The Breakfast Club
FREEPORT — For three Valencia men, Saturday morning breakfast can be an adventure.
Andy Walter, Ed Kosinski and Chuck Reynolds have eaten breakfast together every Saturday for the past several years.
The trio went to Freeport Foods in Freeport in early August. This was the 100th restaurant the group had been to. Walter had wanted to go to 100 different locations as a part of a bucket list of things to do.
“We're just friends, and we decided to go to different places,” Reynolds, 77, said.
Walter, 81, started going to eat in 1999 with another man, Sonny Cole of Valencia.
He met Kosinski, 81, in 2000 at a computer class, and he started coming. Walter and Kosinski also discovered that they share the same birthday, July 3.
Reynolds, who knew Cole since childhood, was introduced to the group a few years later. Cole has not been able to come recently due to poor health.
They have been to places such as New Castle, Pittsburgh's Strip District, Butler, Oakdale and Harrisville.
They go to chain restaurants. They go to independent ones.
They go to different churches when they serve pancake breakfasts.
“We've been all over the place,” Reynolds said.
In August, they went to their fourth Bob's Diner, which is a small chain in Pittsburgh's South Hills.
Walter carries a list of places he has been to, but he didn't officially start keeping track of where the group went until 2010.
The group often repeats locations and goes to new restaurants as they discover them.
They have gone to restaurants that have since gone out of business.
Sometimes, they go to a restaurant that closes and reopens under a new name and with a new owner.If they go, it then counts as a different restaurant.In all their travels, Walter said they have not found any restaurants that they would consider “bad.”Kosinski consistently orders blueberry pancakes and coffee, and he rates restaurants based on the pancakes.Walter generally gets a cheese omelet with hot tea.Reynolds sometimes gets pancakes and sometimes gets an omelet.“Whatever I feel like ordering that morning,” Reynolds said.One interesting place they ate was in Ellwood City. Instead of conventional place mats, the restaurant used a sheet of newspaper.“(And) the food was excellent,” Reynolds said.He said they also have eaten at a restaurant that was above a car dealership.The meals generally last between an hour and a half and two hours.“Sometimes, the trip is almost as long as the breakfast,” Walter said.The topic of conversation sometimes strays to politics, but it generally sticks to ordinary life.“We never argue,” Reynolds said.“We're too old for that,” Walter jokes.Walter found out about eating at Freeport Foods from his nephew, Ed Walter of Sarver, which is how it ended up as the 100th stop. Because of the special occasion, several family members attended that meal.Ed Walter has gone to the group's breakfasts about 15 times, which he said can be fun.“It's like their club,” he said.Hitting the 100 mark could be considered a milestone, and the group shows no sign of stopping.“We're going to go for 101,” Walter said, noting he found out about a restaurant in Carnegie.
