Poor Richard’s Almanac

Our friend Ben noticed that someone had searched Poor Richard’s Almanac yesterday for the top ten diner foods. The part of Pennsylvania where Silence Dogood and I live may be lacking in the Greek, Thai, Indian, Middle Eastern, Mexican, and other ethnic restaurants we crave, but it’s rich in wonderful old country inns and diners. Our friend Ben admits with chagrin that I’d never even seen a diner when I first moved to the area from my native Nashville. But I’ve since spent many a happy lunch hour in area diners, and Silence and I occasionally treat out-of-state guests to the unforgettable diner breakfast experience.

What do I eat in diners? If it’s breakfast time, our friend Ben favors French toast or a grilled sticky bun (a regional specialty) or hash browns or home fries with eggs fried hard. Or, if I’m trying to be good, I’ll have a bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar and milk. And, of course, the ubiquitous diner coffee, which in our friend Ben’s humble opinion puts Starbucks’ nasty, bitter coffee to shame. Our friend and blog collaborator Richard Saunders favors a stack of syrup-drenched pancakes and another regional specialty, scrapple, which is cut in slabs and fried like sausage, with his coffee and eggs. (He’s been known to put syrup on the scrapple as well, but given our friend Ben’s own syrup-laden French toast, we don’t have a lot of room to talk here.)

For lunch, our friend Ben favors a club sandwich with French fries and cole slaw, or an omelette with French fries, or a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich with French fries and cole slaw, or a Greek salad (mercifully without French fries). Those fries keep our friend Ben out of diners except as an occasional treat, since I can’t resist them, or another thing I’m passionate about: onion rings. I could devote an entire post to onion rings, onion petals, and the like, and what makes them good (fresh sweet onions, lightly battered, fried just so and served with a generous portion of creamy horseradish dipping sauce) or bad (frozen, heavily battered, tasteless). Beer batter: good. Gummy pseudo-batter: bad. Crunchy: good. Rigid: bad. But I digress.

But what are the top ten diner foods? I hope someone who owns or works in a diner reads this post and gives us all an informed opinion. Until then, our friend Ben is going to hazard a guess. Please chime in and let us know what you think! So here goes, ten, in no particular order:

1. French onion soup. Tops the list on every diner menu. 

2. Hot roast beef sandwich with gravy and mashed potatoes. Real comfort food, especially with a side of overcooked green beans.

3. Burgers (all kinds) and fries. Wraps, gyros, and other less-standard fare have showed up on diner menus in recent years, but our friend Ben believes that the iconic status of the diner burger remains unassailable.

4. Croquettes (salmon, chicken, tuna). The predecessors of crab cakes. Diners are about the only places that still offer them.

5. Hash browns or home fries. The diner equivalent of Tater Tots, these crispy-crunchy treats are usually reserved for breakfast, but if you’re lucky, the diner of your choice will serve breakfast all day long. Order them extra-crunchy, and hope they make them from scratch and throw some diced onion in.

6. Diner coffee. A food group in and of itself, and rightly so. Ignore the ghastly little plastic thimbles of half-n-half or pseudomilk and demand (politely, of course) that they bring you a small pitcher of real whole milk for your coffee. It’s worth the hassle.

7. Club sandwiches. This is probably just bias on our friend Ben’s part, since I love club sandwiches, but unless you’re actually in a country club, I don’t know where else you’d find them.

8. Creamed chipped beef on toast. There’s a much less printable name for this particular dish, which to my knowledge is only served in diners, where it’s ubiquitous, so somebody must be eating it. (Not our friend Ben, though—just looking at it is enough to turn my stomach.) Hash of all kinds, including corned beef hash and the wonderfully named red flannel hash, also falls in this category.

9. Clam chowder. Why this has become a diner staple is a mystery to our friend Ben, who’d have thought it would be best served in New England seafood houses, but I’ve never seen a diner that didn’t feature at least one kind of clam chowder, so I guess it must be working for them.

10. Pies, all kinds, but especially banana cream pie, lemon meringue pie, coconut custard, cherry, and Boston creme pie.

There are plenty of other diner faves I didn’t put on the list, including ice-cream sundaes, baked potatoes (and, around here, potato filling), open-faced hot turkey sandwiches, and mac’n'cheese. Not to mention an up-and-coming favorite that our friend Ben, who loves mac’n'cheese and fried foods, has not dared to try, deep-fried mac’n'cheese cubes. (I just know they would be good. I can see myself gaining ten pounds for every cube consumed. I can also see myself being mercilessly needled by friends who think this is the grossest concept ever devised. I’m keeping far, far away from them.)

And I’m ignoring the appetizers like buffalo wings and jalapeno poppers that are doubtless popular at diners but are also served at every pizzeria, bar, and etc. Ditto the salad bar, doughnuts, muffins, and other widely available food. Let’s stick to diner specialties here.

Now it’s your turn. What am I missing here? Help me out, folks. Does your local diner serve our friend Ben’s favorite, sweet potato fries? (I wish ours did.) Fried chicken and corn cakes? (Would that it were.) Eclairs or pecan pie or dinner rolls to die for? Let us know what your diner’s specialties are. Maybe I can persuade Silence to put her formidable cooking skills to work and recreate a few of them for us!