Oct. 2, 2020
By Landon Bost (The Local Reporter)
If you ate at Elmo’s Diner in Carrboro over its 29-year run, thank kitchen manager Charles “Chuck” Mills: he made your day better.
He started in 1995 as a dishwasher, then became a prep-cook, square-meals cook, cleaned, handled deliveries: anything that needed help in the tiny kitchen inside Carr Mill Mall, he did.
Now, two weeks after the downtown institution announced its permanent closure because of the coronavirus pandemic, Mills and some of the diner’s regulars are still feeling the loss.
“We’ve been around so long that we were literally the hub of the Carrboro dining scene,” Mills said, recalling that when Elmo’s opened in 1991 there were few restaurants in downtown Carrboro. “We definitely became ingrained in the community, and I could see it. Every time I would talk to someone, they’d ask me where I worked, and I would say Elmo’s, and they’ll go, ‘Oh Elmo’s,’ and they would start telling me some Elmo’s story.”