Diners

Diners are a primarily Northeast phenomenon. You rarely find them in the South or on the West Coast. I’m not sure why this is. It could be due to the proliferation of fast-food and family restaurant (e.g., Applebee’s) franchises, where everything is prepackaged, portion-controlled, and lacking creativity. There’s also the cafeteria culture in the South that swamps almost everything else. (Word to the wise: When planning a trip to a Southern cafeteria for Sunday lunch or brunch, go before or well after the local Baptist churches let out. Momma and Granny deserve a Sabbath from cooking, too.)

The diner experience follows a particular pattern. Some diners resemble silver railroad cars; others are large freestanding buildings. The exterior is often festooned with neon lights (or LED’s, for the more eco-conscious). The decor is usually lots of red vinyl booths along the walls with tables in the middle of the floor. You can sit at the bar near the kitchen as well. A glass case featuring a wide variety of desserts greets you at the entrance, a blatant invitation to overconsumption.  The menu features everything from breakfasts to burgers to full meals. There’s always a kids’ menu. The paper placemats feature ads for local businesses. Some of the waitstaff have worked at the same diner since The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. As a result, they can steer you to the right item on the menu. And, of course, they will counsel you to save room for dessert!

The epicenter of diner culture is downstate New York and New Jersey. Any self-respecting town will have at least one diner. We went to two on this last trip; one in Goshen and the other in Nanuet. Many diners in the area are run by Greek families. At the Goshen diner, I had a Greek omelet with feta cheese. Curiously, there were few other Greek items on that menu–and no baklava in the dessert case.

The closest thing to a diner I’ve found in the Seattle area is the Wedgwood Broiler, in our old neighborhood. It’s the anchor business at the north end of a strip shopping center, adjacent to the QFC grocery store. The Broiler is a throwback to the 1950’s, and the menu hasn’t changed much since then. The menu features diner standards such as liver and onions. No molecular gastronomy, no swizzles of sauce on a plate, or arugula in the salad.  It’s just straightforward food that my grandmother would recognize as such. That may be the reason behind the staying power of diners in the metro New York area: After you’ve dined at some fancy expense-account restaurant in the city, you can relax with some real food.