‘This is an institution’: Paul’s Family Restaurant celebrates 65 years in Elgin

One of the oldest family-owned and operated restaurants in the suburbs was celebrated as an Elgin “institution” on Friday.

About 75 friends, family and local dignitaries gathered at Paul’s Family Restaurant at the corner of Lawrence Avenue and McLean Boulevard to honor its 65th year in Elgin.

“This is an institution,” state Sen. Cristina Castro said before reading an Illinois Senate proclamation congratulating the restaurant. “When we have an institution like Paul’s, we need to celebrate, cherish it and keep it safe. It’s like coming home to your family.”

Mayor David Kaptain invoked the term as well, saying he remembers a consultant telling council members once that most restaurants last about two years, and “if you last five years, you’re an institution.”

“Sixty-five years in business in this town and still be as successful is incredible,” he said.

John and Stella Paul opened their first iteration of the restaurant, then called Douglas Coffee Shop, at 158 Division St. in Elgin in 1961. Greek immigrants who met in the United States, they had $200 to buy food for their first day of business at the 19-seat eatery.

The couple later moved the restaurant to its current location at 1300 Lawrence Ave. Their daughter, Elaine Paul, bought the restaurant in the mid 1990s to keep it in the family when her parents wanted to retire.

Elaine Paul said that like many Greek immigrants, her parents’ “only goal” was for her to have “as great an education as possible.” She went to Northwestern University and later graduated from law school and worked in Washington, D.C.

“When it was time for them to retire and sell, I’m the only child, and I wasn’t ready to see it go to someone else,” Elaine Paul said. “I thought I’d keep it a few years, and here we are 30-some years later.”

Stella Paul died in 2015. Elaine Paul said her father, John, now 97, “was the absolute picture of health” as recently as this year and was in fact traveling internationally by himself when he started feeling poorly in February. He was soon diagnosed with stage 1 colorectal cancer.

“He has his good days, but not that many and it’s really hard,” she said.

John Paul had hoped to attend Friday but had just returned home from a hospital stay and wasn’t up to it.

Elaine Paul said business has been difficult since the pandemic, but it’s been important to her to carry on the legacy her parents created.

“It’s really been a labor of love,” she said. “And it’s really been to honor my parents because I was always so proud of them.”

rwest@dailyherald.com