I just wanted to acknowledge that yesterday was the 6th anniversary of when my buddy Owen Abdalian passed away. At the time of his untimely death at 46 years of age, he was the owner of the Main Street Diner in Woburn, Mass. Owen and his wife Ranu had been running the diner (Worcester Lunch Car # 834) for about 21 years and he was actually about to make a big life change. He had just passed his test for obtaining a teaching certificate and was going to put the diner up for sale. His plans were to teach culinary arts at a local vocational school and I’m sure with his personality, he would have been a fantastic teacher! I cannot believe it has been 6 years already.
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I just saw this and am deeply saddened. I cooked with Owen at the Bay Tower room and then subsequently in Cambridge at a short lived place called Rufus Porter’s. I helped Owen scrape, clean, paint and refurbish the Main Street diner when he opened it and while I moved away from cooking, I tried to stop by whenever I was in the area. I lost track of him and didn’t know how to contact him. Decided today to see if I could find him and came across this post. He was a great guy and would have been an equally great teacher!
Blair, thanks for commenting. I count Owen as a dear friend and deeply miss him to this day. I mentioned him in the acknowledgements in my newly published book…. Classic Diners of Massachusetts.