In March of 1978, David Braverman parked a school bus dubbed “Max” on Sansom Street on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus. At first, he once told me, he had no culinary training other than advice passed down from his father’s deli and snippets gleaned from the cookbooks he’d paged through. But he had an idea and three guiding principles: “Make everything from scratch, use only the best ingredients, and try everything.”

Braverman’s father, Cy, had owned Cy’s Penn Luncheonette (affectionately dubbed the “Dirty Drug” by students) in the 1960s and later had a vending school bus on the Temple University campus called the Good Food Bus.

Banking on that legacy, on an otherwise nondescript morning that day in 1978, David Braverman walked out on a high wire. Armed with a few home-roasted meats, some fresh-baked blueberry muffins and a pot of hot coffee, he slid open the window of Max and greeted the first LeBus customer.

LeBus was an immediate hit. The muffin options soon became legendary in their variety. Salads and soups made their debut. And, perhaps most importantly, it was a small propane oven outfitted at the back of Max that turned out the first LeBus breads.

In the 1980s, Braverman enrolled in culinary school for a formal chef’s education. He also traveled throughout the United States, France and Germany, honing methods from some of the world’s greatest restaurants and bakeries that he discovered along the way. And in 1984, with the help of his culinary mentor, Esther Press-McManus, of The Philadelphia Restaurant School, where David earned a chef’s degree, he opened his first brick-and-mortar, sit-down establishment on the Penn campus.

LeBus on Main Street in Manayunk would follow in 1993, which lasted until 2003. (It later became Winnie’s.) And eventually, LeBus expanded into a commercial bakery supplying breads to many of the area’s finest restaurants. Then Braverman chose to focus on his wholesale operations, and his iconic bus was donated to a local soup kitchen and spent its golden years providing food for people who are homeless.

Nearly 15 years after leaving his restaurants behind, Braverman saw his next opportunity at the corner of Ridge and Midvale avenues in East Falls, previously Johnny Manana’s, near his own home. Braverman resuscitated the LeBus concept in 2017 and developed a menu featuring some LeBus classics, including the house-baked breads and pastries for which LeBus was so well known.

“For many years,” Braverman said in an earlier interview, “during the heyday of the restaurant revolution in Philadelphia, the trend was for chefs to produce exotic, overly fussy food, designed to impress. But I believe now people have come back to craving simple, familiar food, well prepared, fresh, comforting, accessible ... That is the goal of my restaurant. I love inviting people over. I love to feed people.”

During our most recent lunch visit to LeBus in mid-August, we interacted with three servers, who could not have been more pleasant. I was pleased to see such a large lunch crowd since so many restaurants nowadays only serve dinner. The rest of the visit was an outlier compared to numerous previous visits over several years. We ordered our food and after a half-hour, during which other nearby diners who came in after us received their meals, a server told us that there was some sort of a mix-up in the kitchen.

“They are just now starting to make it,” she said. “I’m very sorry about that. The meal will be comped.” I told her we really did not want free food, but she insisted.

The food came out about 15 minutes later. A green salad was excellent with an abundance of fresh seasonal greens, almonds, cherry tomatoes, etc., but a veggie burger was seriously overcooked. It almost looked burnt. And a cup of vegetarian chili that was ordered did not come out.

As I mentioned earlier, this was an outlier. After our previous visit, I posted the following comment on Yelp: “Everything was excellent. Two of the four of us ordered the shrimp with fettuccine and pesto, which was outstanding. The quantity was so huge that we had one and a half more dinners out of it. Appetizers and drinks were also great, especially the vegetarian chili, mushroom bisque and Sangrias.

“And the prices are extremely reasonable for what you get. Highly recommended! The only negative, over which the restaurant has no control, is the parking situation. We spent more than 20 minutes after getting to the restaurant, driving around looking for a parking space.”

The parking situation is still a thorn in the side. There are no parking lots close by that I am aware of, and I have driven up and down all of the nearby streets.

For more information, visit lebuseastfalls.com. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.