My Story #178: Gold Roc Has Closed!

Don Stacom/Hartford Courant

Many good memories were made there.

Gold Roc in West Hartford, once a popular 24/7 diner, now out of business
Hartford Courant
By Don Stacom
August 31, 2021


After two decades of serving all-day breakfast fans, after-bar crowds, long-haul truckers and third-shift workers from around the region, the Gold Roc diner in West Hartford is gone.

One of a fast-dwindling number of 24/7 diners in Connecticut, the Kane Street landmark shut down recently after struggling for the past year and a half.

With bars closed and less traffic on the highway, the pandemic cut deeply into business at the Gold Roc. It had reduced its once extensive menu and set up a handful of outdoor tables, but the parking lot had been noticeably less crowded — and sometimes empty — since early 2020.

The local news website we-ha.com reported that the building will be converted into an International House of Pancakes location, but neither Gold Roc owner Ayaz Enterprises nor Dine Brands, IHOP’s parent company, could be reached for information.

An IHOP! Sacrilege.

Gold Roc was an institution in the trans community, I was asked many times by the owner about “Our Girls.” Once in a while one of the member of the support group would have stopped by for sometime and he would ask me if she was all right.

Before the pandemic, the Gold Roc had thrived despite a national downturn in the diner business. It was known as a stopping point for Boston-bound or New York-bound I-84 drivers seeking a meal, a snack or just coffee before getting back on the highway.

The dinner was the first place I that I went out as Diana, the support group had a diner there once, the instructions were that they were going to be in the back on the right side of the dinner.

I gathered my courage and with my pocketbook tucked under my arm like a football I marched in head down ready to block any opponents, and made a beeline to where they said they would be.

NO ONE WAS THERE!!!!

Panicking I sat down at the booth and didn’t know what to do, finally a waiter came over and said, I think the group that you want is over there.

In my diary I wrote:

I went to the Gold Roc Café. The COS had dinner there and ten members came. I got there at 7:30 and the directions said to go in the front door, turn left and go all the way to the back and they will be sitting on the right. So I did and no one was there. After about ten or fifteen minutes a waiter came over and said that he thought the group I wanted was sitting over on the left.

I looked and there was about 10 members of the support group sitting there laughing, I had walked right pass them and never saw them there.

But the Gold Roc was also a gathering spot for third-shift workers from around the region, sometimes including state troopers from the Hartford barracks.

I remember one time when I was at the Legislative Office Building until the wee hours of the morning and I stopped there to get either a really late dinner or a really early breakfast and the dinner just filled up Hartford police officers, state police officer, CT Marshals, US Marshals, DEA, FBI, and just about every other police officers. I found out that there was a joint drug raid and fugitive round-up.

Now here is a newly outed trans girl surrounded by about thirty or forty macho police officers (there were about four or five police women there).

Redroc LLC owned it until last month, when Mustafa Ayaz’s Middletown-based business purchased it for $1.95 million, according to town records. As of this week, its phone was disconnected and the doors were locked.

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My regular blog post will be at 3 PM today.