The owners of Seattle-area landmark Randy’s Restaurant have announced that they are closing the eatery permanently, a victim of the pandemic’s social distancing mandates, which in Washington State has often included bans on in-person dining.
If you’ve never been to Randy’s, it’s too late now, but here’s what you missed. The restaurant was open 24 hours and served breakfast from around the clock, because pilots’ clocks often don’t pay attention to local time.
And over the decades—Randy’s was open for just under 40 years—pilots and workers from the nearby Boeing plant, ate countless meals with friends and co-workers there, the walls of the joint seemingly forever infused with the chit chat of brilliant engineers working out plans for new planes, and flight test pilots comparing notes over their recent flights in those same planes.
Here’s a quick review for a place you’ll never get to get to again. (I know!we’re sad, too!) The food was American cuisine prepared just right and served piping hot! and very quickly, too. And the servers were pros who knew most of their customers by first name but would strike up a quick and pleasant conversation with any wide-eyed newcomer who showed up asking the same three or four questions they had heard countless times before but never let on that it was so.
Randy’s owners announced the closure on its Facebook page, and said it would return some of the memorabilia to its owners with other bits of flying lore being sold in what will surely be the most remarkable aviation-themed flea market in history.
And Randy’s will be missed. It was a place where you were welcome, got a good meal, that would be the case tomorrow and the next day, too. There are too few such places in the world. And today there is one fewer. So raise a cup of black coffee to Randy’s.
