This diner serving the Fort Lauderdale area for 44 years was just named best in Florida

The Peter Pan Diner isn’t just a restaurant. It’s a culinary time machine.

Step into a low-key space with two big dining rooms, with booths, tables and a counter. Not sleek, not trendy, but comfortable. The prices may startle you, but not in the heart-stopping, credit-crushing way to which you have become resigned: This is an affordable restaurant. There’s an excellent chance the waitresses will call you “hon,” and the huge menu seems to encompass every American comfort food served between breakfast and dinner.

Pancakes and eggs, bacon and sausage. So many ways to eat eggs! As breakfast slides into lunch, you’ll find hot open-faced sandwiches with piles of tender meat on bread, smothered in gravy and nestled next to a mound of mashed potatoes. Tuna melts and patty melts, Reubens and Rachels. Five different club sandwiches. Greek specialties like gyros and spinach pie (from a family recipe by the founder’s aunt). And more: salads and seafood; eggplant parm, lamb shank, fried chicken, stuffed cabbage; house-baked cakes and ice cream sodas.

It’s home-cooking, seasoned with the power of memory. And to many diners in and around Fort Lauderdale, it’s home.

The long-time Oakland Park restaurant, which was just named the best diner in Florida by Reader’s Digest, has survived 44 years in a growing, changing city. And as Fort Lauderdale strives to reinvent itself as a culinary destination, the family-run Peter Pan Diner pleases its customers with the past.

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Opened in 1979 by Panagiotis Kourkoumelis (or “Papa P,” as the staff affectionately calls him), the restaurant was formerly Sir George’s Buffet. Kourkoumelis intended to name his diner Peter’s Pan, as in cooking pan, but the state of Florida clearly had the famous Lost Boy on its mind and changed the name on the paperwork.

Papa P’s son Jeronimos Kourkoumelis, 48, who took over the business 23 years ago, said that the same customers return again and again for their favorite meals and daily specials. Workers stop in for an early breakfast, while families take advantage of the kids’ menu. Older folks show up for the early bird specials, which start at 3 p.m. Diners from nearby neighborhoods take advantage of the fact that two people can eat comfortably here for under $30, while widows and widowers bask in the friendly service and smiles.

Generations of the same family show up year after year.

“We get the wives and husbands whose spouses have passed away,” Kourkoumelis says. “We get their grown children, who now bring the grandchildren. I remember little kids coming in, and they’re grown now. They sit in the same booths their grandparents sat in.”

Sometimes customers don’t even wait to be seated. They walk past the hostess station, smiling politely, and head straight to the booths or tables they once shared with their parents, creatures of habit longing for a warm supper with a helping of nostalgia.

Sometimes, by the time the guests sit down, their orders are sizzling on the grill.

Sometimes, they cry.

“They miss their parents,” Kourkoumelis says.

Waitress Barbara Rogers, who has worked at the diner for 25 years and handles breakfast and lunch shifts, says the diner is the proverbial place “where everybody knows your name.”

“I remember kids coming in now when they were in their mother’s belly,” she says. “Older parents pass on, and the children come in with their kids. It’s beautiful. Two brothers have been coming in here for 40 years. They don’t get around as much anymore, but their family brings them in. Our customers are loyal, and we love that.”

Peter Pan Diner was originally open 24 hours a day, drawing hungry nightclub patrons after hours in 1980s when hot spots like Christopher’s, Yesterday’s and Shooters closed for the night. Sometimes, the wasted left the restaurant without their prized possessions.

“Do you know how many bags of cocaine we used to find on the floor?” Kourkoumelis asks, laughing.

Over time, the late-night crowds got rougher and more rowdy, and finding help to work the overnight shift was hard. Kourkoumelis decided to close at a more reasonable hour by 2017.

Other changes were harder. The original menu was a 14-page monster that Kourkoumelis finally tamed, whittling the choices down to five pages after figuring out what wasn’t selling. The Salisbury steaks and chicken a la king, the stars beloved by an earlier generation, were finally retired. A few new dishes were born, like the Paulie Slam breakfast (three eggs, three pancakes, two bacon strips and two sausage links for $11.50), named after a long-time cook who passed away.

The cooks make everything themselves. The bread and desserts are baked on the premises. The meats for the sandwiches are roasted or baked, taken out of the oven and sliced thick. The gravy and the tzatziki for the gyros are homemade, and so is the glistening butter that slides off the pancakes.

The look of the diner was updated slightly in the 1990s, but Kourkoumelis is planning a makeover, starting with the lounge, which has its own entrance. Then the redesign will move on to the bathrooms and dining rooms.

A more contemporary feel, he hopes, will attract a new generation of customers who appreciate classic diner fare. But a massive change would come with a price he isn’t willing to pay.

“I want it to be more modern,” he says. “The place is outdated. But I don’t want to be too extreme, and I don’t want to make it unrecognizable. I want people to feel the presence of their mother or father. I want nothing that’s going to make me raise my prices. I want to stay true to my customers.”

Peter Pan Diner

Where: 1216 E. Oakland Park Blvd., Oakland Park

Hours: 6 a.m.-11 p.m. daily

More information: mypeterpandiner.com or 954-565-7177