For over three decades, Rich Grimaldi and his family have grown Boulevard Diner into a place generations of Mohawk Valley families have come to know as their own.
I first met Rich Grimaldi years ago, so sitting down with him recently to talk about 30 years at Boulevard Diner felt less like an interview and more like catching up with someone I’ve known for a long time.
I grew up in New Jersey, where diners are part of the landscape. I won’t say there was one on every corner, but sometimes it felt that way. They were the places you went to without overthinking it, the places that somehow worked for breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee, dessert or a conversation you didn’t want to rush. So, when I found Boulevard Diner here, it gave me that same feeling. It was comfortable in a way that made this area feel a little more like home.
Of course, most of us know Boulevard Diner. It’s one of those places that has been around long enough that you don’t necessarily stop to think about how it became what it is today. You know where it is. You’ve driven by it countless times. I’d probably joke with RoAnn Destito that it’s one of the few places I don’t need Google Maps to get to. Chances are you’ve met someone there for breakfast, stopped in for lunch, lingered over coffee and pie in the afternoon, or sat across the table from family or friends over dinner.
But sitting with Rich and talking about the past 30 years made me look at the diner a little differently. Behind the familiar restaurant is the story of a young chef, a family, a lot of hard work and a business that kept growing because people kept coming back.
Rich’s path to Boulevard began with food. He attended Johnson & Wales University, where he studied culinary arts and built the foundation for a career that would eventually lead him to create Boulevard Diner. In 1995, Rich and Roxanne took a leap of faith and opened the restaurant in a building that had once housed a Chinese restaurant and had been closed for some time.
It is hard to picture that now. The Boulevard Diner we know today has grown considerably from those early days. The building expanded, the menu grew and the restaurant continued to evolve as more people walked through the doors.
Looking at old photographs, you can see that history unfold. There is something about seeing a familiar place as it once was that makes you stop for a minute. You notice what has changed and what has been added and realize that while all of us were busy living our own lives, the diner was growing and changing right along with us.
Rich’s culinary background and Roxanne’s early experience in restaurants and hospitality have always been an
important part of the story. Boulevard may be a diner, but there is a trained chef behind it, someone who has spent his life in food and understands what it takes to run a kitchen day after day. There are the dishes people expect and love from a diner, but there is also the experience Rich and Roxanne brought with them from the beginning.
Thirty years in the restaurant business is no small thing. It means early mornings and long days, weekends and holidays, changing tastes and changing times. It means adapting and continuing to show up and serve people, year after year. And when Rich talks about those years, so much of the story comes back to the people.
Some customers have been coming to Boulevard Diner for years, people with a favorite booth or a favorite meal. They walk through the door and know the staff, and the staff knows them right back. You can stop in planning to grab a quick meal and end up seeing someone you know, catching up over coffee and staying a little longer than you expected.
Think about all the conversations that have taken place there over three decades. Good news shared over breakfast, problems talked through over coffee, families meeting for dinner, friends catching up over lunch.
Those moments may never make it into the official history of a business, but they are part of Boulevard’s story just the same.
And while customers were raising families and moving through their own lives, Rich and Roxanne were raising their
family, too. That may be one of my favorite parts of the story today.
Their sons, Richie and Michael, have been working with their parents since their early teens. They grew up with Boulevard Diner as part of their lives, seeing firsthand the long hours, hard work and commitment it takes to run the business.
Today, they are helping carry it forward, bringing new knowledge and ideas while building on the foundation their parents created as the next generation of the Grimaldi family at Boulevard Diner.
Anyone who has been around a family business knows it is rarely just a business. It comes home with you. The kids grow up around it, seeing the good days and the hard ones. So, when those children grow up and choose to become part of what their parents built, it means something.
As Rich and I talked, I thought about how quickly 30 years can pass. We remember the milestones, but so much happens in between, in the places we return to until one day we realize how deeply they’re tied to our memories.
Maybe you went to Boulevard with your parents when you were younger. Maybe it was where your family went for Sunday breakfast. Maybe you took your kids there for pancakes, stopped for coffee with someone you hadn’t seen in a while or spent an afternoon talking over a piece of pie. Everyone’s Boulevard story is a little different.
That is why this anniversary feels like more than simply marking 30 years in business. It is about Rich and his family
and what they have built, but it is also about becoming one of those well-known places people count on.
In 1995, Rich and Roxanne opened the doors to Boulevard Diner and began building something of their own. Today,
Rich can look around the restaurant and see longtime customers still coming through those doors, new families making their own memories and his sons working beside him.
The building is bigger. The business has grown. Another generation of the Grimaldi family is now part of the story. And yet Boulevard Diner still feels like what a good diner has always been: a comfortable place to walk in, sit down, order something good and spend a little time together.
When I asked Rich what he thought Boulevard had become known for over all these years, his answer was simple.
Boulevard Diner, he said, is a place to eat, not to dine. And I think that says it perfectly.
It is not about making a meal complicated. It is about being comfortable, being welcomed, seeing familiar faces and knowing you can come as you are.
Maybe that is why Boulevard felt comfortable to me all those years ago, and why it still does.
You’ll find Boulevard Diner at 24 Roosevelt Drive in Whitesboro.
