The iconic 24-hour diner from a famed Goodfellas scene caught fire on Monday afternoon — drawing more than 60 firefighters and severely damaging the Queens building.
The Post reports that GoodFellas Diner broke out in a fire around 4:30 p.m. Monday. Nobody was injured, but the building at 56-26 Maspeth Ave., at Rust Street, suffered a lot of damage. Co-owner Denise Diamantis told the Post: “Everything is destroyed. My God, everything is destroyed.”
In a post on Facebook, the restaurant shared a video of the smoke coming from the building and noted that they needed help boarding up the windows.
GoodFellas Diner opened in the early ‘60s and was once called Clinton Diner. Diamantis and her husband Michael, who have owned the place since 1985, renamed the classic roadside diner to GoodFellas because so many people knew it for the iconic movie scene between Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta.
Since then, the restaurant played set to a myriad of movies, TV shows, music videos and commercials, like the Good Wife, Six Ways to Sunday, the Americans, and Elementary. It’s one of the few remaining standalone diners in New York and has maintained a “space age design” that makes it such a hit with location scouts. It’s one of NYC’s iconic old-school diners.
Update: The owners say that they’re working to get it fixed as soon as possible, though there’s not a timeline yet.
Sooooo sad . The famous Goodfellas Diner just went on fire.
Posted by Gee Santiago on Monday, June 11, 2018
Remnants of the burnt down GoodFellas diner in Maspeth, Queens. Considering Robert De Niro's comments last night at #TonyAwards sure has the appearance of something nefarious pic.twitter.com/dqCyeFBVxO
— Joe Fionda (@fiondavision) June 11, 2018