Costas Triantafilos’ children see signs from their late father everywhere.

Since the founder of Costas Inn died less than three months ago, lights have suddenly gone out while the family was talking about him. His daughter’s phone started glitching, which had never happened before. In one instance, the number 1939 — the year Triantafilos was born — flashed on a TV screen. His son Pete placed a $5 lottery bet with those numbers on a Pick 4 and won $27,000.

They also feel him everywhere inside the newest branch of Costas Inn, which opened at the historic Maryland State Fairgrounds last week.

“He would have been in his glory here,” said Pete, who started washing dishes at Costas when he was 8 and is now the restaurant’s chief operating officer.

Costas Inn’s new location is befitting of the Triantafilos patriarch. The restaurant is next to the Off Track Betting Center and overlooks the fairground’s horse racing track. Windows look into the betting area where men with cigars watch the day’s races and find out if they’re winners. Pete said his dad would have especially enjoyed last weekend, when the restaurant was packed with customers for the Belmont Stakes.

Triantafilos, himself an avid horse racing fan who owned more than 30 racehorses throughout his life, knew all the track’s regulars and would have enjoyed seeing them at the eatery, said Christine Lambros-Shifflett, Triantafilos’ only daughter. As she spoke, a portrait of her dad in an aqua-colored shirt hung just a few feet away, his smile bright and mischievous even into his 80s.

The newly renovated restaurant is more modern than the old, wood-paneled Dundalk institution now managed mostly by her brother Nick Triantafilos, but there’s another key difference, too: the Timonium branch doesn’t serve steamed crabs.

“It’s not set up for crabs,” and lacks the infrastructure to prepare them, Pete said. But the menu does offer other Costas staples of crab cakes, crab soups and crab dip — not that it’s done much to stop customers from whining online.

After Triantafilos’ sudden death in March, his family pulled together and powered through their heartbreak to see his dream come to life. The fairgrounds branch opened just two months later than they had initially planned. “One minute you want to cry because he’s not actually here to see it,” said Lambros-Shifflett, who works in the restaurant alongside her daughters. “And then the next minute, I’m beaming from ear to ear because I just know things are going well.”

In addition to the eatery, Costas is catering events at the fairgrounds. Triantafilos’ three kids, who now run the family business along with their own children, have been swamped for weeks with orders.

It was “a little shocking” when her father announced he wanted to open a second location, Lambros-Shifflett said. But she eventually came around after seeing her dad’s commitment to the project. Triantafilos stopped by the fairgrounds every day except Sunday to monitor progress on the renovation of the restaurant, formerly Nick’s Grandstand Grill.

The first Costas Inn opened in Dundalk in 1971 as a blue-collar check-cashing tavern that served workers at the nearby Bethlehem Steel. As the steel industry died and the surrounding area became a ghost town, Triantafilos pivoted the business to offer steamed crabs along with its crab cakes and other menu items. Over time, celebrity patrons have included Kathie Lee Gifford, who highlighted the restaurant on “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee,” to actor Josh Charles and Oprah Winfrey’s partner, Stedman Graham.

But the restaurant’s success was a testament to the warmth and work ethic of its founder as much as its crab cakes. Triantafilos frequently passed out $5 to children at the Dundalk eatery — the same amount of money he had in his pocket when he moved to the U.S. from Greece as a teen. Even into old age, he would help the bussers and take out the trash.

“You never heard him say, ‘That’s not my job,’” Lambros-Shifflett said. He never considered retirement, sure that stopping work would mean his body and mind would go, too. “He was going to work till the end,” Pete said. “The older he got, the more he pushed himself.”

Then, one morning in March, Triantafilos collapsed on the floor while brushing his teeth in his Glen Arm home. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning after accidentally leaving his Jeep Grand Cherokee in the garage running overnight. The vehicle had a push-button ignition, and Costas, who wore a hearing aid, likely couldn’t hear the quiet engine running. His mother, Mary, who sleeps with an oxygen mask, was hospitalized but survived.

The family is still absorbing everything their dad meant to his community. There was a two-hour wait at his viewing, with eight hours straight of mourners passing through to pay their respects. There were calls from Gifford and Graham, and a write-up in People magazine.

In Timonium last week, guests stopped by the new location to eat and share stories of Triantafilos’ impact. One former factory boss said that many years ago, one of his employees cashed bad checks at Costas Inn in Dundalk. Triantafilos found out, but let the man make good on what he owed in monthly installments rather than having him arrested.

Baltimore resident Francine Shaffer said it was her first time coming to the fairgrounds in years; she hadn’t even realized there was a place to eat on site. She’s glad to see Costas Inn expanding into Timonium, where she frequently runs errands. She appreciates how present and attentive the owners are at the Dundalk branch, stopping by each table to make guests feel like extensions of their own family. “It’s very much like an old-school restaurant in that respect,” she said.

For the Triantafilos family, there’s not a lot of difference between work and together time. People sometimes ask them: “Are you tired of work? You work on Mother’s Day. You work on Father’s Day,” Lambros-Shifflett said. She responds: “But you know what? We work with family.”

This Father’s Day will be the first without her dad, and the first at the new restaurant she helped open in his memory. Yes, it’s going to be hard. But they’ll get through it the same way they get through everything else: as a family.

“We’ll carry on in his honor,” Pete said. Their dad would have wanted that.