Denny's Steak Pub: No Steak, but Just Enough Charm

On a sunny weekday afternoon, Kevin Ryan stood behind the bar of , filling baskets with electric orange cheese puffs from a giant plastic tub.

Don’t let the “steak” part of the name fool you - the glowing puffs, and maybe some pretzels, are the only food you’ll find at Denny’s, which comes as disappointing news to many would-be visitors hoping to score a Grand Slam breakfast in the city.

“Every time there’s an advertisement on the TV for anything for Denny’s, you get four phone calls saying ‘Where you located?’” said one regular seated at the bar. (A note to future inquisitors: if you’re looking for the diner mega-chain, you’ll have to travel outside the five boroughs. It doesn’t exist here.)

Indeed, not much escapes a Denny’s regular. The time was not yet noon, but a small contingent of middle-aged men lined the bar, casually sipping beer and casting the occasional glance at one of the games broadcast from a handful of TVs. The steaks may be of a bygone era, but one suspects the regulars are permanent fixtures.

Located squarely atop the Church Ave. F stop in Kensington, Denny’s has all the trappings of any good dive: A well-used pool table, a jukebox, TVs perma-tuned to sports. Domestic beer is on tap for $3, and shots are poured not into your standard glass thimble, but cups that could suitably contain an entire mixed drink at a fancier joint elsewhere.

Denny’s been a neighborhood stalwart since 1975, when Denny Ryan opened his eponymous bar with the idea of offering good food and reasonably priced drinks to Kensington’s primarily blue-collar residents.

After his death in 1989, Denny’s son, Kevin, took over the bar. He's been there ever since, despite the economic hardships that forced many of the neighborhood’s similar establishments to close.

The younger Ryan attributes the survival of Denny’s to the fortunate fact that his family owns the building. Had they been forced to pay the sky-high rents demanded by most of the area’s landlords, he says, Denny's would probably have folded as well. In fact, and are the only other businesses on the block to have weathered the years along with the bar. 

Of course, the neighborhood's sea change has hardly been limited to the business landscape. Once predominantly Irish, Italian and German, Kensington has seen an influx of immigrants from all over the world.

Ryan, a former longtime firefighter in East New York, said the bar’s clientele mirrors the changing face of the neighborhood.

“It’s a little of everything,” he said, chuckling. “We get a lot of different people mixed together, and somehow it kinda works in a weird, dysfunctional way.”

Ryan shut down the restaurant portion of the bar around 10 years ago, deciding that maintaining a kitchen was simply too hectic. He’s been meaning to take the sign down, he said, but worries about accidentally dropping it on an unsuspecting pedestrian ascending the subway stairs.

It’s just as well. Changing the sign likely wouldn’t make a lick of difference to anyone accustomed to walking through the front door. Whatever else in the neighborhood changes, Denny’s will be right there with its jukebox, pool table and affable crop of regulars, a fact which is not lost on Ryan.

"'Where else you gonna go?,'" he sometimes chides his customers laughingly. "I’m the only game in town. This is the oasis right here.”