End of the Flim Flam

Chris Klademenos calls it quits

by Tony McReynolds

posted 1/26/2012

Chris Klademenos quietly closed the Flim Flam Family Restaurant & Deli in the Plymouth Road Mall for the last time on Sunday, November 5, at the end of the regular business day. The next day he met with the landlords. "I just gave them the keys and I left," he says.

Klademenos, who owned the northside institution for twenty-nine years, says he decided to close for a number of reasons. "For one thing, I'm getting old." And since Pfizer closed its 3,200-employee campus across the street, "business was getting on the slow side." (Pfizer is now the U-M's North Campus Research Complex, but employment is still far below former levels.) He says he tried to sell the restaurant but couldn't find any takers.

Klademenos, seventy-two, is enjoying the break from the daily restaurant grind, but says it's hard to imagine retiring completely. "Who knows?" he says. "I might find a little thing to do a few hours a day. We'll see."   

[Originally published in January, 2012.]