An Ode to the Jersey Diner

Tired of eating Chinese food and pizza, my girlfriend and I just visited the local diner. Tonight I did something I don't often do; I ordered off the dinner specials menu. Typically when I go to a diner (and now that I've moved back to Jersey, I eat at a diner every couple of weeks), I'll order a burger and fries, or a buffalo chicken wrap or something. Tonight, because one of my favorite all-time meals (chicken francese) was on the menu, I went for it. I went whole-hog.

For $11.95, in addition to the chicken francese (which was really nicely sauteed and had a white-wine butter sauce that scored at least an 8 on the 1 to 10 scale of deliciousness), I had matzo ball soup, a salad, and three scoops of chocolate ice cream for desert. With my girlfriend's help, I successfully consumed about 50% of the food that was placed in front of me. I wrapped up the rest of the main course, which will be my lunch at work Monday.

There are two aspects of this diner experience which were awesome, and worth writing about. The money aspect of this meal is one thing, the existentialism is quite another. I'll discuss the money first, and the artsy-fartsy bullshit later in this blog post.

People may have varying opinions about what it means to eat a four-course meal for under $12. There are probably other parts of the country (Vegas comes to mind) where a similar meal can be had for even less. Other people may think that such a cheap meal must be low in quality, and I must be a cheapskate or not really appreciate food in order to enjoy a $12 meal.

I've had low quality food before in my life. McDonald's, for instance, is still low quality food. Very little has changed in their food preparation over the past decade -- it's just that through creative marketing, they've positioned themselves as a quality food brand. It's brilliant in its simplicity. Just throw a few pictures of fresh tomatoes and a few punchy catch-phrases on the side of a 1,100-calorie Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and all of a sudden people think they're eating health food. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese itself has not changed -- it's still a mediocre hamburger (you'd be better off going to a Jersey diner). McDonald's food is low quality, and diner food is not (at a good diner, at least).

Money also interacts with geography. New Jersey is not a cheap place to live; some time in the near future, I will put a down payment on a "starter home", and this home will in all likelihood cost nearly half a million dollars. There is nothing strange about this; in fact, it is par for the course. There is a great deal of money around here, and the standard of living is (as a consquence) quite high. We simply deal with it, and somehow the diner cost structure still thrives.

It probably does cost a lot of money to run a diner, but smart proprietors realize that crazy-high markups are going to drive people away from eating at an otherwise-solid establishment. With food costs and labor and overhead combined, it probably cost less than $5 to prepare my meal - so why charge $20?

Some people think that good food needs to be expensive. This is an incorrect assumption, even though quality and cost are positively correlated. (I would rather eat at Peter Luger's than Taco Bell, and I think you agree with me on this point.) To be honest, I definitely sat there and internally debated for a while whether or not I should purchase a "nice" item at the diner tonight... but then I did. The next time you're at a diner, you should, too.

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"My" diner growing up was the Middletown Diner, and it had all the important Jersey diner characteristics. What are the important Jersey diner characteristics? Let us list them, one at a time. Taking the sum of the parts, we shall establish what is the Jersey diner experience.

1) Proximity. A good diner shall be no less than 2 miles from one's place of primary residence. This makes travelling to said diner easy enough under any set of circumstances which may arise: freak snowstorm; a late-night drinking binge (also see point #2, below); becoming exasperated because dinner was just destroyed by evil magical elves; and etc.

2) Flexible hours. A good diner shall have the most flexible hours of operation possible. No excuses; a good diner must be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is absolutely no wiggle room for this characteristic. A number of times, even in New Jersey, I've been surprised to see a "diner" closed at a ridiculously early hour. I'm embarrassed to admit that there's a "diner" on LBI (named after me!) that closes after lunch, even during the summer! This is simply unacceptable. A "diner" that closes, ever, is not a diner -- it's a restaurant. There's a difference.

3) Price. Lately I've noticed a new breed of diner popping up in New Jersey; this type of diner attempts to be ironic and/or cool. You can tell when you've mistakenly arrived at such a diner because the waiter will hand you a martini list, and you will hear a cover band playing in another room. A good diner should not even hold a liquor license - diners are where you go after you get drunk somewhere else. You know, like a bar. Additionally, a good diner shall not have an average menu item price higher than $8.00. A "diner" that charges $16.95 for a dinner special or $8.95 for a burger is not a diner -- it's a restaurant. Again, there's a difference.

4) Superior quality and inferior price of deluxe cheeseburger. This is sort of an extension of item #3, above. The deluxe cheeseburger (which, for the uninitiated, is a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, and onions, with a heaping of steak fries, cole slaw, and pickle on the side) shall have the following characteristics:

• It shall cost no more than $6.50;
• It shall contain at least 6 oz of beef;
• It shall be cooked to order, even if the order is "extremely rare". (Making the purchaser sign a waiver before eating the burger is acceptable, as long as the waiter agrees that doing so "is ridiculous".)
  
• It shall contain at least twice as many french fries as a large McDonald's order, and each individual fry must be twice as wide and twice as thick as a McDonald's french fry;
• Each and every bite shall taste delicious.

5) Gruff service. You will be served by a "diner waitress", whose overall attitude and level of professionalism will be questionable. You may not get everything you ask for, and you may not be smiled at even once. Why is this a good thing, you ask? Because it adds ambience to the experience. The whole point of going to a diner is that it's no-frills. You're sitting there drinking Diet Coke (with free refills, assuming you ever get the free refill) and eating greasy food - do you really need to be treated like Akeem, Prince of Zamunda? I think not. If you want a thumb up your ass while you eat, you shouldn't go to a diner -- you should go to a restaurant.

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There you have it, devoted blog readers -- the Jersey Diner. Everyone should have the experience, at least once. I've been to a hundred diners a hundred times, and I still consider myself someone who likes fine things. Liking fine things (like Johnnie Walker Blue Label) and liking good things (like a delicious, greasy, six-dollar cheeseburger) need not be independent of each other. To be someone who is awesome, I think you need to be both types of person at once.

Stay classy out there.