Good Reigns Over Evil In Another Of A Long String Of Skirmishes Between Irony And Sincerity

It’s not so much a “classy restaurant in a retro location,” as one of the original investors once obnoxiously promised, but something better — an actual diner:

When last spotted in its ancestral home, there was the Munson Diner, steel and chrome shining off the streetlights, noirish blue exterior like a ghost from the ’40s, loaded onto a flatbed truck and lumbering toward the George Washington Bridge, bound if not for glory, at least for Liberty, a faded resort town in the Catskills.

It was May 5, 2005, and, as it turned out, getting a 50-foot-long, 30-ton diner onto a truck was the easy part. One of its new owners and a cameraman were taken off the George Washington Bridge by the police as they tried to film the big event without a permit.

The diner hit not one, but two highway bridges on the way up. And when it finally arrived, dinged up but more or less intact, the crew lowered it triumphantly onto its new foundation . . . backward, with the vintage neon sign and steel facade facing away from Main Street.

And then for two and a half years, the 15 local investors behind the diner transplant considered and discarded ideas from at least 23 potential operators. A Catskill kosher deli! A Catskill history museum! The site for a reality show featuring a talking diner and chatty patrons reflecting on city and country life!

All of which explains the sign by the entrance (“Come in. We’re finally open!”) and the somewhat disproportionate expressions of contentment on the face of patrons — not to mention investors — when the Munson finally reopened to big crowds last week, a lesson in comfort food, diner lore and other themes that could have been explored had anyone been nuts enough to greenlight the reality show.

. . .

The Munson might still be closed if not for Fred LaGattuta, 47, a retired diesel mechanic turned populist entrepreneur whose projects have included a bowling alley in Callicoon ($7 unlimited-time bowling, $2 beer, $1 pizza slices) and a motel and diner near Parksville (rooms at $49.99). He leased the diner with an option to buy it, along with a partner, Tom Russell.

Mr. LaGattuta figured the old diner should just be a diner, and worked every weekend for eight months with his 18-year-old son, Paeden, to fix it up.

There’s a new tile floor, new and bigger red booths, a new kitchen, a new ceiling, new laminate on the tables and the counter to go with the old facade and neon sign, old menu boards and old twirling stools.

The whole project will cost about $300,000, not the $125,000 the investors originally planned on, but at least it’s open, with two eggs, potatoes and toast for $2.50, $5.20 ziti, and a 12-ounce Monster Munsonburger with three cheeses, bacon and other extras, plus fries and cole slaw, for $6.

“I’m a fatso who likes to eat, and I thought this little town needed a restaurant like this,” said Mr. LaGattuta, whose family moved to the Catskills from Yonkers in the early 1960s. “You go to an old diner and you get, I don’t know, a warm feeling. That’s what I wanted.”