If ever there was a family business, it's Tim's, named for owner Lorraine Kamataris' late husband, who purchased the diner in 1954. The fare is cooked fresh each day, created from Tim's original recipes. At the age of fourteen, Tim first stepped behind the formica at the now extinct White Elephant Diner in Clinton, Massachusetts, where he worked for three years. He then went to Chicago to perfect his culinary skills, toiling in some of the Windy City's biggest restaurants. After two years, he returned to Leominster and purchased Tim's.

Lorraine is quite proud of the success of her establishment, which is frequented by Leominster town politicians, judges, doctors, lawyers, and everyday people. Even Ted Kennedy once stopped in to sample the "chowda".

"The diner is run as a Mom and Pop diner," says Lorraine, "very informal, very friendly, very reasonably priced and very good food. A funny thing about our place is that if we are too busy, customers will come in back to the steam table and get a soup or coffee and cut their own bread!"

Tim's is staffed by only four people, all family, who can often be found eating their own breakfast and dinner at the diner. Tim Jr. has been there since he was 10. He's now 45 and is the grill man (and all-around fixit-guy), Gail, also there since a child, is the dishwasher and waitress. Dee-Dee is the cook and of course, there's Lorraine, who jokes, "Mom pays all the bills."

The diner is in it's original state except for the addition of a dining room and a surprisingly attractive brick frontage. As Lorraine tells it "the same week we put the brick in front, a van crashed into it and it has not been repaired since."

"I am trying to hold onto the diner as long as possible," says Lorraine, "because the diner was the love of my husband. He was proud that it was being run by only his family. It will be open as long as I can do the little work I do in it."