The good ones survive, and the better ones thrive. But the mark of a really successful restaurant is longevity. Sure, a new restaurant may be splashy and have an up-and-coming chef or a sexy, high-concept interior. But one that’s been in the same location for decades knows a thing or two about its neighbourhood. It has hit on that magic formula: the combination of food, atmosphere, and price that keeps people coming back.

Below, our writers honour four of these neighbourhood stalwarts. From a Chinese restaurant on Main Street that has survived the area’s hipster gentrification to a pasta place in the West End that’s attracting customers with huge plates of spaghetti and meatballs, these are places with staying power. For that, we salute them.

Accord Seafood Restaurant

“It used to be busier,” said David Sum, the very hands-on manager of Accord Seafood Restaurant (4298 Main Street). “It used to be [Chinese] restaurant row on these few blocks—the Good World down the street, Park Hay Chiu Chow upstairs”¦” He recalled the camaraderie and buzz of the good old days with a glimmer in his eye. “I’ve been in this business since 1977 and here [at Accord] for the last 15 years, so I knew them all. But I think business started to go down when they put in the parking meters.”

It’s 8 p.m. on a Tuesday night and the restaurant is three-quarters full. It seems Accord is still pulling in the crowds. Whatever effect the meters may actually have had on business, they were undeniably a sign of changing times. As Vancouver’s great east-west social divide moved inexorably eastward across Main Street, raising property values as it gentrified the neighbourhood, many Chinese family restaurants relocated—to the Kingsway corridor or the strip centred around East 41st Avenue and Victoria Drive—or their owners simply cashed in and retired. The strip’s reputation as a Chinese-food hot spot eroded, thinning out Accord’s customer base in the process as competition stiffened due to the area’s new hipster demographic. The Good World morphed into a Vietnamese restaurant, Simply Delicious sushi moved in upstairs, Splitz Grill opened down the block, and yet another espresso and pastry place is brewing across the street.

Nonetheless, Accord—around since 1986, and now ancient amid its newbie neighbours—still has a few tricks up its sleeve. Forgoing lunch, it now stays open late: Monday to Thursday till 3 a.m., Friday and Saturday till 4 a.m., and Sunday till 2 a.m. With a small-plates menu of over 60 generously sized $5 dishes and $3 Chinese beers on offer, it’s found a niche among insomniacs and a good number of kitchen staff on R & R après slaving over hot stoves elsewhere in the city.

Regulars like me are being wooed by a whole host of deals and are passing our loyalties on to the next generation. For example, there’s a prix fixe menu (four dishes for $49 or six for $69) that offers dozens of dishes to choose from; your choice of a bonus dish of fried oysters, tilapia, or taro-crusted duck; and steamed rice. Frequent seafood specials include a two-pound crab for $12.80 if you spend $30 on dinner, or most recently, lobster cooked any way you like it for $14.99 a pound.

Grinning like a proud grandpa, Sum returned to our chat after delivering a plate to a nearby table. “When they first started to come here, the wife was pregnant with their son,” he said. “Now look—the kids are taller than I am.”

> Stephen Wong

Lombardo's Pizzeria & Ristorante

Even though it’s become famous for its wood-oven-fired pizza, Lombardo’s Pizzeria & Ristorante didn’t exactly set Commercial Drive on fire when it opened nearly a quarter of a century ago.

“We opened August 15 in ’86, right in the middle of Expo,” Patti Lombardo recalls. “It wasn’t planned that way, because it was a bad time to open. Everyone was at Expo—nobody was doing anything else.”

Lombardo’s (1641 Commercial Drive) found itself competing against Vancouver’s world’s fair thanks to delays in the construction of Il Mercato, the flamingo-pink mini mall in which the restaurant is located. Looking back, Lombardo remembers thinking that Expo wasn’t the only thing keeping her up at night during the restaurant’s launch.

“They showed us what the project [Il Mercato] was going to look like, but when they built it, it wasn’t exactly what they had showed us,” she says. “It was a big problem for us, opening up in the middle of something that we were stuck with. It wasn’t what we had in mind, but we’ve had to live with it.”

Lombardo’s survived a couple of challenging early years to become a Commercial Drive institution. The big drawing card is, of course, the pizza, which is cooked in a brick oven heated by burning wood.

“There was no one using a proper wood oven in town at the time we opened,” Lombardo says. “The city gave us permission to build one, but I don’t think they meant to. I don’t think they realized it would be an actual wood-burning oven.”

Designed by Lombardo’s engineer uncle, the brick oven burns at around 700 degrees during peak dining hours. While it’s the wood that makes it good, the restaurant has ultimately become one of Vancouver’s treasures because things are kept fresh and simple. Lombardo’s was one of the first places in the city to realize that a three-inch layer of melted mozzarella and a pound of No Name–brand salami do not a better pizza make.

“The philosophy when we opened—and it still is—is that we try to do it very simple,” Lombardo says. “We try to use local produce when we can, and we rarely change what we do. For example, we use Bosa salami, and if we can’t get it, we won’t use anything else.”

It’s a formula that’s made Lombardo’s some heavy-hitting fans over the years, she says, including the late Urban Peasant James Barber and a certain North Vancouver–raised rock star.

“Bryan Adams lives in London now, but he used to come all the time,” Lombardo says. “He used to come Tuesday or Wednesday evening at about 10 p.m., when there were no crowds to bother him. He’s a vegetarian, so he would get a mushroom pizza. He’d sit there and go, ”˜You know what? This is the best pizza in the world.’ ”

> Mike Usinger

Kibune Sushi

In the 27 years since Kibune Sushi opened near Kits Beach at 1508 Yew Street, much has changed. Where there were once just a handful of restaurants in the area, 16 eateries now stand within a couple of blocks of Kibune, including neighbours Hapa Izakaya and Kits Sushi. Kibune was one of the first Japanese restaurants outside of Japantown and East Hastings Street, where only old-timer Koko continues on. Today, sushi is one of the most popular foods in the city.

Kibune is a traditional sushi restaurant with sushi-bar seating, snug tatami-lined booths, and a small patio on the sidewalk out front. From most of the compact room, indoor patrons can see the sushi bar, where chefs skillfully slice fresh fish, deftly mould rice, and artfully roll maki.

A native of Japan’s Oki Islands, owner Hide Endo came onboard as chef in 1984, two years after the restaurant opened. By 1988, he had bought the place.

Endo’s commitment to traditional Japanese cuisine has much to do with the restaurant’s longevity. “Kibune is successful just being basic and not too creative,” Endo says. “I emphasize very basic skills like making soup stock—miso and clear soups. We don’t use MSG or additives.” He adds that “heart is number one, as is making good-tasting, healthy food.”

Attention to detail and customer care are also key. Endo caters to finicky diners; in fact, one of his most popular rolls—which features prawn tempura, mayo, and cucumber and is topped with avocado slices—was created through his attempt to accommodate the tastes of one picky eater. He used the customer’s request as a springboard for a new menu item: “I don’t exactly follow the customer’s order; I do it my way. I called it the Hiro-maki for dishwasher Hiro, who wanted to become a movie star.” (Former dishwasher Hiromoto Ida went on to land the lead in 1994’s Tokyo Cowboy.)

Endo’s customers are mostly from the neighbourhood, but he does get the occasional famous face like Goldie Hawn dropping by. “People come here for many reasons,” Endo says. “They’re hungry for Japanese food, they’re meeting friends, they want to see the sushi chefs, and it’s convenient.”

He’s happy that Japanese restaurants have become a certified hit with Vancouverites, but he has concerns that some chefs aren’t properly trained or mislead diners by using farmed seafood and less-than-optimum food- and equipment-handling techniques.

Endo, a stickler for cleanliness, is confident that Kibune is here to stay. He credits a commitment to quality ingredients and treating all customers equally, saying, “When you’re good and you have regular customers, business takes care of itself.”

> Judith Lane

Cafe Luxy

It’s late afternoon and Afsi Jafari, co-owner of the West End’s Café Luxy (1235 Davie Street), arrives at work, greeting diners with warm smiles of recognition. “We have a close connection to all our customers. They know our names and we know their names,” she says proudly.

Jafari began working here when her sister, Gila Rezaie, opened what was then a modest coffee shop in 1988, back when Davie Street had few other eateries. She managed the front-of-house operations while her husband, Peyman, worked as the chef, transforming the café into a pasta mecca over the years.

The couple took over the restaurant three years ago, but they’ve left the place unchanged. Dark wood accents, brown tile flooring, and furniture with a hint of the old-fashioned create an air of familiarity. “It’s comfy. It’s like going to someone’s house,” Jafari says. Café Luxy doesn’t have a computer system, because Jafari thinks it’s more personal to ring up the bill on an old-fashioned, well-loved till.

The Jafaris decided to keep things pretty much the same because over 75 percent of their patrons are regulars, many dining here at least twice a week. One customer even calls Jafari at home to make his reservations. When he arrives, Jafari remembers the particulars of his usual order, down to the garlic bread without butter.

Devotees keep on coming for the heaping plates of pasta (about $16 each), featuring semolina noodles made fresh daily. All the old favourites are still on the menu: spaghetti Bolognese; penne with chicken, mushrooms, and spinach in a Gorgonzola rosé sauce; and fettuccine with prawns and scallops in a rosé sauce. “What they get today is what they got 10 years ago,” Jafari says. And those who are truly in the know (and really hungry) venture off the menu and ask for the gargantuan order of spaghetti and meatballs.

> Tara Lee