The Tiffin Inn was a quintessentially 1960s-style pancake house breakfast place in Metairie, except for the fact that it didn't open until 1977. Walking in from the day it opened until it was forced to close in 2015 was like a trip back in time. Dark paneling, vinyl-upholstered booths (some semi-circular!), banquette seating around the perimeter, water and juices served in glass tumblers, porcelain plates and coffee cups, syrup carafes in their metal caddies, and waitresses in uniforms long out of style. Tiffin was part of a small chain founded in Baton Rouge in the 1960s, and at the time of its closure was the last remaining outpost.
Sunday morning patrons usually found it necessary to put their name on the list and wait to be seated. Those who couldn't fit in the small area just inside the entrance would have to wait outside. It would take several years for a narrow enclosed lobby with benches to finally be added across the front to shield those waiting from the weather. While longer some days than others, the wait never seemed untenable enough as to make one give up and go elsewhere.
Regulars would plant themselves in the banquettes under the windows along the south wall. This put the morning sun at their backs, perfect reading light for the Sunday newspaper. Before smoking was banned in restaurants, the sun streaming through the slits in the venetian blinds then through puffs of smoke made for a mesmerizing display.
I don't think the menu ever changed. A number of predetermined pancake selections on the inner left side of the plastic laminated menu probably accounted for 90 percent of all the orders. Omelets likely accounted for the majority of the rest.
During busy times, the wait to place an order, let alone receive your order, could be long. A full house could overwhelm what usually seemed like a half dozen waitresses total for the entire place. But there was a kind of glue that would hold things together, and its name was Danny.
Danny was what you could call busboy extraordinaire. He had a knack for noticing if you were waiting too long for something, anything, and would take up the slack. Water, silverware, coffee refill, condiments, a missing part of your order; if you couldn't get your waitress' attention, he was on it. So good at it, in fact, was he that you could regularly observe departing diners slipping him a few bucks directly on their way out. When not traversing the floor with his bus cart, he could be seen catching a breather (and a quick couple of drags on a cigarette) at his station in the southwest corner of the restaurant.
Tiffin Inn closed when the landlord declined to renew the lease, wanting instead to give the space for an expansion of the national chain store tenant next door. Rumors of a relocation swirled for a time, but nothing ever seemed to materialize. The iconic black and orange sign was last seen languishing in a grassy, fenced-in lot in Bucktown.
Tiffin Inn: American, 6601 Veterans Blvd, Metairie (Metairie Above Causeway) - 888-6602 (do not call) map