James Williams can’t remember the first time he ate a burger from Louis’ Lunch.
His earliest memories of the restaurant were working with his father, who used to buff the restaurant’s floors.
Williams, who was 3 years old then, remembered crawling on the floor with a rag to help get his dad get the edges.
Saturday, Williams was there again to see the restaurant he had grown up with one last time.
Louis’ Lunch, Gainesville’s oldest restaurant famous for its “Louis Burgers,” closed its doors for good Saturday, ending an 82-year run.
“It’s a sad situation,” Williams said. “It’s a deep thing that goes on, you know? You grow up with something, and then it’s gone.”
Louis Pennisi, the restaurant’s namesake, set up his shop at the corner of Southeast Second Street and Fifth Avenue in 1928. In 1936, he decided to move the restaurant to its current location at 436 SE Second St.
In the 1950s, he sold the business to his son Freddie and continued to work as the cook until age 97.
Freddie owned the restaurant until his death in 1993, when he was shot in the store during a robbery.
Louis died at age 106 in 2003, exactly 10 years after his son’s death.
The restaurant was then turned over to Tom Pennisi, who took over the restaurant from Freddie’s widow in 1995. Pennisi said he took over the restaurant because he felt as Louis’ son, it was his destiny.
But destiny is carrying Pennisi in a different direction – retirement.
“This past year has been real bad,” Pennisi said. “I wasn’t makin’ enough sales. I just got agitated. Old equipment wearing out; expenses getting high.”
Though he said he does not know what he will do with himself after the restaurant is gone, Pennisi found purpose in his final day at work.
He spent most of his time preparing the restaurant’s signature burgers, made of beef and turkey – his grandmother’s meatball recipe.
Though he said he was tired and found it hard to keep going, he didn’t want to close down the restaurant, his father’s legacy.
“I’ll be crying all night long,” said 57-year-old waitress Joyce Philman, who had been working at the restaurant with Pennisi, her ex-husband, and their daughter, Emily Cheves. “I thought we’d never have to close this store.”
Philman occasionally teared up as she bustled around behind the counter. On her final day of work, she helped her daughter take orders and prepare food for the line of customers who came to see Gainesville’s oldest restaurant off, which spanned all the way out the door.
It had been a long time since she had seen crowds like that.
“It takes something like this for people to come back so they can support us,” she said. “If they did support us, we wouldn’t be closing.”
The restaurant, which survived the Great Depression and a slew of recessions, could not recover from the economy’s recent downturn.
Other factors, such as road closures on Main Street and the occasional equipment failure, like the ice machine, helped to sound the death knell for the restaurant.
Chris Baxley, a 59-year-old from St. Augustine, was one of the final customers served on Saturday.
Baxley has a rich family history tied to the restaurant. His parents ate there the night they were married in 1949. As a UF student in the 1960s, he became a regular customer.
Over the span of eight presidential administrations, the restaurant became something more than an ordinary lunchtime destination.
Whenever he traveled to Gainesville, whether for football games or on business, he made a point to stop at the faded, white restaurant for a meal.
There were even times when Baxley would travel to Gainesville just to eat at Louis’ Lunch before driving back to his hometown.
“I just finished my last Louis Burger ever, and that’s a pretty sad thing,” he said. “It’s really a part of all these people. They’re a part of our lives, we’re a part of their lives.”
Though Louis’ Lunch will no longer be there to serve up burgers reminiscent of 1920s America, those seeking a brief moment of nostalgia only need to drive down the street past the old restaurant and look up at the street signs.
There it reads “SE 2nd Street – Louis Pennisi Street.”
