Can’t ‘wine’ about NO Frills: Ogden’s famous diner reopens on 25th Street Monday morning

Would you like some wine with those hash browns? Such bliss may be yours at the new NO Frills Diner, one of Ogden’s most beloved breakfast joints, opening Monday in its new location on Historic 25th Street in Ogden.

Ogden Independent News

Ogden is hungry for one its favorite breakfast spots—NO Frills Diner—and it reopens on Monday, November 22 in a new location on the corner of Historic 25th Street and Lincoln Avenue.

Signs placed outside the new eatery read: “We will be OPEN Monday, November 22 at 7:00 AM. Thank you for your support!” 

“People were constantly stopping in to ask when we’re opening,” said owner Ron Yeates. “Now they don’t have to stop in if they don’t want to.”

Part of the reason for all the excitement may be due to limited breakfast options on 25th Street for some time. NO Frills Diner, already well-loved from its former location on 12th Street in a building that was sold, is a highly desirable addition to the downtown Ogden food scene. 

Yeates wanted to bring his 1950s-style breakfast eatery to 25th Street even before the move became necessary. During the construction at the new space, Yeates observed out-of-town visitors from nearby hotels frequently asking around for places to eat breakfast.

While there are some great local favorite breakfast options, such as Pig and a Jelly Jar, Two Bit Street Cafe, and Bickering Sisters, many dining establishments on 25th Street are closed until lunch or dinner. 

NO Frills Diner will be open seven days a week from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m. to start, and will eventually have extended dinnertime hours Thursday through Saturday.

The four-page menu, with recipes created by Yeates, is loaded with the essential breakfast dishes, burgers, and sandwich standards like pancakes, biscuits and gravy, omelets, chicken and waffles, fish n chips, Monte Cristo and Philly Cheese Steak. But an irresistible array of other fun twists also look very promising—how about a waffle breakfast sandwich, chili verde French fries, breakfast sliders, breakfast nachos, and assortment of loaded hash browns?

Cinnamon rolls, scones and charming side dishes such as mashed potatoes, homemade soups and chili, funeral potatoes, cottage cheese, fruit cups, and “cheesy pasta,” are delightful to see. And beverages from flavored iced coffee, Italian sodas and shakes, to beer and wine, are an added bonus.

All of the food is made fresh to order and homemade, and at a slightly higher price. Yeates said the dramatic rise in costs is the most surprising thing in the nine months of closure between moves. Coffee increased to $40 a case, for example, and the cost of fryer oil more than doubled. In addition, he said, wages must also go up. But unlike many other food industry businesses, Yeates isn’t starving for employees.

“Pay isn’t the greatest for restaurant workers and when I can I help them out. They’re family to me,” Yeates said of his staff, most of whom have worked with him since he opened around fourteen years ago. Many restaurant owners have a spouse or a partner but Yeates, who still jumps in to cook when needed, has always done it alone. “That’s why I think I treat my crew like they’re family,” he said.

The move has been a frustrating and often grueling process, from building a kitchen in the space to getting all of the city permits and working with contractors, but it’s worth it for someone like Yeates who loves to cook and has the passion for it. Before construction began, it was a large, open space but he said the large windows facing east with the mountain views attracted him to it.

Yeates owned Sideline Cafe in Tremonton where he grew up before working for La-Z-Boy until the company closed down twenty years later, and then went right back to the restaurant industry with the 50s-themed NO Frills Diner. He never lived in the era, he said, but seeing it through his mother “it seemed like a calm, peaceful time” and it’s that spirit he wanted to capture in his dining atmosphere.

Simpler times and small pleasures, like sipping steaming hot coffee in a diner booth waiting for a country fried steak—the best-selling No Frill dish—or a glass of wine with your hashbrowns at 11 a.m. if you want to, will add yet another charm to Ogden’s Historic 25th Street.

NO Frills Diner on 25th, 195 25th Street, opens Monday, November 22 at 7 a.m.