10 Restaurants Pennsylvanians Over 60 Remember That Are Gone for Good

Somewhere in your memory is a booth, a menu and a first bite you can’t order anymore.

Pennsylvania has said goodbye to many restaurants like that.

Here are the old favorites many locals still talk about.

1. Gino’s Hamburgers

Gino’s Hamburgers ran its headquarters right in King of Prussia, founded in 1957 by Baltimore Colts stars Gino Marchetti, Alan Ameche, Joe Campanella and Louis Fischer.

You ordered a char-grilled burger with a secret sauce, and you sang along with the jingle whether you meant to or not.

The chain grew past 500 East Coast locations before Marriott bought the whole company for $48 million in 1982.

Every Gino’s became Roy Rogers.

A 2010s revival tried to bring the name back, and its King of Prussia location reopened just a few miles from the original headquarters.

That comeback store closed in 2013, citing growing pains, so even the second try at Gino’s didn’t survive in the state that built it.

2. Horn & Hardart Automat

Horn & Hardart put its first automat at 8th and Chestnut in 1902, and Philadelphia never had anything else quite like it.

You slid a nickel into a little glass-fronted window, and a slice of pie or a plate of baked beans sat behind the door, already portioned out.

No cashier.

No small talk if you didn’t want it.

Just food, glass, and coins.

The automats spread through the city for decades before the format lost its footing to fast food drive-throughs.

The very last one anywhere in the country shut its doors in 1991.

3. Philip’s Restaurant

Philip’s Restaurant opened at 1145 South Broad Street in South Philadelphia in October 1940, when Philip Muzi and Teresa Teodori took out the business license.

Muzi put only his first name on the sign, since Italy and the United States were headed toward war.

An Italian surname didn’t seem like good business at the time.

It worked anyway.

You ordered veal or a T-bone.

Philip’s had advertised itself as the first Italian restaurant in the city with air conditioning.

Philip’s pulled more customers from the Main Line and out of state than from the South Philadelphia neighborhood around it.

Philip Muzi died about five years after opening.

His widow, Amelia, and their son John ran the restaurant for decades after that, until it closed in 2001.

4. Le Bec-Fin

Georges Perrier opened Le Bec-Fin in Center City Philadelphia in the early 1970s.

Esquire eventually named it the best restaurant in the country.

Le Bec-Fin carried a reputation for years as the most expensive restaurant in Philadelphia.

That price tag alone put it out of reach for many would-be diners.

You dressed up for Le Bec-Fin.

Georges Perrier exited Le Bec-Fin in 2012, more than forty years after opening it.

The restaurant didn’t survive the transition.

The dining room went dark.

Le Bec-Fin closed for good in June 2013.

Georges and Le Bec-Fin had always been joined at the hip, and when he left, so did the restaurant.

5. Howard Johnson’s

Howard Johnson’s ran the dining rooms at every one of the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s original service plazas when the highway opened in 1940, under a subcontract with Standard Oil.

You stopped at Midway for the orange roof and the 28 ice cream flavors, not because you needed gas.

Fast food and drive-through windows replaced those sit-down Howard Johnson’s dining rooms at the Turnpike plazas by the mid-1980s.

The last Howard Johnson’s restaurant anywhere in the country, a holdout in Lake George, New York, closed in 2022.

Gone from the Turnpike now.

Gone everywhere else, too.

6. Chi-Chi’s

Chi-Chi’s inside the Beaver Valley Mall in Monaca served up sizzling fajita platters that hissed all the way to your table, and you remember them.

Health officials linked that Monaca restaurant to a hepatitis A outbreak that sickened more than 650 people and killed four in late 2003.

It remains one of the largest outbreaks of its kind in U.S. history.

The restaurant closed immediately.

Chi-Chi’s had already filed for bankruptcy weeks earlier, and Outback Steakhouse’s parent company bought up what remained of the chain in 2004 and converted every location to other brands.

The name has started making a comeback, with a lone new Chi-Chi’s opening in Minnesota in October 2025.

Pennsylvania isn’t on that list.

7. H.A. Winston & Co.

H.A. Winston & Co. opened its first restaurant at Front and Chestnut in Philadelphia in 1972, and by 1977 it had grown to 22 locations, including one in Bryn Mawr.

You ordered the French onion soup because everyone told you to, and your burger came with a name that made no sense and tasted fine anyway, a “Berger.”

Winston’s is often described as the precursor to the fern-bar chains that followed, including Bennigan’s, Houlihan’s and T.G.I. Friday’s.

Then it vanished too.

The last Winston’s location, at 15th and Locust, closed for good in 1992.

8. Winky’s

Winky’s opened its first restaurants in the Pittsburgh suburbs starting in 1962.

The burger stand grew into a chain of roughly 40 restaurants across Pennsylvania and Ohio by the late 1970s.

You ordered a Big Wink if you were hungry, and you got a Winkyshake to wash it down whether you needed one or not.

The company behind Winky’s, Sewickley-based Jiffy Foods Corp., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 1982, listing only 25 remaining locations.

Nothing came back from it.

By the end of 1982, Winky’s was gone from all three states.

9. Old Original Bookbinder’s

Old Original Bookbinder’s fed Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood for well over a century, seating presidents, Hollywood royalty and everyone in between under its low ceilings.

You went for the snapper soup and the lobster, and you stayed to look at the old photos on the walls.

A big 2001 renovation left the restaurant with debt it never worked off, and the owner filed for bankruptcy protection in 2006.

The doors closed for good in 2009.

An Old City landmark, gone.

10. Snow White Diner

Snow White Diner ran two locations in Philadelphia, one at 2nd and Market and another at 19th and Chestnut.

You could get a burger there that the Philadelphia Inquirer's food critic once praised in print.

The 2nd and Market location closed first and became Revolution House, a beer-and-pizza spot.