OPEN NOW: Darien Diner Is Serving Crowds at Its New Location [UPDATED]

What’s bright, shiny and new but part of something more than 20 years old? Darien Diner, which opened Saturday at its new location in a traditional metal diner building that would have been familiar in the 1950s.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated as of 6:09 p.m. with new information.

For its first day in the new spot, business is booming, with crowds of customers filling almost every table. There were spaces in the parking lot at 2 p.m., but not many (you can also park next door at Lithos restaurant, which Teddy and Olga Giapoutzis also own).

After all the preparation, Olga said as she stood in the amid customers coming and going in the crowded place, “Today I feel like a ton of weight is lifted.”

The new building at 275 Post Road is at the same spot Friendly’s was located. It’s bigger inside and has much more parking than the old location, less than 1,000 feet down the road at 171 Post Road.

The restaurant is open seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., but Olga Giapoutzis said the hours may be expanded. She said that on Saturday she was seeing a lot of customers she didn’t recognize and thinks the new location, not a quarter of a mile from the old one, is catching the eye of many more people driving up or down the Post road.

About 20 years ago, the Giapoutzis, originally from Greece, bought the Post Road Diner at 312 Connecticut Avenue in Norwalk. They later bought the Driftway Diner at 171 Post Road, as well, “but we outgrew the place in three years,” Olga said. There wasn’t enough room for customers in that building’s 67 seats or enough room for cars to park in the lot.

The new place, which seats 95, became available when Friendly’s closed, and as soon as Teddy heard that the restaurant was closing, he made a phone call to discuss leasing the property. The Giapoutzis replaced the building, which has parking on each side and in the back — almost triple the parking at the old place.

“It took us a year and a half to do this,” Olga said. “My husband worked day and night.”

The couple also now own New Canaan Diner at 18 Forest St. and they’re opening Bronxville Diner, at 112 Kraft Ave. in Bronxville, in addition to Lithos Restaurant right next door.

The Giapoutzis looked at the decor at a lot of diners and decided they wanted to go retro wherever possible, both in architecture and in what went inside.

“If we found something old and retro-looking, we started buying them up,” Olga said. “Then everyone loved them — the kids, the grownups. It became like our trademark. It has to be retro.”

The colors in the new diner are teal blue, burgundy red and off white. A “boomerang”-like design (made with four straight lines) is on all the booth seats.

The Darien Diner has 30 to 40 employees, Olga said — over a quarter of all the workers the diner chain has.

Giapoutzis said she and her husband feel gratitude for their customers, some of whom have been coming to their diners for 20 years. “We’re very, very grateful for their loyatly, and if it wasn’t for the customers that we have, we wouldn’t be here today.”

Asked what dishes she’s most proud of at the diner she said, “We have a lot of specials for the weekend that are truly different from a lot of places. We have a lot of selections for milk shakes that I don’t see anywhere else. Teenagers come just to try the milk shakes.”

The pies are home made and popular, Olga said. “The chocolate cream is the No. 1 best-seller,” she said.

In addition to regular French toast, the diner has French toast with a home-made bread made from a Greek recipe, she said.

The food should be made from fresh ingredients; the place, clean; the staff, friendly, Olga said. “We have a passion for that,” she said about the attitude of the staff. “We try to have friendly staff, and if they’re not friendly, they’re out of here.”

A friendly atmosphere is important in the Giapoutzis, Olga said. “We want our customers to feel that they’re coming into our home. This isn’t just ab business. We have customers for 20 years, and the loyalty of people is amazing. […] Our customers feel like this is their home, too.”