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"Breakfast Meeting at New Locanda" is a warm, memory-rich story that blends nostalgia, place, and friendship into a gentle narrative about reconnection. It is a tale where the physical journey across Ottawa mirrors an internal journey through decades of recollections, each step awakening a thread of personal history.

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Breakfast Meeting at the New Locanda

By Harry Arabian

I was in Ottawa for the yearly Fire Safety Conference at Minto Place—a trip I’d made often enough that the city’s downtown blocks felt familiar, though never worn-out. On Tuesday evening, I phoned Andy to let him know I was in town and hoped to see him before my Friday flight home.

“Wednesday, early morning. Eight sharp,” he said. “We’ll meet at the New Locanda Diner on Laurier West. Short walk from where you are—and trust me, they’ve got the best Lebanese coffee in the city. Fresh man’oush that’ll take you right back to vendors on the streets of Beirut.”

That settled it.

The next morning, Ottawa greeted me with a fine May sun that warmed the sidewalks and sharpened reflections in the glass towers. I asked the hotel clerk for directions. She smiled, pointed west, and said, “Follow Bank Street—two blocks. You’ll see the diner on the corner.”

“How convenient,” I murmured as I thanked her, already feeling the small lift that comes from the promise of good company.

Bank Street was alive with commuters and shopkeepers nudging their window displays into place. One storefront was a high-end fashion boutique, its mannequins remaining as rigid and hollow as ever. Next to it—and unexpectedly—a record store.

A bright, bold Paul Anka cover in the window caught my eye. I drifted closer. The track list made me stop. There it was: “She’s a Lady.”

And suddenly I was fourteen again.

Ken’s morning anthem—his shower soundtrack to the entire neighborhood in the 1970s—came rushing back. It was the song he belted every day with theatrical gusto, driving his parents, his sister, and half the block to the brink of madness. It was also the soundtrack of our middle school mornings at Church & Cedar, where I’d wait for Andy and Ken. Sometimes fifteen minutes. Sometimes thirty. And on the morning that had become legend, I finally marched to Ken’s house—only to find Andy already outside, listening helplessly as Ken crooned at full blast from the bathroom window.

“She’s a laaady!”

We groaned. We laughed. Somehow, that ridiculous moment became the thread we never stopped tugging on.

Back in the present, I stepped into the record store. The clerk grinned when he saw the LP in my hands.

“Memorable choice,” he said. “The Anka family used to run the diner on the corner. The new owners kept some memorabilia on the walls. Worth a look.”

“I will,” I said, amused by the neat coincidence—and by the tug of a memory that felt warmer than I expected.

When I arrived at the New Locanda, the scent of fresh dough and spiced coffee wrapped around me like an old blanket. I slid into the first empty booth and ordered a cup. Still no sign of Andy—of course. His enthusiasm had always outpaced his punctuality.

The walls were lined with Paul Anka memorabilia: black-and-white photos, concert posters, an old microphone preserved behind glass. He had been quite the teen idol. Staring at that smiling 1960s face, I couldn’t help thinking of Crooning Ken—our own neighborhood pop star, if only in the echo chamber of his bathroom.

I was mid-sip when the diner door burst open.

“Well hello, Jack! You made it!” Andy boomed. “Can you guess who’s with me?”

He stepped aside, revealing a bald man with a mischievous grin and the kind of confidence that comes from decades of leaning into who you are.

I squinted. There was no chance.

The man pointed to the LP on my table. “She’s my lady. Still my favorite.”

The voice—deep, theatrical, unmistakable—hit me first.

“Ken?” I blurted. “Ken! Look at you!”

He laughed—a fuller, richer version of the one I remembered. “Still crooning. Just with better acoustics now.”

The three of us stood there laughing, hugging, trying to catch up with the decades that had slipped past like loose pages blown down a street.

And just like that—over Lebanese coffee, warm man’oush, and memories that felt both distant and close—the old Church & Cedar trio was back together, as if time had only stepped away for a moment before returning to join us.