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| - I can't believe I've been in-out-around-about Phoenix-Tempe-Scottsdale for more than twenty years, let alone the fact that Mel's has been here all this time and I only just learned of it via a friend who takes photos of vintage signs.
"There's a new girl in town...and she's feel in' gooood!"
The premise of the 1976-1985 tv sitcom "Alice" (played by Linda Lavin) is that she's on her cross-country way to L.A. but her car breaks down in Phoenix. She gets a job at "Mel's Diner"..."and if things work out, she's gonna staaaay aaaawhile. bum bum bum bum baaaaa." Intro theme song: http://bit.ly/1uSfKb3 (just in case you want it to get stuck in your head too.)
The diner inside is not as seen in the show, but the sign is still there and there's local history behind it. There are framed newspaper clippings and the menu acknowledges the show's three waitresses: Alice, Vera, Flo and the owner: Mel.
Besides the history, you've got present day diner goodness. Fresh coffee, omelets, eggs, pancakes, biscuits and gravy and did you try the grits!? Unlike the show's Flo, there was no loudmouthed, beehived-redhead shouting out those three words at us but I still had a flashback:
In the '80s, iron-on t-shirts/jerseys were all the rage. My mother wouldn't let me get Flo's "KISS MY GRITS." Do I digress? I don't! Regress, maybe. A reason this place speaks '50s diner is that it has those "space age" tabletops that were popular in kitchens during that era. I sat at a kitchen table like that, wearing my second choice "I was the kind of kid your parents didn't want you to hang out with" iron-on jersey and scarfing down my food like all good kids who had to "hurry up and eat so you can go watch tv!"
Now, at a retro-tabletop window-seat booth in Phoenix, all of my little worlds collide when I come to Mel's. Side note and further collision: we'd seen Linda Lavin perform at Chicago's Goodman theatre awhile back with a truly all-star cast: http://www.goodmantheatre.org/season/0405/finishing-the-picture/ Enough of memory lane! (Though if you feel like continuing, note that "Mel's Diner" is located just shy to the west of Phoenix's historic F.Q. Story Neighborhood District.) Ding!
What about counter seating? It's always been full at the counter when we've arrived, but I do intend to hop up there and watch the food come hot off the line. I may have to bring my own little bell though. I don't remember a bell at modern-Mel's. (Now, I'm digressing.)
Ding!
Dingbat! Birdbrain! Oh wow, I'm remembering more...that's what Mel used to call Vera. Bum bum bum bum baaaaa.
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