Dino Tripodis is nothing if not a man of his word. Ever since departing his popular Dino’s Family Restaurant in the Southtown neighborhood of St. Joseph two years ago to make way for the new Buffalo Wild Wings he has been in search of the ideal place to reconstitute his outstanding formula for success. After that lengthy search led to several dead-end runs along the way, Dino is announcing to the world that he’s on the comeback trail, a chip shot away from his original home.
Tripodis has signed the paperwork with a Chicago developer to take space in the Walgreen’s Plaza just off of Hilltop & Niles in St. Joseph for creation of his new diner. A large but simple sign foretells the arrival saying: Coming Soon Dino’s Restaurant & Pancake House. His return to the Niles Road corridor will land him at 2080 Niles Road.
The space being prepped for transition is the former Honeybaked Ham site and an additional 1,000 square foot bay of the adjacent suite, which, assembled, will provide Dino with a 3,400 square foot diner, nearly identical to the space that he sold to Mike Jones in February of 2014 for creation of Buffalo Wild Wings.
The new Dino’s will comfortable seat around 150 people, and that is music to the ears of longtime loyal customers who had come to rely on the Dino’s brand of hospitality.
The irony of the story is that Dino approached the Chicago landlord shortly after he concluded the deal with Jones two years ago to take the Honeybaked suite. It was unfortunate timing for Tripodis, however, inasmuch as the developer was in deep negotiations with a national brand to take that space. The deal to make a quick move and not miss a beat never materialized and the space has been vacant for several years. After missing out on that deal, Dino had been hopeful of an alternative plan to build a new diner across the street from Walgreens, but says “Zoning issues there were insurmountable,” and he widened his search in the region.
Dino tells me, “We looked at some other great spots in the area, but in the end we felt that we belonged back in the Southtown neighborhood of St. Joseph.” In the meantime, Tripodis was anything but idle. He crafted a small diner, The Chicago Grill, at the corner of Red Arrow Highway & Glenlord Road which he operated for a year before selling the place this spring to a young couple who rebranded the space as the Crimson Cafe.
Dino’s story is a true bootstrap lifestyle which started when he served as a bus-boy for his uncle’s restaurant in Gary, Indiana at the age of 10. His uncle was the original founder of the Round the Clock restaurants of that era. His father gave up the life on an industrial painter to launch an Arman’s Restaurant franchise and he went to work for him as a teen. After graduating from high school, Dino did what every other young man in town did, tried his hand in the steel mills, but decided in short order that it was definitely not the life for him, so he started Dino’s of Michigan City in the late 89s and early 90s until he opened Dino’s on Western Avenue in South Bend in 1996. He held onto that property until 2005 when he sold it out. Meanwhile, in 2004 he had purchased the former Nicholsen’s Restaurant in Southtown St. Joseph and converted that into Dino’s Family Restaurant until he sold it to Jones for the Buffalo Wild Wings.
Dino’s 46-year saga in the food service industry will open yet another new chapter sometime in “early to mid-fall” according to his current calculations. He is eager to get back to serving his faithful followers who became regulars at Dino’s. He tells me that he will also add a nod to the Chicago Grill’s brief run by reserving a small section of the Dino’s menu for the most popular fare he created there.
Stay tuned for further details on the impending return of Dino’s before year’s end, a couple of short blocks south of the original home of his popular diner at the opposite end of the strip from the St. Joseph Domino’s Pizza.
