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| - THIS IS WHAT I CALL A DINER!!!!!
There are two ways you can have a dream diner:
** Strategy A: Go All Out New Jersey With a 1000 Page Menu
New Jersey diner menus are huge.
There is no American or Italian or Jewish or Greek dish they ain't got and a lot of them have Mexican too.
The execution is generally solid if not especially remarkable - but your comfort is that you were given the entire world to choose from.
The Danger of a Bad New Jersey Diner:
The cook is a fleabag and the dish or the ingredients have been sitting in the back for a long time.
Leftovers for dinner again?????
***Strategy B: Go All Out Legendary Execution on Rediscovered Classics
Ok, the Menu is normal sized, but the food is so good!
There is an excellent cook. Not only are the classic dishes resplendent, but there are lots of innovative touches, and new dishes the cook has come up with.
Your breakfast or your dinner is wonderful, marvelous, fantastic.
The Danger of a Bad Legendary Execution Diner:
Pretentiousness.
"Our landmark gastronomic establishment serves locally sourced eggs signed by the chickens themselves, locally sourced spinach personally tested by Popeye, and locally sourced sausage made from the meat of consenting pigs. Customer, remember you are having the AUTHENTIC NORTH AMERICAN DINING EXPERIENCE."
There is a financial aid officer to help you with the tab.
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Diner Deluxe is a superb superb Plan B small menu great execution diner.
And there is not a drop of pretentiousness in the place.
They even make fun of other pretentious la-dee-dah diners such as OEB which is one block away.
Diner Deluxe has a white board offering gag items such as $1000 Financier Caviar and Champagne and $800 Trust Fund Kid 100 point wine.
So Diner Deluxes' heart is in the right place.
How is their cooking?
OMG. Totally totally OMG.
My wife had an eggs benedict for the gods, with the most orange yolk on a poached egg I have ever seen, and an absolutely perfect firm non-runny but not hard boiled texture. Mild restrained hollandaise sauce that had no touch of the kill-the-flavor-of-the-rest-of-your-food-with-loudmouth-hollandaise that is generally the curse of amateur benedict makers. A very classy touch was flash sauteeing the capers in butter - which takes the acid out and makes them mellow and remarkable.
I had a wacky three ingredient breakfast and hit paydirt three out of three times.
A tomato bisque off the lunch menu was pure tomato magic with cooked in subtle garlic and herb flavors.
Maple sugar beans (yeah these are weird pairings) - were totally original and avoided all of the flaws of bad home-made diner beans. Unlike the soupy, overly wet, overly sweet mush that passes for baked beans in most places - these baked beans were dry dry dry. There was no sauce. The beans were firm and had strong bean taste. AND they had a subtle touch of sweetness that came from an absolutely restrained use of maple syrup as well as the savory heft of well-cooked-down tomatoes. An absolute triumph of a dish!
But the star of the show was what they call "a parfait". This is yogurt, and flavored mascarpone (kept separate on your plate) along with a good homemade granola and fresh good northwestern mixed berries. Mix together and eat.
What set this apart from a standard yogurt granola and fruit combo you get at the grocery store was
a) a very restrained amount of yogurt, so the dish stayed firm and solid.
b) flavored mascarpone to give the yogurt freshness and interest.
c) super-high quality fresh berries.
It was like eating a creamy berry pancake.
I was in heaven.
The coffee was fine.
The crowd was young graduate-student-y and cool.
(The handful of older folks in the place came accompanied by adult sons and daughters. The oldsters all looked like global warming researchers.)
Service was friendly and excellent,
and the prices were very reasonable.
You have paid far more elsewhere and gotten far less.
Diner Deluxe is an absolutely solid six-star must-visit establishment!
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