SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — After being closed for a year and a half, Coney Island Lunch on Lackawanna Avenue in Scranton is back.
The community staple went through a remodeling, taking on a new retro look. The building will now include apartments upstairs and two other businesses on the lower level. But, customers can expect the original sauce from years ago.
John Basalyga is the current owner of the restaurant and says it took a lot of hard work to get the restaurant back up and running.
“It’s the same iconic feel it used to have. You hear some 50’s music in the background. We’re trying to just bring back some nostalgia to the city. I’m the type of guy that I believe in bringing things back to the city to make it great again and I wanted to rebuild it. We decided to do that. We’re about a year and a half here to bring it back where it was basically laying in the middle of Lackawanna avenue to be able to come in here and enjoy a great Texas wiener,” said John Basalyga.
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The Ventura Brothers owned Coney Island Lunch for three decades and say they approve of the new additions.
“We bare-bonesed it, but we got thirty years out of it. But, this is the way I wanted it when we first got this building,” Peter Ventura mentioned.
“John guaranteed that it would have a nostalgia look and he is a man of his word because he did everything that we couldn’t do,” Robert Ventura noted.
Customers like the new look of the business that’s been around for more than a century.
“I love how they kept the original Coney Island vibe. When you walk in, you definitely feel like you take a step back in time to the original with the red leather stools and just like the overall 1950s vibe,” said Tara Lynott of Scranton.
Basalyga says Monday’s opening is a soft opening and in the near future, there will be a grand opening with a ribbon cutting.
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