Rob Lowe came home to eat burgers and pie at an iconic Dayton-area diner that his grandpa owned for 30 years

Credit: DaytonDailyNews

Roles were reversed on Friday afternoon when visiting celebrity Rob Lowe got a VIP tour of a 112-year-old Dayton-area iconic eatery.

Lowe stopped at The Spot Restaurant in Sidney around lunchtime and owner Michael Jannides happily entertained The West Wing and Parks and Recreation star with a walk down memory lane. After all, from 1950 to 1980, Lowe's grandfather owned The Spot and even introduced the carhop service to the restaurant in the 1950s.

>>Rob Lowe to help raise money for Dayton tornado relief at his local show today

The actor is in the area this weekend for the “Rob Lowe: STORIES I ONLY TELL MY FRIENDS: LIVE!” show at the Schuster Center Sundayt at 4 p.m. In a tweet earlier this week, Lowe said donations for the Greater Dayton Disaster Relief Fund will be collected in the lobby of his show.

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Tickets are still available for Lowe's show. You can purchase them at ticketcenterstage.com.

>>Greater Dayton Disaster Relief Fund established to help those affected by tornadoes

Owner Michael Jannides and Rob Lowe took a tour together of The Spot on Friday afternoon.

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“He was standing at the front looking at some of the pictures on the case and walls, so I walked over and introduced myself,” Jannides said.

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“He was really happy to see most everything was just like he remembered. He spent a lot of time here as a kid running around the restaurant and so I said, ‘Well why don’t I just give you a little tour?’ So we checked out one of our walk-in coolers which he remembered vividly and he was really surprised to see it still in operation all these years later.”

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The star-studded lunch consisted of a cheeseburger, a bowl of chili and a frosted malt of some kind. Lowe was dining with his father and another couple the pair was travelling with. Of course, the meal was capped with some of The Spot’s pies for the table.

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“He was definitely in his element,” Jannides said. “When we started walking through he was like, ‘Man, I remember all this stuff down through here,’ … He remembered everything. He was super, very talkative, you could just tell he was very excited to be here. It had been a while since he’d been here and I think he was just really happy with the visit.”

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