Mattie’s Diner will reopen at the end of April off The Plaza. Travis Mullis/UP

Matthew King, the owner of Mattie’s Diner, has been connected to and working in the restaurant industry for his entire life. Growing up in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, his mother was the maître d’ at an upscale Italian restaurant. In college at Rutgers University, he worked in the dining halls for four years. His plan after graduation was to become a history teacher, but the gravitational pull of the restaurant world pulled him back in. He worked for Jason’s Deli for ten years as it swept across the country with exponential growth. He opened up stores for them across the country, including the first locations here in Charlotte. He decided to stay in the Queen City and always noticed how everyone wanted to know where to find the best diners in the city. That’s when the idea for Mattie’s Diner was born.

King, known to his friends and family as Mattie, grew up in Northern New Jersey, an area that is diner-obsessed. Upon his arrival in Charlotte, it became apparent to Mattie that there was a diner-shaped hole missing from the city — and he intended to fill it. At the time, he didn’t realize that you could buy any number of the old chrome diners from up North and have them put into storage. Once he got wise to this fact, he picked up a copy of a book about the history of diners in New Jersey. On the cover was Bound Brook Diner. When King saw it, he decided he wanted it to be the building to house his own diner, and set himself to the task of acquiring it.

Bound Brook Diner had been flooded during Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and never reopened. Before the internet was big, trying to get a hold of the owner of the now wrecked diner proved difficult. Mattie finally got a name for the owner, a Mr. Bruno, and proceeded to use a phone book to begin calling every Bruno household in that area of New Jersey. He made 42 calls to various Bruno families, explaining who he was and inquiring if they were the owners of the old Bound Brook Diner. It turns out the first guy he had called and left a voicemail with was the Mr. Bruno he was looking for. They connected, and Mattie was finally able to purchase the beloved old diner in 2005.

Five years and innumerable renovations later, Mattie’s Diner opened up at The Music Factory and became a popular place to grab something to eat after a concert or bar crawl. This late night crowd was often drunk, and oftentimes got out of hand, leading to 27 fights in five years, even with the presence of security guards or off-duty cops.

“It was great when I was younger and capitalized on the drunks and the shows, and it was fun, and we got to meet 200 bands, and go to free concerts, but what I really want is to be part of a neighborhood, to be part of a community,” Mattie tells me when we met up at his new location at the intersection of Shamrock Drive and The Plaza. In 2015 the land that the original Mattie’s Diner sat on was sold to Avid Xchange, who generously agreed to pay for the diner to be put in storage while King looked for a new location. Plans were made for various locations but none materialized until 2020, when The Tire Depot on The Plaza went up for sale and Mattie found the neighborhood location he had been longing for.

Then Covid brought all of that to a screeching halt.

After two hard years of pandemic and construction-related delays, they are shooting for an opening around April 25. In addition to the 40 odd seats in the main dining room of the original diner, 70 seats have been added in an adjacent space with more room for restrooms, walk-ins, and food prep areas  behind the original diner space. It has been a long journey for King,  and the energy and enthusiasm that’s pent up as he awaits opening surrounds him when discussing the diner.

“We were delayed a little bit and unfortunately during that time, costs went through the roof, materials were hard to find, and we waited almost five months for our electrical panel,” King says, seated at the diner counter with the sounds of electric drills and saws whirring in the background. “Those were uncertain times anyway, so you just take the good with the bad and roll with it, and we’re here now.”

As far as the menu goes, Mattie is most excited about their new vegan versions of diner classics like pancakes, French toast, meatloaf, and sloppy joes. In recent years, he and his wife have turned to ultrarunning to get healthier, and as a consequence ate vegan for more than a year. Consistently frustrated by the lack of vegan options at most restaurants, he wanted to make sure that his diner didn’t force vegans to have to choose between boring salads and carb-heavy pasta dishes. He’s also ditched Coca-Cola and Pepsi and gone with Smart Soda to provide a soda that uses sustainably sourced cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup.

For diehard diner aficionados, the unhealthy diner staples are staying on the menu. Other than the variety of pancakes and burgers on offer, he is most proud of the Italian stuffed meatloaf — his mother’s own recipe, a meatloaf stuffed with Italian herbs and mozzarella cheese and smothered in marinara and grilled onions. King’s mother, who still lives in New Jersey, will be coming down from time to time to make sure his cooking is living up to her recipe.

Mattie King is 51 now, and the days of a 24 hour joint are far behind him. He’s most looking forward to having this iteration of the diner be a hub for the community of Plaza Midwood and Villa Heights. King is driven by nostalgia, he’s trying to recreate the diner culture that he grew up with in in New Jersey — a place where everyone comes together for good food, good stories, and good laughs, or, as King puts it: “We brought this diner to the people of this community to come together. You won’t see a T.V.  in here. No way. Talk to the person next to you. We’ll shout. We’ll laugh. We’ll have fun together.”