Diner Review: Main Street Diner

Sooooo....St. Charles, St. Peters, O’Fallon, Wentzville, Troy... these are all just places on a map west of town but as I was growing up I thought of them as country. As an adult I have found these locales disappointing. In the last ten years with our credit bubble inspired building boom now most of these towns look like... gasp... suburbs. Suburbs even used to have a personality but now they all look the same, Starbucks, Bread Co, Bob Evans, Best Buy, Walmart, Target and on and on it goes... like a cancer. Unfortunately a lot of fine restaurants and diners have gone out of business. It is always nice when you find a place that is not processed and shipped in from a 1000 miles away to be cooked “fresh” for you.

This place puts on one fine breakfast. I am not out in the vicinity a lot but as you head west on highway 70 you eventually pass through that part of the wasteland that is St. Charles and arrive at the Cave Springs Mall exit to the highway. What a weird thing.... a mall. The key is to not go to the left and cross back over the highway but to take a right and quick left which sends you into Old Town St. Peters. Such venerable establishments at Elmo’s Olde Town Bar are there as well as the subject of our piece today.

The building itself is pretty new and that sucks a little. It also has only a small high counter with stools more similar to bar stools then the short round stools that God intended to be in diners. It has a nice hard wood floor which gives it a homey feel but also adds to a rather loud echo that permeates the place making it a noisy place for a quiet morning with a paper or a private meeting with a client. Still the ambience is pleasant, the people do not stare at you too suspiciously and the service is very nice. The people are a mix of some suburban housewives and some builders and construction people and perhaps a few bored home builders. They do not build new homes out here anymore.

Excellent iced tea. Perfect hash browns, light brown crust on a shredded cake. Very tactilely pleasing to my rather delicate palate. The cream gravy is top notch, good consistency without making the move to wallpaper paste and the right amount of sausage. The sausage itself has a little bit of sage for just the right spice. It is really almost exactly what you could want. Examining other people’s plates I saw evidence of eggs cooked to order and well (lovingly) prepared bacon. The service as I said is very nice. The right combination of attentive and respectful of your privacy. The waitresses themselves were not of the “rode hard and put up wet” aged variety that you see in some places. The food was not cooked in plain site which is somewhat of a concern but we will forgive them that.

The menu is home-style cooking complete with Rib-eye steak breakfasts and meat loaf for lunch. I will need to stop by for lunch sometime. The bathrooms are a minor draw back on a cold morning. If I have have the time I often like to enjoy a brief constitutional after breakfast. The bathrooms are in a corner with two outer walls and sometimes, as an older gentlemen it can be harder to gain the appropriate amount of relaxation, even with the help of a sports section, to get the job done. Be warned.
Over all I really like the place and will be a regular on my tours of duty with the broke people of St. Charles and O’Fallon. I am saying it in 8.9 Slingers on the 10 scale.