Groton, CT
A sign from the original Oh Boy diner on Route 184 is framed in the front entrance of the new, modernized version a half-mile further up the road.

On it, the statue of a child holding up a hamburger is reminiscent of the Big Boy restaurant brand, but the boy is wearing striped pants, instead of checkered ones.

John D'Angelo has now taken what his father, Phil D'Angelo, began in the 1950s and given the boy a whole new look.

The new boy is well groomed. His smile is open-mouthed, his cowlick combed down, and suspenders exchanged for a collared shirt.

The diner, too, with its outer-space themes, has a new identity.

D'Angelo hopes his Oh Boy, which was set to open its doors today at 6 a.m., will eventually become a franchise in the state.

Locals, however, will likely remember it as the diner that replaced the longtime Rosie's Diner.

It started out as the A&P Diner, and then the Twin Bridge, which D'Angelo's father also ran, before it became Rosie's. D'Angelo, who owned the land and the building, decided to start his own restaurant there when the lease for Rosie's expired in 2005. It would have been too much work to fit the historic, but aging, 40-by-16-foot dining car into his vision for the new diner, D'Angelo said. He ended up selling the car to a man in Indiana, who planned to refurbish it.

D'Angelo considered opening a Denny's on the site, but after visiting the company's training facility, he said he and his vice president of restaurant operations, Joseph Babin, “decided to do our own thing.”

The result is a 100-seat chrome diner, open 24-hours, that could have been drawn into a Jetsons' cartoon. The booths are orange leather, the ceiling metal-plated, with a pattern like an astronomical map.

Robot posters serve as framed art, while some walls are painted with planets and spaceships. The lights that hang over each booth shine like lasers, ready to beam up your food into space.

The idea was to “get out of that poodle skirt and black-and-white checked floor,” D'Angelo said.

The food is “home-style” like meatloaf and a meal called “Thanksgiving every day,” D'Angelo said, but features some twists like Paella frittata to crunchy Thai chicken salad. The desserts are made off-site by a pastry chef.

There will be curbside delivery, but not by roller-skaters. D'Angelo joked he didn't think his insurance agent would approve.

The opening took much longer than D'Angelo originally anticipated. When underground storage tanks had to be taken out, the state Department of Environmental Protection also required the contaminated soil around it be removed, D'Angelo said, which was a long, careful process. The building was transported as modules and put together. He also acquired more road frontage from the state so he could curb the area.

Opening the model store for a franchise has also meant starting from the bottom up, writing employee manuals and developing recipes that can be replicated elsewhere, D'Angelo said. He hopes to open other locations in New Haven and Fairfield counties.

Originally published online here: http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=253b4311-656b-4773-a0b0-32dbbac9602c