 in the afternoon or 2 in the morning, a cross-section of Philadelphia puts aside decorum to set its elbows on the Formica amid the clattering of silverware, slapping of spatulas, and rattling of coffeepots. Politicos and celebrities. Docs and nurses from St. Agnes down the street. Flower arrangers from Ten Pennies around the corner. Shift workers and retirees and schoolkids. And when the bars close, the scene gets even better.
