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HealthCrisis🇺🇸United States6d ago

Petros Papatheofanis fondly remembers stealing bacon off the griddle and being handed orange juice by the doting wait staff of his father’s North Center restaurant, Alps East.Tuesday morning, he got to walk back through the same door with his mom — the namesake of the current space, Irene’s Finer Diner, and one of the many family members he worked alongside when Alps East was open, from 1986 to 2012.Customers from the former restaurant greeted them both before ordering.It came nearly two years to the day after the diner, at 2012 W. Irving Park Rd., was closed after a grease fire gutted the inside, though luckily no one was injured.“My entire life essentially was in that restaurant,” Papatheofanis said. “It was a special place for us, so to get to open something in the same building my dad and mom and uncles worked, it was really cool.

3.7/10·Chicago Sun-Times

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