{"id":286139,"date":"2026-09-15T00:50:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T00:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/286139\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T00:50:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T00:50:24","slug":"scrantons-coney-island-lunch-reopens-after-year-and-a-half","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/286139\/","title":{"rendered":"Scranton\u2019s Coney Island Lunch reopens after year and a half"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA COUNTY (WBRE\/WYOU) \u2014 After being closed for a year and a half, Coney Island Lunch on Lackawanna Avenue in Scranton is back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;It&#8217;s the same iconic feel it used to have. You hear some 50&#8217;s music in the background. We&#8217;re trying to just bring back some nostalgia to the city. I&#8217;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&#8217;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,&#8221; said John Basalyga.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a data-ylk=\"slk:New autism center making an impact on students;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.2822news.com\/news\/local-news\/new-autism-center-making-an-impact-on-students\/?ipid=promo-link-block1\" class=\"promo-link__link\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0New autism center making an impact on students\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Ventura Brothers owned Coney Island Lunch for three decades and say they approve of the new additions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;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,&#8221; Peter Ventura mentioned.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;John guaranteed that it would have a nostalgia look and he is a man of his word because he did everything that we couldn&#8217;t do,&#8221; Robert Ventura noted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Customers like the new look of the business that&#8217;s been around for more than a century.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;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,&#8221; said Tara Lynott of Scranton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Basalyga says Monday&#8217;s opening is a soft opening and in the near future, there will be a grand opening with a ribbon cutting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<a data-ylk=\"slk:For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to 28\/22 News.;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.2822news.com\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to 28\/22 News.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA COUNTY (WBRE\/WYOU) \u2014 After being closed for a year and a half, Coney Island Lunch on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[119160,119170,14472,201,119161,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-286139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-coney-island-lunch","tag-island-vibe","tag-john-basalyga","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-peter-ventura","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}