The eatery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood is especially helpful to the blind
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There are lots of decent diners in New York City, but some are more decent than others. The Malibu Diner on West 23rd Street may be the most hospitable of them all. They’ll even cut up your order for you.
“I think the food is excellent,” said customer Sharon Lash, who is blind, as server Damian Hejmo performed precisely that task. “For a diner. Of course, every place can make its improvements. But this is my second home. I don’t know what I’d do if this place didn’t exist.”
The Malibu welcomes everybody. “We have a few customers [who] leave, see other places are too official and they come back here,” explained Boris Gacina, the restaurant’s manager. “We sit down with them. Try to make them laugh.”
But the staff may be best known for the effort they take on behalf of the blind. The Malibu is just down the block from Visions at Selis Manor, a social-service agency and residence for the blind and visually impaired.
“It’s very convenient for them to come to our place to have breakfast,” Mr. Gacina said.
Not to mention lunch and dinner. And the occasional birthday party. “The whole back is filled with them,” Mr. Hejmo said of the birthday celebrations. “They usually come in a group.”
Mr. Gacina listed some of the types of assistance the staff routinely provides blind customers. “The hostess helps them to sit down, pick their food—we have menus in Braille but they don’t really use those.”
Ms. Lash added another. “There have been times when a manager will walk me home if it’s raining really hard or snowing, or just out of kindness.”
Vanessa, the cashier—she declined to give her last name—said that she’s sensitive to the needs of blind customers when they pay their bill. Her great grandmother was blind. “If you’re giving change to a blind person you have to tell them, ‘This is a five. This is two fives. This is a 10,’” she explained. “Because they fold each bill a different way.”
Vanessa said the blind also tend to be better tippers. “When they see somebody cares—not just slap the plate down—they do tip better.”
However, the rewards to the staff aren’t limited to a few extra bucks. “From these people you learn a lot of things,” Mr. Gacina explained. “It’s amazing how they’re happy all the time. It’s rare to see them in a down mood.”
Mr. Hejmo added, “From the very beginning you learn to be humble. You learn you have everything on a silver platter. They achieved much more than we did. I tell them the same thing.”
Ms. Lash, who said she works as a transcriber for the Department of Homeland Security, was having eggplant Parmesan over angel-hair pasta. “With mozzarella cheese,” she added with a mischievous, and only slightly guilty, grin as regards the mozzarella’s calorie count. “I don’t care. It’s been a long arduous day. I telecommute. I work from home.”
As she dug into her meal she received a phone call from her therapist, Laurie Nadel. “I’m at the Malibu,” she told Dr. Nadel. “She’s coming here to meet me.”
Ms. Lash wasn’t born blind; she was one of thousands of premature babies in the 1940s and early 1950s who lost their sight after being treated inside their incubators with pure oxygen that had the unexpected result of damaging the retina and causing blindness in some. “I wish I’d never found out because I’ve been bitter ever since,” she confided.
Dr. Nadel was just dropping off some papers. But Ms. Lash said she feels so comfortable at the Malibu that her therapy sessions are sometimes held there. “We’ve been meeting here a lot lately,” she said, and then added with a laugh, “As long as I don’t have to scream.”
Her conversation segued to the coming baseball season and her favorite sportscasters. Among them the Yankees’ John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman, the San Francisco Giants’ Jon Miller, and, of course Ms. Nadel’s brother, Eric. He’s an announcer for the Texas Rangers.
“I wish they were all teddy bears and I could hug them,” Ms. Lash said, while making it clear she’s rooting for the Giants this season. “I wish I could see what they look like.”
—ralph.gardner@wsj.com