More Than Forty Years on the Same Street

Since 1984

Terri and Paul Cakmis opened 43rd Street Deli in 1984. It was not built to be a destination restaurant or a place chasing a trend. It was built as somewhere a family could get breakfast together, somewhere a college student could grab a plate between classes, somewhere the same regulars could show up on a Tuesday and get treated like it. That is a specific, unglamorous kind of restaurant to run, and it is also the kind that tends to last, because it is not depending on being the newest thing in town.

A mom-and-pop breakfast spot survives on repetition more than on any single big idea. The same eggs, cooked the same careful way, morning after morning, for people who are going to come back next week and the week after. Over decades that adds up to something a brand-new restaurant cannot manufacture no matter how good its opening month is: a place where the servers already know what you usually order.

It also means the restaurant has had to serve more than one generation of the same families. A parent who grabbed breakfast here as a University of Florida student decades ago can bring their own kids in now and sit at more or less the same counter, under more or less the same neon sign. That is not something a restaurant can plan for on day one. It only happens if the place is still standing, still good, and still theirs, forty-some years later.

The next generation in the kitchen

Grace Cakmis, daughter of the founders, now runs 43rd Street Deli as proprietor and chef. That kind of handoff is its own quiet achievement. A lot of family restaurants close when the founders step back, because the food and the standards lived in one person's head and left with them. Here, the same traditions that built the place are still running the kitchen, just under different hands, with room for the menu to keep moving. Fresh-pressed juices and specialty pancakes sitting alongside a biscuits-and-gravy platter is what that looks like on a plate: the classics stay, and there is still room to try something new.

You can see the same idea in how the dining room actually runs. One regular who has been coming in nearly once a week described never having a poor experience, pointing to a consistency across service, food, and a specials menu that keeps rotating, and said the restaurant is his only option when he wants to go out for breakfast. Another customer, describing a first visit, called the breakfast and the service outstanding and said the restaurant is excellent for people who are picky about breakfast. That kind of feedback, repeated at 4.5 stars across more than a thousand Google reviews, is the long-term evidence that the handoff between generations held.

What changed in 2026

For a long stretch, 43rd Street Deli operated two locations, the original spot and a second on Williston Road in South Gainesville. That South Gainesville location closed its doors on August 10, 2026. The West location, at 4410 Northwest 25th Place, is now the sole 43rd Street Deli, open every day from 7:00 AM to 2:30 PM, with lunch served Monday through Friday until 2:30 as well.

One detail from that transition is worth knowing if you have not been in recently: the Cakmis Catfish Platter, a dish associated with the closed location, hand-breaded catfish nuggets served with two eggs any style, cheese grits, and a biscuit or toast, has been folded into the main breakfast menu here. It is a small thing, but it is the kind of small thing that tells you how a family restaurant actually handles change. Nothing gets lost, it just moves to where the family still is.

Local coverage of the closure noted that the former Williston Road storefront was purchased by Linda Vista, a Mexican restaurant, closing one chapter of the building's history while confirming what the business had already said itself: the West location on Northwest 25th Place carries the name forward now, on its own.

Forty-some years in, the address may have simplified to one location, but the reason people keep coming back has not changed. It is still a place built by a family, now run by their daughter, still serving the same kind of morning it always has.