Editor’s note: After 26 years in business, Lucille’s American Cafe in Weston permanently closed after lunch service on Sunday, Aug. 31, according to co-owner Beth Nunez.

Once the final customer left at 3 p.m., Lucille’s longtime staff were treated to an employees-only dinner.

Over the past two weeks, “people had been coming in every single day and crying on me, and I was doing the same,” says Nunez, who stressed that she and husband Paul are working to reopen elsewhere in Broward County. “It was a good ending, but I can’t retire. We’re trying to find another spot.”

It became a safe haven for dazed and distressed snowbirds after the Sept. 11 attacks and a sanctuary for dazed and distressed regulars in the COVID-19 era.

But now, the future of Lucille’s American Cafe, a Weston comfort-foo

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