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The closing announcement at River City Diner's Shockoe Bottom location (Photo by Piet Jones)
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Cindy Young was a server at the diner for 23 years. (Photo by Piet Jones)
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These Richmond firefighters say they're heartbroken over losing their favorite place to have a beer after work. (Photo by Piet Jones)
If you spent any fraction of your youth in Richmond, an era just abruptly ended. Most everyone has a story of a night out carousing around Shockoe Bottom that also included an early morning — and by early I mean like 2 or 3 in the a.m. — stop for breakfast at River City Diner. It was loud. It was smoky. Everyone was massively drunk. It was a blast, an extension of the evening’s activities as the bars kicked everyone out.
Things weren’t quite so raucous after the diner picked up and moved off Main Street and onto 17th Street a decade or so ago. Sure, it was still a morning crowd, but now the patrons arrived after the restaurant opened its doors at 7 in the morning. Instead of drunk kids it was tired firemen, police officers and residents from MCV coming in for breakfast after long overnight shifts and one of the few places they could get a drink after work.
“You could count on seeing the same people every morning,” lamented Cindy Young, who’s been serving at River City Diner for 23 years.
The announcement that they were closing abruptly on August 2 caught everyone off guard, from Cindy to longtime patrons who kept popping in as the minutes ticked down to final call. A group of firemen looked perplexed, not sure where they would go after their night shifts ended to unwind and relax.
The space? It’s already been snapped up. EAT Restaurant Partners, the guys behind places like Foo Dog and Fat Dragon as well as the just-opened Red Salt Chophouse & Sushi, will be adding the space to their growing empire. No word on the actual plan; I am sure it will be hot and trendy, a great addition to the Richmond dining scene. It just won’t be the place so many of us spent our youth or where the people who keep our city running and safe overnight can decompress.
