Editor’s note: After 26 years in business, Lucille’s American Cafe in Weston permanently closed after lunch service on Sunday, Aug. 31, according to co-owner Beth Nunez.
Once the final customer left at 3 p.m., Lucille’s longtime staff were treated to an employees-only dinner.
Over the past two weeks, “people had been coming in every single day and crying on me, and I was doing the same,” says Nunez, who stressed that she and husband Paul are working to reopen elsewhere in Broward County. “It was a good ending, but we can’t retire. We will focus on our Winter Haven location for the time being.”
It became a safe haven for dazed and distressed snowbirds after the Sept. 11 attacks and a sanctuary for dazed and distressed regulars in the COVID-19 era.
But now, the future of Lucille’s American Cafe, a Weston comfort-food institution serving up mouthfuls of nostalgia since 1999, is unclear.
Longtime owners Paul and Beth Nunez last week announced via the restaurant’s Facebook account that Lucille’s would close “at the end of August.” In the post, Paul Nunez pointed to a landlord disagreement over higher rents and upgrades to the restaurant’s aging kitchen and bathrooms.
However, on Monday, the cafe owners told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that negotiations are underway for a potential last-minute reprieve.
“We’re supposed to meet this week [with the landlord],” said Beth Nunez. “We’ve done a great job of keeping the restaurant well-maintained, but the building is 27 years old, and we wanted to refresh the bathrooms and kitchen.
“This is not how we wanted to go out,” she added, fighting back tears. “I just feel like we’re letting the community down.”
The owners’ other Lucille’s location in Winter Haven would stay open regardless of whether the Weston flagship shutters, she said. The possible closing affects 62 employees, with a few in talks to relocate north.
Calum Winsor, a broker at Current Capital Realty who handles real estate on behalf of the landlord, on Tuesday confirmed the active negotiations with the owners of Lucille’s.
“I want the outcome to serve the landlord’s best interests, whether that’s raising or maintaining the rent [Lucille’s is] currently paying,” Winsor told the Sun Sentinel. “But if the rents they’re proposing don’t make sense, then we might have to go back to market.”
With the fate of Lucille’s hanging in the balance, the mood in the dining room felt somber Monday afternoon as longtime regulars passed, pointed and “aww”-ed at a chalkboard sign above the kitchen pass mentioning the planned end-of-August closing. Whispered chatter echoed across the lunch-rush lines waiting to be seated, some voicing confusion (“But this place is always popular!”) and others anger (“How the f—- could Lucille’s get screwed over like this?”).
Customer Dorothy Henry, accompanied by husband Don, has been coming for 15 years.
“Oh, this is a classic place,” she says as a Monday blue-plate special of California Baja fish tacos arrive. “I hope it survives. The staff are very welcoming, and the food is good, comforting and easy.”
One of Weston’s oldest restaurants — at 26 it’s a few years younger than the city itself — the checkered floors, plush vinyl booths and blue-plate specials at Lucille’s have beckoned comfort-food disciples for decades.
Less a diner than an upscale 1940s cafe, the lunch-dinner joint plays Great American Songbook tunes round-the-clock in a space accented with mahogany panels and old travel photos of sightseeing dames and gents. Homey, classic comfort foods — think roast turkey dinners, salmon burgers and chicken pot pie — are scratch-made under longtime chef Ray “Ray Ray” Petit, along with fork-tender baby back ribs and meatloaf in mushroom gravy with generous mounds of mashed potatoes.
Original owners Craig and Karin Larson (the late Lucille’s Bad to the Bone BBQ) opened Lucille’s American Cafe in 1999 but sold it a year later to Paul Nunez, who started there as general manager, and his wife Beth.
After the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, stressed-out customers flocked “to what was easy and comfortable,” recalled Beth Nunez, describing the city’s restaurant landscape back then as “tiny, unless you just wanted chains or bagels.” Regulars did the same during the pandemic, when Lucille’s briefly morphed into a pop-up shop selling toilet paper, masks and sanitizer to folks unable to find them.
Losing a gathering place like Lucille’s would alter the city’s identity, said Elliott Hartog, a server of 24 years.
“The worst thing that can happen is we lose a piece of Weston’s personality,” he said. “Just listen to everyone here: People are upset because we’re their family.”
Phillip Valys can be reached at pvalys@sunsentinel.com or Twitter/X @philvalys.
