‘Classiest’ eating house in Nova Scotia
Diana Sweets restaurant a part of Sydney’s history
On May 22, 1934, the owners of Diana Sweets celebrated five years in business. Diana Sweets was Sydney’s leading restaurant and confectionary shop, located at 216 Charlotte Street.
The “Proprietors of Sydney’s popular restaurant are most optimistic over prospects for the summer months and look forward with great confidence in the future of Cape Breton.” They further claimed that Diana Sweets was one of the best know businesses of its kind in the Maritimes.
The restaurant was coowned by Michael Vallas, Blaise Koufis and John Raptis. Since its start in 1929, the business gained a steady clientele and popularity. Originally, the three started a small restaurant on Charlotte Street, but after a year in business, they found they had to expand into a larger space to accommodate their growing business. By the end of the second year, their popularity had continued to grow and they need to expand their business yet again.
The three owners set about planning a massive gala to thank their customers for their patronage.
Each guest who from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. were given ‘special floral gifts’ when they attended the ladies afternoon tea. Tea time featured special French pastries and other delicacies. The restaurant was lavishly decorated by Tuttle’s Floral Shoppe with ferns and flowers.
After tea was finished, an even more exciting evening program commenced. The evening program included a fancy dinner, followed by a dance.
The celebration began with a special menu that included a choice of appetizer, an entree, and dessert for only 50 cents. These special menus were set so the patrons could enjoy the choicest of foods and dishes.
For dinner, the menu included fruit salad, a choice of either cream of tomato or Chicken a La Reine soup.
For an entree, guests could choose fresh lobster patties, stuffed young turkey with cranberry jelly, roast dressed chicken with apple sauce, roast leg of lamb with mint sauce, choice of a roast rib of beef with brown gravy, fresh lobster, any style, filet mignon with fried mushrooms, and chops.
All these were served with a choice of vegetable, either boiled or mashed potatoes or buttered carrots.
Then you could finish off your meal with pineapple shortcake with whipped cream, fresh fruit jelly with chocolate cake, lemon meringue pie, or ice cream of any flavour.
When you had finished your meal, you could continue the celebration once the tables were pushed aside to create a dance floor.
There was no cover charge, but the add stated that the things were “prices as usual,” but it never clarified what they meant.
The restaurant was reported to be “undoubtedly the classiest eating house of its type in Nova Scotia, and visitors from near and far have marvelled over the richness of the appointment, excellence of its cuisine and the promptness of service.”
The weekend preceding the celebration saw the coowners “fairly deluged with telegrams of congratulations from leading business firms throughout Eastern Canada, and admirers and patron, which attests to the popularity of the establishment.”
The popularity of Diana Sweets would continue for many years after its fifth anniversary. The restaurant was very popular with the younger crowd and during the war, it was a hot spot for the local servicemen, the best feature was the fact that you could play a song on the jukebox from the booth you were sitting in.
Eventually, Diana Sweets changed hands and owners. Blaise Koufis left town and sold his interests in Diana Sweets. He later returned and tried to rejoin the partners of Diana Sweets, but they declined. So he opened a competing business just down the street, closer to Dorchester Street called the Dome. The restaurant eventually went out of business in the 1970s.