After more than four decades in business on the shoreline, the family-owned Lynn’s Restaurant and Delicatessen is closing for good at the end of the month.
“When you get up in the morning you put your feet on the floor you need to enjoy what you’re doing and we did,” Lynn’s co-owner Helen Borrelli told NBC Connecticut. “We enjoyed every minute of it.”
Borrelli and her sister Lynn DeMusis-Grady, whom the restaurant is named after, told NBC Connecticut they are going out on a high note.
“All the recipes our my mother’s recipes and then of course we’ve done our own recipes over the years,” Borrelli said.
Forty-one years ago, the sisters’ father bought a dairy mart for their mother Ethel on East Main Street in Branford.
“She’s like yeah, well I think I’ll make a little sausage and peppers, you know a little eggplant she did that was it,” Borrelli said.
“And that’s where our story began,” DeMusis-Grady said, finishing her sister’s sentence.
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Lynn’s Dairy Mart morphed into a restaurant and deli serving breakfast and lunch. The sisters said the chicken cutlet is the must try item on the menu.
Sixteen years ago, the sisters bought the family business from their now 85-year-old mom.
“We moved from 800-square feet down the street to 2,500 square feet here and expanded our catering and kind of took the business to another level,” DeMusis-Grady said.
Since the move, Jay Kirby has become a regular, coming in five days a week.
“All of the longtime customers get plaques,” he said sitting in front of his. “There’s bud and myself.”
But soon, Lynn’s longtime loyal customers will have to go elsewhere.
“I’m devastated I’m not sure what I’m gonna do at all,” Kirby said, “we’re going to Florida for three weeks to figure it out.”
Borrelli said she has been less involved in the past year and DeMusis-Grady said she’d like to sell real estate full time.
“She’s my right arm,” DeMusis-Grady said, “so it’s been hard to run the show without her so you know the show must go on but there just comes a time when you know its time.”
Time for a change, but also time to cherish many memories and say thanks.
“Our customers are our family,” DeMusis-Grady said. “Thank you to Branford and the shoreline cause we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them, we love our customers, I’m gonna miss our customers.”
Lynn’s will close on February 28 and the sisters said they plan to party that final week with their customers.
