Is this Mustache Bill’s last stand? Legendary diner keeps cooking, but is still up for sale

Bill Smith has spent more than half a century behind the griddle at Mustache Bill’s Diner in Barnegat Light on the northern tip of Long Beach Island. He’s invented novel ways to cook everything from pancakes to eggs, including a UFO-shaped hybrid of the two called the Cyclops. He’s seen the rise and fall of trends and ably adapted, perfecting the egg white omelet and gluten-free specialties.

But the secret to the enduring success of Mustache Bill’s — the first diner to be named an America’s Classic by the James Beard Foundation in 2004 — has been his determination “not to change too much.”

“People always ask me, ‘What’s new?’ Well, certainly not the turkey gravy,” said Smith, 73, who says even Guy Fieri admired how he still makes gravy the old-fashioned way, from pan drippings and stock, when the TV star featured Mustache Bill’s in a 2009 episode of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.

“If someone comes in and enjoys a dish, they’ll want the exact same thing the next time. And that’s the key: You don’t want to surprise them. Surprise is not good.”

Smith broke his own rule in the spring of 2023: He and wife Debbie, 72, decided that it was time to retire and put Mustache Bill’s up for sale. They listed with Oceanside Realty, asking $3.5 million for the 50-seat 1959 Fodero diner and its half acre of prime real estate in the shadow of the Barnegat Lighthouse.

The farewell parade of columns lamenting the “end of an era” started rolling in immediately for “the Jersey Shore’s most storied diner.” A collection box at the local post office gathered hundreds of tribute cards and letters to the Smiths and their long-running crew, including Smith’s younger sister, Dorothy “Dottie” Zauli, a grill cook who also has worked there for more than 50 years.

“I read every one and I recognized so many of the names and pictures of 7-year-old kids holding pancakes shaped liked mermaids, whales, and ships,” Bill said. “I’ve fed generations.”

But then? Well ... not so fast.

Earlier this summer, I was simultaneously stunned and delighted to find the old place at Broadway and West Eighth Street still humming with vibrant diner life, its celery-colored Naugahyde stools and booths occupied with customers devouring fresh chowders, chicken cheesesteaks, local fluke tacos, and bread pudding.

“We’ve had no offers,” Debbie said with a shrug from the cashier’s stand.

“We’ve not even had a nibble,” Bill said, an odd thing to consider for a man who still serves up to 800 people on a busy summer day.

The empathetic part of me wishes the Smiths a happy and well-earned retirement. Bill started working in the diner at age 14 as a summer dishwasher. In 1972, after a few years loading clam trucks and mating ships, he returned at age 21 to buy it, changing the name from “Jack’s” to “Bill’s” during the Nixon administration.

The couple, who met in sixth grade in Ship Bottom, N.J., (where Debbie’s father was the school’s principal), have worked tirelessly side-by-side for decades, with Bill rising early each weekend morning to prep the diner for its 6 a.m. opening. The diner now serves only Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays during the season; the Smiths live much of the year in Florida.

The nostalgic part of me, who hungrily devoured a fluffy Trenton omelet studded with nubs of pork roll and fresh tomatoes and then dove into a cloud of creamed chipped beef — a recipe handed down to Bill from his Army dad, who ran the mess hall at what was then named Fort Bragg — is also simply grateful that this slice of true Americana is still cooking with the same passion for freshness it always has.

“That [dual sentiment] seems to be the consensus,” Bill said, with a note of both pride and resignation. They’d put the diner up for sale because, “well, I’m getting older and it seemed like the right thing to do.”

But knowing how much Mustache Bill’s is still appreciated fuels his willingness to keep going.

“If you don’t love doing this, it would be impossible to do it for 50 years. When I wake up at 4:20 a.m. each day, it’s not like, ‘Oh God, not this! Not me!’ I get up and I just do it. I’m paying attention. I’m present. I’m thinking about what specials I’m going to run. You gotta be involved. You can’t fake it. You’re either in or you’re out. And if you don’t love it enough, you should just go do something else.”

The Demise of the Diner has been a long-unfolding American tragedy, at least until recently, as these affordable neighborhood mainstays and community hubs face the tides of changing tastes, competition from chains, the blows of the pandemic, and rising real estate pressure. Mustache Bill’s sits on four buildable lots.

“The land is the value here,” Smith acknowledged. “Believe me, nobody wants to pay that price and work this hard.”

He is hopeful that someone will buy the vintage structure and move it elsewhere to still operate it as a diner. But few, if any, take as much satisfaction in the no-shortcuts scratch cooking that has always set Mustache Bill’s apart.

“People are eating what you’re putting in front of them. This is an intimate affair. So, you’ve got to care a little bit. Actually, more than that. It’s not a show,” Smith said.

They crack whole eggs here instead of the pre-mixed cartons of liquid eggs most high-volume restaurants use. Smith’s pancakes show the fluffy resilience of a batter made with fresh ingredients, as opposed to the typical just-add-water mixes that result in squishy cakes.

A great pancake recipe is, of course, essential to one of Smith’s great innovations: the Cyclops, a ring-shaped pancake with an egg in the middle. He created it on the spot one morning to save space on his griddle when eight orders for pancakes and eggs came in at the same time. He has since invented a dispenser to drop a perfect batter ring on the grill, like a giant doughnut, and also refined the art of cooking eggs right to order.

The Cyclops wasn’t Smith’s only innovation. He has refined a distinctive technique for cooking omelets on a flat-top grill, swiftly scraping, shaping, and folding eggs into a rectangle and then forming them into a roll to be set aside over low heat “for the bake,” to finish cooking. It lends the eggs an extra puff uncommon for a folded omelet cooked on a griddle.

Mustache Bill’s has also been credited by some with originating the term waitron in the early 1970s. That may sound somewhat dystopian these days, but in the era of DEVO and Lost in Space, it was a quirky and progressive attempt at gender equality. The service at Mustache Bill’s could not be warmer or more personal, which is why progress has its limits in this bastion of retro hospitality.

Smith isn’t looking forward to the moment he finally does sell the diner.

“I have not imagined that day and I’ve been here so long — my entire life, really — that it confuses me to even think about it.”

A recent flare-up in his left knee, though, straining the pivot he makes hundreds of times daily to put cooked orders up on the pass, is yet another reminder that retirement may have its benefits.

“The plan is I’m going to keep doing this until somebody else digs me out of here,” he said. “But I’m glad I did it. I still get tremendous satisfaction when I make something that people enjoy.”

Mustache Bill’s Diner, Broadway and West Eighth Street, Barnegat Light, N.J. 08006. Hours: Friday through Sunday, 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., through the end of the 2024 season on Oct. 31. Information: 609-494-0155 or mustachebills.com.