By John Spinelli
MIDDLETOWN – To the surprise of many local customers, the Middletown Pancake House, a mainstay of the township’s diner scene, closed Saturday, Oct. 26, after 38 years in business.
Restaurant owners Kitsa and Frank Mavrode announced the Route 35 restaurant’s closure via Facebook with a heartfelt message to the community.
“Thank you to everyone that has supported us through the years and made this place a family of its own! We will miss everyone so much,” they said.
In a statement to the Two River Times, the couple continued to express gratitude to their customers. “We appreciate all the years of loyalty, and the beautiful journey watching your families and kids grow up,” the statement read in part.
Frank said the couple didn’t want the restaurant to close. “We were hoping to find another candidate who would be interested in taking over” after they retired.
Despite support from the community, Frank said the property owners were not interested in finding new tenants. He said he is unsure why they don’t want to continue the restaurant.
The site was originally home to a Perkins in the 1960s. In 1986, Middletown residents Cathy and Stephen Pappas took over the lease, rebranding as the Middletown Pancake House. Their daughters Kitsa, Betsy and Nicki all worked at the restaurant but it was Kitsa who eventually took the reins from their parents.
“The customers were our neighbors,” Frank said. “After four generations, we started to see them at church, in ShopRite. We even developed such friendships over the years that we were invited to their weddings or their children’s weddings!”
Kitsa said she held a meeting with the employees in August, explaining they would be closing soon. “Despite having the option to leave, all of them continued to work until the last minute.”
Tara Rummell-Berson, now the director of communications for Middletown Township, said her first job was at the pancake house, when she was a Middletown North student in the 1990s.
Berson went on to study journalism at The College of New Jersey and obtained her master’s at New York University. She reflected on her time as an employee.
“There were times lines were out the door and wrapped around the building and I had to learn how to manage the crowd and de-escalate situations when people were ‘hangry,’ “ she said. “I was able to calm people down and keep them informed of when they would be seated – all while getting to know more about them each weekend because most patrons were regulars.”
Berson fondly recalls many memories of the restaurant, its staff and its owners.
“The owners made us feel like a part of their family,” Berson said. “Cathy treated me like a granddaughter. She used to joke around and call me troublemaker in Greek when she saw me playfully teasing the busboys. I loved it!” She said the employees were such a close-knit group that many still keep in touch years later. “As a natural people-lover, I ended up pursuing a degree in communications and now get to use a lot of the same skills as the Communications Director.”
Amy Zagarella, now an employee of the Brick Township Police Department, worked at the Middletown Pancake House from 1986 to 1992, during high school and throughout college during the summers. She noted that the job helped her pay for college.
“I’ve worked for a lot of chain restaurants, and it wasnothing like working there. I felt like family there,” Zagarella said, who rose through the ranks to become an assistant manager.
“Sometimes I would work a double if I wanted extra money. It used to be open for dinner until 8 p.m. I remember when it cost $2 for a stack of pancakes in the 1980s.”
When she heard the news, Zagarella was sad but also “very happy to hear that Kitsa was retiring. She missed out on a lot of life from running the business over the years.”
Members of the Pappas family, coworkers, and former employees like Berson and Zagarella returned to the restaraunt to toast a final goodbye.
The article originally appeared in the November 7 – November 13, 2024 print edition of The Two River Times.
