Vom Excellent Diner zum Super Diner
The Excellent Diner opened in Westfield, New Jersey, in 1935. Stella and Louis Lukas had moved to the town that year and opened the diner on 18 July. At the time, the restaurant was furnished with mahogany and marble. A few years later, it was due for modernisation. The Lukas family bought a new, state-of-the-art diner designed to resemble a railway dining car, which replaced their original premises. This type of dining-car diner had been manufactured by Jerry O’Mahony, Inc. in Elizabeth, New Jersey, before being transported to Westfield, where it opened in 1951.
The new Excellent Diner stood out for its streamlined design, rounded corners and stainless-steel exterior.
Steve and Harriet Frasiola bought the diner in 1975 and ran it for the next 20 years. The menu featured typical diner food, including pancakes, hamburgers, milkshakes and omelettes.
The Excellent Diner was forced to close on 30 July 1995 because of disagreements between the Frasiola and Lukas families over the sale of the land on which it stood. According to reports from some guests, it was a sad day for the Westfield community.
The closure did not mark the end of the diner’s story. The Excellent Diner found a new home in Germany after being bought and exported by Oldies But Goldies. The Frasiolas sold the diner to the company for $60,000. It was transported to Germany in one piece and installed at a new location in Aalen. Although it proved very popular there, it had to close after only a few years because the running costs were too high. At the same time, widespread concern about BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), commonly known as mad cow disease, caused beef sales in Germany to fall sharply during the late 1990s, making burgers difficult to sell.
At that point, Disney Imagineers were looking for just such a diner. It was sold to Disney and moved to Walt Disney Studios Park, which opened on 16 March 2002. Renamed Café des Cascadeurs, it was renovated and given a new interior. The décor continued to reflect the style of the 1950s and retained a highly authentic appearance.
As part of the redevelopment that created the Avengers Campus, Café des Cascadeurs became Super Diner in 2022.
