It’s a common bond shared by children all across the United States: lining up for lunch at the school cafeteria.
Our own fond memories of these meals are few and far between, particularly when we think of the institutional food on the menu. We had better luck with lunches packed from home – in part because we could show off our TV-themed lunchboxes – but for many school children, then and now, this isn’t always an option.
Enter the lunch lady: a nostalgic, nurturing figure who presides over the cafeteria, and who ensures that the children get what they need.
This is Dria Atencio’s adopted persona at Salty Lunch Lady’s Little Luncheonette in Ridgewood The lunch lady, she explains, is someone who’s “taking care of you in a simple, basic way.” Even nowadays, when we sit down to lunch, there’s little that’s simpler or more satisfying than a good sandwich and a nice dessert.
Dria (as in “Alexandria,” though everyone knows her by her shorter moniker) grew up in Los Angeles, then went to college in the Boston area. She’s cooked professionally for 15 years, in many restaurant kitchens, at least one of them recognized by Michelin. But her own style, she tells us, “was always a little more lowbrow” – something that “every single person can enjoy.”
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Dria took up baking desserts and selling them via social media. Although she recognizes that many confections call for considerable precision, hers have what she calls a “wonky home-style.” She’s happy to accept orders for wedding cakes, but cautions that “I don’t do straight lines, I don’t pipe [inscriptions]. It’s not going to look perfect.”
This, we might argue, is the heart of what Dria also calls her “grandma aesthetic” (although she’s nowhere near grandma status herself). Dria’s food is appealing not because it’s special, but because it’s familiar. “It’s just a version of something you know well,” she says.
During those all-too-common stay-at-home days of the pandemic, Dria began planning to open her own restaurant. A 15-minute walk from her Ridgewood home, she found a ground-floor space with two floors of apartments above it – a typical mixed-use building in this low-rise neighborhood, where it’s easy to find a vantage to watch the sun rise and set.
The ground floor of the building, which dates to 1915, had been home to many years of commercial tenants, most recently an air conditioning contractor, a travel agency, and a Mexican restaurant. To make it her own, Dria stripped out the drywall and the drop ceiling, uncovering wainscoting that she eventually painted pale green as well as stunning pressed tin that spans the space overhead. In square feet, the dining area might not be large, but thanks to what’s now a 14-foot ceiling, as well as pale colors and natural light, Dria’s luncheonette feels much more open and airy than any school cafeteria.
Even the eclectic furnishings – tables from a bygone Lower East Side restaurant, chairs from a lady way out in the middle of Pennsylvania, hanging lamps and wall lamps from all over – don’t seem to add clutter. True, most of Dria’s personal contributions – cookbooks and knickknacks, crockery and glassware – are constrained behind the counter.
To no surprise, when Dria opened her luncheonette in the summer of 2023, she dispensed with commercially printed menus. Instead, a hand-chalked signboard describes a half-dozen sandwiches.
The Chicky sandwich applies charred onion, Bulgarian feta, arugula, smoked paprika and mayo to a single huge herb-seasoned meatball, which has been flattened to fit between a crusty sesame-seeded bun. For the Dill Party, Dria observes, “we brine and roast our turkey every day,” and dress it with dill havarti, dill pickle and dill mayo; avocado, too. The relatively simple Tomato TomAHto adds no more than olive oil and basil mayo to “good tomatoes,” a claim that’s simply an affirmation of market freshness; when that’s not possible, the sandwich is 86’ed.
The stunning desserts are stationed beside the register, within a tall rotating display and under bell jars, so it’s impossible to order a sandwich without wondering what dessert will follow it best. On our first visit we feasted on a gorgeous kumquat pavlova; another time we indulged in a fat slice of sour cherry chocolate cake. Both were large enough to share.
It’s possible, however, that not ordering a second dessert, or passing up a seasonal sandwich, might mean missing out. Dria balances her desire to devise new menu items with the need to serve favorite dishes to her regulars, many of whom are her Ridgewood neighbors. Sandwiches tend to have a longer menu lifespan than desserts, but we’re still waiting for the return of Squash Me, which adorns roasted butternut squash with kale pesto, a goat cheese ricotta spread and a dressed radicchio salad. And we rue the day that we declined a slice of black-and-white malted cake, striped with malted milk chocolate ganache and malted vanilla frosting.
Though the hours at Salty Lunch Lady’s Little Luncheonette aren’t as regimented as at a school cafeteria, Dria’s place is truly a luncheonette. It’s open only from late morning till late afternoon, five days a week, and is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Those, of course, are the hours when customers are served; they don’t account for special orders, let alone the shopping, cleaning, bookkeeping and endless other tasks that keep a restaurant humming along.
Nonetheless, “I love it, I love it, I really love it,” Dria tells us. It’s a “unique and special thing” to have a passion for one’s work; “I don’t take that for granted,” she says. Neither do we.
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