East by Northeast

By Randy Garbin

Not all that long ago, the Scranton, Pennsylvania area represented a veritable gold mine for the diner aficionado. On my first trip into the area in 1992, I seemed to stumble upon one diner after another, and for reasons lost to time, most of them had Mountain View tags. Indeed, in this northeast corner of the state, the Route 6 and Route 11 corridors boasted at least 10 gleaming examples of the brand.

As a rule, the diners here all fall into the classic, almost cliché, mode of operation, serving standard comfort food and offering few surprises. Thus, the discovery of a creative exception like the Six East Restaurant among this group of standard classics becomes downright memorable. At the end of that very first exploration, finding the Six East along a then-remote stretch of Route 6 was like spotting a mirage. Unlike the day’s previous visits — and certainly those that came afterwards — this diner had atmosphere. The mood lighting, the color scheme, and the menu all indicated an owner of fertile mind and not a little ambition.

Paul Wanas didn’t exactly have a diner in mind when he decided to open his own restaurant. Still in his mid-20s, the budding restaurateur saw himself managing a trendy showcase for his culinary talents, leanings not typically found in the average diner. A native of nearby Carbondale, Paul’s pre-conceived notion of a diner meant just more pancakes, meat loaf and mashed potatoes – especially in this hardscrabble, blue-collar landscape. Still, challenged with – so to speak – the lemon handed him, Paul elected to make the locals a zingy, fanciful batch of lemonade, serving it in a high-style glass.

The Six East had previously operated as the Sunshine Diner from 1962 after its move from nearby Clarks Summit as the Parish Diner. When Paul got it, he had to take a tired diner with worn-out booths and a tattered dropped ceiling and rejuvenate it with new lighting, a thorough cleaning, and coats of paint in a darker, atmospheric palate. Paul aimed to transform his diner into a bistro in the style of the Manhattan’s Empire Diner, and to specialize in creative, upscale dinners.

	The interior of the Six East reveals Paul's attempts to update a vintage diner to contemporary purposes.

His plan went over like a lead balloon. “I was going more funky and high-end diner. It just did not work,” Paul conceded. “People resented it. They wanted strictly cheeseburgers, Texas wieners…they wanted diner food.”

Endowed with a chef’s training, Paul’s frustrations mounted. “I couldn’t deal with it. Your pride gets in the way, and then you find out that your pride’s not making you any money!” In the end, though, he wisely adjusted to what the market demanded. He put regional ethnic specialties on the menu, such as stuffed cabbage and other meals people no longer make at home. Today, the Six East Restaurant boasts an extensive dinner menu of well-made comfort foods along with an impressive list of seafood dishes.

By the time I discovered the Six East, Paul had already made some of those adjustments. However, I did notice that the diner’s interior still retained bistro vestiges. Paul himself looks like one of those vestiges. Tall, trim, and boyishly handsome at 43 years old, Paul’s athletic build and sandy-blonde hair would fit more naturally in a lifeguard chair than in front of a grill in a Pennsylvania diner.

In 1990, after five years of menu adjustments, Paul essentially started a second food-service business. For the most part, his catering and diner menus overlap very little. The diner provides the kitchen and a general income stream for Paul’s overall business, but now the growing catering side has put him, and by extension his diner, in touch with the movers and shakers of the Scranton business community. He has catered corporate events and weddings as well as such high-profile events at the popular Steamtown National Historical Site and the recent opening of new Electric City Trolley Museum at the Scranton Cultural Center.

Paul admits to some frustration with the bi-polar aspects of his two menus, but he remains philosophical about it. “There’s an awful lot of rewards, too. Our guys could get complacent working in the diner, but then there’s a part that gives them a chance to use their creativity.” Over time, the two businesses have begun to promote one another. Paul freely uses his association with the diner to market the catering and vice versa.

Today, the Six East seats 110 people in both the diner and the attached dining room. The restaurant also includes a function room in the basement. While there is an excellent breakfast, the morning side of the menu does not dominate like it does in most other area diners. The specials menu, however, changes daily, and just might include broiled Delmonico steak, stuffed twin lobster tails, or a variety of pasta dishes. Start off with a homemade shrimp bisque followed by an appetizer of crabmeat-stuffed mushrooms or homemade pierogies. Paul cites the higher margins in dinners, and his assertion “that it just works better for us,” and notes that because of the more transient nature of the traffic on the highway, “The restaurants in the valley do a much bigger breakfast business.”

Until only recently, the Scranton-Carbondale Highway consisted of a smattering of a few roadside businesses strewn along a two-lane connector route on the eastern approach into the city. Today, it’s become the modern equivalent of a “Miracle Mile,” a four-lane road crowded with all the usual “big box” retail.

Rather than hurt his business, the sprawl has only raised the diner’s profile. Now, Paul gets a healthy hoard of shoppers stopping for lunch or dinner after a visit to Wegman’s (an expansive, upscale grocery store), as well as a chunk of the Pocono Mountains tourist trade.

The news I hear from Paul all seems all good in an area that has declined precipitously in the past couple of decades. Indeed, the population has dropped from 130,000 in 1950 to around 80,000 today. With the coal mines closed and the surviving mills and factories on life support, the city faces a tough road in the new economy.

Yet Paul seems unfazed. For him, at least, business looks good and so he sounds outright bullish on Scranton these days. “We bottomed out a few years ago, but now we have a new mayor with some good ideas. There’s a lot of young blood and young energy coming to the valley. Scranton’s coming back.”

The Six East Restaurant is located at 1611 Scranton-Carbondale Highway in Dickson City, Pennsylvania. Currently the diner is not wheelchair accessible and the non-smoking section is in the dining room addition. Open daily at 7:00 A.M.; closes at 10:00 P.M. every day except Sunday, when it closes at 8:00 P.M. For more information and directions, call: 570-489-8974.