West Shore Diner An Original Silk City Diner for All Roadside Diner Fans

Story by Christina Heintzelman: cheintzelman@benchmarkmediallc.com

Photos by Christina Heintzelman and West Shore Diner

Brothers Chris Katsifis and George Katsifis, owners of West Shore Diner, have a fantastic piece of diner history sitting on their site at 1011 State Street in Lemoyne. Their diner, built in the 1930’s by PattersonVehicle Company as part of the division known as Silk City Diners, is one of only 1,500 diners built between 1926 and 1966. Theirs is one of the earliest that is still in existence as a working diner. Each one of these Silk City diners is tagged with the year and order in which it was built. Many were made of tin with only the trim consisting of stainless steel.

The diner has been modified from its original narrow floor plan, which only allowed for seating at a counter, by bumping out the back wall and allowing the counter to be moved further back, providing space for a row of deuce booths along the outside wall. A separate dining room was also added in later years that is located along a further bumped out area in back. The ceiling of the original diner is narrow and steeply curved. The interior still has the dark woodwork, tile, and Formica adorning the original part of the diner.

The diner was initially settled in the Fishing Creek area off Route 83 and later moved to New Cumberland. It was moved again to Market Street in Lemoyne and then to its final place on State Street forty-four years ago. George and Chris have owned the diner since 1991, but the diner has been in their family since the 1980’s, when it was owned by their brother, John, during which time Chris and George worked for him.

The Katsifis family came from Greece to the United States when Chris, the youngest of seven children, was six years old. As Chris explains, Greek communities in various locations in the United States would sponsor other families still in Greece to come to the United States. These families would then work to pay back their sponsors, support their families and finally assist other Greek immigrants to come to this country. The Katsifis children were all hard workers who went to school, found jobs with other restaurants, and then moved on to have restaurants of their own. The work ethic in their Greek communities was one of always striving to help support their family while building their own means of becoming solid citizens in their communities. Chris says that even his children were raised working in the diner in various capacities and because of the work ethic they learned from him and his wife they have now moved on, achieved college degrees, and are successful in their own professional fields.

George and Chris trade off every week between the job of cook and front-of-house manager. Chris’s wife, Jo, is integral to their team and keeps the diner running smoothly with her friendly conversation, waitressing abilities, and technical expertise in keeping their website and Facebook page up and running.

The diner serves breakfast and lunch with breakfast being available all day. The breakfast menu has everything one could want for breakfast, from hearty combinations of pancakes, French toast, eggs, various meats, home fries, toasts, English muffins, and bagels to the simple and low-calorie bowl of oatmeal. There is also a large assortment of omelets that are mouthwatering, the most popular being the western omelet and the cheese steak omelet. Cream chipped beef served over toast and home fries is a specialty and, as Chris states, “It is made with the best quality dried beef which is hand cut here at the diner.” George adds, “We keep the pieces a nice size so that it doesn’t resemble ground up meat.” The brothers say that they bought their meats from Kessler Foods for at least fifty years when it was located across the street from the diner. Kessler Foods was a staple in the community for over a hundred years and was widely known for their Nittany Lion Franks. In 2022, Kessler Foods was sold and is now located in Camp Hill. Today the diner uses meat products from Hatfield.

Lunch items are served from 10:30 a.m. until closing and consist of homemade soup of the day, salads, hot sandwiches, cold sandwiches, entrees, and various side dishes.

There are a lot of regulars who have their very own place at the counter and enjoy the banter and sports talk with each other and with the team of Chris, George, and Jo. Since the Katsifis brothers have owned the diner, they have seen three generations of customers come through their doors. Local resident and diner regular Rob Cowman says, “At least 90% of their customers here are regulars and that’s because they do such a great job.” He says that his favorite thing to eat is the bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on an English muffin. He also says that he is a faithful reader of Harrisburg Magazine!

The diner offers food deliveries through Door Dash and Grub Hub. Chris credits the food deliveries as being the saving grace during the Covid shutdown. He adds, “And the deliveries still continue, maybe thirty or forty a day, and have built up our business even more since we have been able to open back up on a full-time basis.” The brothers mention that they have one take-out customer that continues to order and has ordered more than two hundred and thirty times from them. “We have never met her, but we sure do appreciate her continued business,” Chris states.

The diner manages to keep its prices low and the quality and quantity of food high even though the price of food and particularly eggs have skyrocketed in the past year. “We used to pay $30.00 a case for extra large eggs and now we pay $185.00, wholesale,” George says. Chris adds, “This is a huge increase because eggs are a staple for so many things that we make here. We keep our prices reasonable because customers can only afford to pay so much but we really need to keep an eye on this.”

West Shore Diner has a history with Harrisburg Magazine as a winner in the first year of the Simply the Best competition, taking the prize for Simply the Best Diner and third place for Place for Breakfast in 1998. In 1999 they were awarded Readers’ Choice for Diner.

West Shore Diner, located at 1011 State Street, Lemoyne, is open daily from 6am to 2 pm. Their website is www.westshoredinertogo. com. You can find them on Facebook: The West Shore Diner.