John’s Cafe: Same as it ever was
Greek couple has owned and operated diner for 53 years
Time seems to stop at John’s Café, an old school diner at the corner of Northwest Broadway and Everett.
I ordered a BLT before I see the Cash Only sign. A woman with a prescient gaze and a panoramic view stands at the counter, taking in all that goes on inside and outside the cafe.
“Have you been here before?” she asks, though I presume she already knew.
She wants to know if I live nearby, whether I’m working today.
Wanting to keep up my side of the conversation, I ask if they are open weekends.
“Six days a week.”
“Do you work all those days?”
“Yes. I’ve worked here 53 years.”
So has the man at the stove. Meet Christine and Jimmy Kapsopoulos, on the job for 53 years except for times when one of them has had to be in the hospital.
They closed for a few months last year due to Christine’s health.
Their son, Tom, the little boy in a grade school class photo on the ornate brass cash register, asked her at the hospital if it was time to retire. No, what she wanted was to go back to work and return to the people who’ve been coming here for years.
“This is their dream,” he said.
Tom grew up here, and the restaurant holds a den of memories. There was once a little bed in the corner where he slept on weekends while his parents worked. He walked deposits to the bank when he was 8 years old.
“I’m making deposits, and there were taverns all around. And they’d be yelling out, ‘Little Tommy’s walking down the street,’ and every guy would be looking out the window. There was never a concern or a doubt that Jimmy and Christine’s little boy wasn’t going to make it to the bank and back.”
In those days, his parents left for work at 4:30 a.m. and worked until it closed at 10 p.m. He didn’t see much of them during his early school years. His grandmother, who spoke no English and lived to be 101, walked him to and from school.
“There were a lot of winos, especially when they first opened up,” he said. “Then in the ‘80s, industry started changing. The people started changing, too, and going out at night. You started seeing more drug dealers, and then late ‘80s to early ‘90s, you started seeing the Pearl. So you started seeing different people. The city started getting cleaner and at the same time dirtier.”
Until the ‘90s, John’s Cafe was Central Precinct’s main hub, and their first stop of the day. Tom recalls climbing in and out police cars for fun.
The couple once owned a quarter of this block, the building that includes the Golden West Hotel. In 1987, they sold it to Central City Concern.
Now the Army Corps of Engineers is gone; workers from the Customs Office are gone.
But not everything has changed. John’s Cafe is known for repeat business.
“The first customer that walked in the front door—I mean the very first one when they got the keys—Alan Peters still comes here to this day,” Tom said.
His parents still get up at 4:30 a.m. to be here by a quarter to 5. His dad works in the kitchen and his mom works out front as it’s always been.
Tom has had careers of his own, but now he’s here keeping a close eye on things.
“It’s been an honor to be able to grow up down here and watch the respect toward my mom and dad—an immigrant family from Greece who met here in Portland, established a business and created a family. So I’m helping them finish their dream.”
