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In December 1996, a bartender nearing his 30th birthday who had never trained as a chef bought a restaurant with his parents. Todd Leach has been running TJ's Cafe in Colonie ever since.

A decade later, to the month, a mid-30s chef educated at the Culinary Institute of America turned a building his parents owned into their hometown's only real restaurant. Art Riley has been running McGreivey's in Waterford ever since.

Now, a couple of months after their respective 25th and 15th anniversaries, the casual restaurants have survived the pandemic and feed hundreds of patrons a day, many of them neighbors living within a few miles.

"I was around 28, talking with my mother on the beach in Florida, and she said, 'What are you going to do with your life?'" said Leach, who turns 55 this spring.

As a teen who looked older than his age, back when the drinking age was 18, Leach began picking up occasional odd jobs and then full shifts at an Albany bar that hadn't asked whether he was old enough to legally consume the drinks he was being served. He would tell them he had to leave at 11:30 p.m. to go to a night job at UPS, but in fact he had a midnight curfew set by his parents, who owned the former Terminal Hardware in Colonie.

Working as a barback turned into bartending jobs, which continued through college and a post-graduation move to New York City, where he'd intended to go to law school. But 60-hour weeks behind the bar of a restaurant in Manhattan's financial district and the lure of paychecks instead of student loans derailed a legal career. Leach continued to sling drinks after moving back to his native Capital Region.

After that fateful conversation with his mother, he decided he wanted his own restaurant, and his father, who had sold his store and was speculating in real estate, agreed that buying a building was better than renting. After touring a rundown place on Central Avenue, they adjourned to a restaurant in the distinctive A-frame building across the street to discuss what they'd just seen. Serendipitously, the A-frame was for sale.

On Dec. 26, 1996, TJ's Cafe opened.

"I wanted a place where you could come in dressed like I like to dress — blue-collar casual, every day — and have a sandwich, or a steak dinner if you wanted, and not feel underdressed," Leach said. "I'm proud that it's still like that today."

He didn't intend to cook.

"I was a front-of-house guy, talking to people and pouring drinks," he said. But, having helped out in kitchens over the years, he could make sandwiches and burgers, handle orders of wings and fries, get it all on plates in a timely manner. And so when his head chef had a domestic implosion, Leach took over the kitchen, teaching himself new dishes over the years to the point that his menu grew to include what have become signatures, including top sirloin, chicken Francaise — and lots and lots of chicken Parm.

As in 315 orders in one night. That was the peak, during the pandemic, for the long-standing Tuesday-night special at TJ's Cafe. He usually sells 200, 60 percent of them takeout, though the other week, on what Leach called "a slow night for chicken Parm," he sold "only" 120. The special includes soup or salad, chicken Parm with pasta or potato, and Prinzo's bread. For years it cost $9.99. Now it's all the way up to $12.99.

Leach, his father and father-in-law each was diagnosed, in the same week last year, with prostate cancer. He had surgery over the summer and is mindful that his decades remaining are likely fewer than he has already lived. His kids, with a wife he met while she was working at the restaurant, are now 16 and 13. The family likes downhill skiing in the winter, summers on Lake George.

If some young person happened to be sitting with a parent at a TJ's table and talking about going into the restaurant business, Leach might sell.

"The beach is beckoning," he said, "but I'm really good at what I do, and I still love it."

Leach paused, then said, "I can definitely do this for five more years. Ask me in five if I I've got another five in me."

What chicken Parm is to TJ's, scalloped potatoes is to McGreivey's.

Art Riley, 51, has been making them for almost 30 years, since his summers feeding track-season crowds in Saratoga Springs. They've been a fixture at McGreivey's since its December 2006 opening, and on holidays like Easter and Mother's Day, the restaurant sells hundreds of ham dinners with scalloped potatoes.

Riley has always run the restaurant. His father does the books; his mother makes the desserts. Neither has ever taken a salary. They bought the property in 1967 and for years ran it as a bowling alley with food. The name comes from McGreivey's Northern Hotel, which occupied the building starting in 1876. A photo on the wall of the restaurant shows the hotel sign in the background as a goat passes by, towing a boy on a sled.

Because the building is long paid for, and the accountant and pastry chef are free, and Riley pays himself as the chef but not also as the general manager, McGreivey's has surprisingly affordable prices across a vast menu that always includes four homemade soups. A salad of baby spinach with diced apples, sweet-and-spicy pecans, sun-dried cranberries and Gorgonzola is $9; pulled-pork quesadilla with guacamole, $10. You can get an 8-ounce steak with a whiskey-peppercorn sauce for $22, a 14-ounce rack of lamb for $32, and a coffee-rubbed, Guinness-glazed pork chop for $24, or $15 less than a similar cut at a fancy steakhouse chain in Saratoga Springs.

"It makes me really proud that we're such a community place," Riley said. "People doubted whether a restaurant like this would be supported, or that it could last long. Well, we've been here 15 years."

Riley's son, now 24, works one night as week as the McGreivey's bartender, but he's got an independent career in the conservation field. Mostly, together with Riley's longtime girlfriend, they hunt and go ice fishing. (Online photos show whoppers regularly being pulled out of Lake George, where Riley's phone drowned a frigid death the other week after falling through the hole in the ice. He was texting at the time with a dishwasher, who wanted an upcoming Saturday night off.)

"I know I'm in an unusual position," Riley said. "Not many chefs have the opportunity to open the restaurant they want in their family-owned building — and be successful at it for 15 years."

McGreivey's Address: 91 Broad St., Waterford Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday to Saturday, 1 to 8 p.m. Sunday Info: 518-238-2020 and mcgrieveys.com

TJ's Cafe Address: 1133 Central Ave., Colonie Hours: 11:30 a.m. to10 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday Info: 518-438-7457 and tjscafealbany.com

He said, "When teachers I antagonized as a kid come in and say how much they like the restaurant, I feel some kind of redemption." 

Steve Barnes has worked at the Times Union since 1996, served as arts editor for six years, and since 2005 has been a senior writer. He generally covers restaurants, food and the arts, and is the Times Union's restaurant columnist and theater critic. Steve was also a journalism instructor at the University at Albany for 12 years. You can reach him at sbarnes@timesunion.com or 518-454-5489.