After restoring Kellogg’s Diner last year, the same team has turned its attention to reimagining another longtime Williamsburg haunt: JR and Son. Opening on Friday, May 2, at 575 Lorimer Street, at Metropolitan Avenue, the address was long ago an Italian social club, but in its later life, it was more known as a crusty dive bar — until its closing during the pandemic.

At Kellogg’s, the choice to do a Tex-Mex diner stemmed from the lived experience of its chef, Jackie Carnesi. The same goes for JR and Son’s chef Patricia Vega, who puts her personal touches on Italian American dishes.

There will be a natural inclination to compare JR and Son’s to nearby restaurant Bernie’s, also known for its red-saucey comforts and nostalgic interiors. Vega emphasizes she is not reinventing any wheels: this is the kind of place to saddle up to the bar and order classics, like a burger or spaghetti with meatballs.

But she wanted to make sure the menu “represented the history of me being in New York and the people that I’ve worked with,” she says. The Top Chef alum, who got her career start making pasta, spent the past several years in the Thai Diner kitchen. Fish and soy sauce give an unexpected umami boost across the offerings: from the onion rings sauce to its spicy chicken Parm with Calabrian chile. Meanwhile, an herbaceous arancini salad also has roots in her experience cooking Thai American food. The stuffed clams a la vongole on the menu takes elements of clams oreganata and linguine alle vongole, using orzo inside. It was influenced by a Thai Diner jasmine rice clam dish, she says.

Pastry chef Amanda Perdomo, known for that beloved strawberry pretzel salad at Kellogg’s, has developed the dessert menu for JR and Son, which includes a cake slice version of the Italian rainbow cookie. You’d never realize it, but the dessert is vegan, using a base of coconut milk, flax, and olive oil with raspberry jam, coconut, and TCHO chocolate between each layer.

Between Kellogg’s and JR and Son, the team is building a reputation for late-night service — notable in New York with a nightlife scene that’s turning in early lately for various reasons, including permitting. Where the former is 24 hours, the latter will be open until 2 a.m. with a last call on food (a more slender menu) at 1 a.m.

“I want to create an environment for industry people, that, after a really long night service, can come in, sit at the bar, and just like feel like when you’re here it’s homey, non-pretentious — whether you’re tired, you’re sweating, you smell like french fries,” says Vega.

Apparently, once a boxing hangout, maroon booths — the shade of old leather sports gloves — fill out one side of the narrow room, while the other is flanked by the bar. On the walls, photos of old regulars were saved from its dive bar days, alongside framed vintage sports memorabilia, helping the room feel like the lived-in clubhouse of sorts that it was born as (only this time with a more open-door policy).

Even with blessings from some of the old-timers in the neighborhood, there will always be naysayers who have feelings about glossing up a space with some grit. JR and Son’s previous caretaker, Anthony Carfagno, chose to give the keys to the team (which includes restaurant interior designer Nico Arze, Louis Skibar, of Kellogg’s and Old John’s Luncheonette, and Michelle Lobo of Nura) for their intent to preserve it. “I’m very, very sensitive to how the community is going to react,” says Arze. “I mean, with Kellogg’s, it was going to be us or Shake Shack, and JR had other people interested who wanted to demo the place.”

For the last decade or so, Arze and his studio partner Matthew Maddy have rescued old bars from closing (“Whenever there’s a bar that has a cigarette burn in it, yeah, I’ll take it!” says Arze) and have devoted themselves to researching the histories of the spaces they’re working in, be it the dive Birdy’s in Bushwick or Russ and Daughters Cafe on the Lower East Side. While doing construction on JR and Son, they found a 1936 photograph that showed old flooring under the vinyl, which allowed them to know what was underneath when they inevitably ripped it out, and, in the process, pulled back a layer in time.

“This is a place that’s been here, but even if you try as hard as you can, you’ll never be able to replicate it. It’s gonna look tacky, it’s gonna look fake,” says Arze. “So, it’s more about always doing less — leaving the imperfections there.”

Nick Johnson/JR and Son