Soooo... We have come to a crossroads. The Diner Review has been silent for a while and has not had much of interest to say in... Some time. My excuses are many and could not be less interesting or more trite. The Diner Review was conceived by me several years ago because I wanted to blog and I had a passion for breakfast. Biscuits and gravy. Bacon. Sausage... And of course hash browns. Hash browns have been, ubiquitous. I did not realize it when I started these pages but my love affair, nay, my obsession with the potato was not apparent to me prior to taking on this small project.
Tom Waits of curse understood with his classic "Nighthawks At The Diner". This is really the summation of everything I tried to convey."Nighthawks at the diner, Emma's 49erThere's a rendezvous of strangers around the coffee urn tonightAll the gypsy hacks, the insomniacsNow the paper's been read"
There is of course something about a diner. For is a holy currency but you sometimes need a small, greasy and perhaps even dirty church to appreciate that currency. Sometimes with a priestess who is 65, wears support hose, has a mole the size of Lesetho and the teeth of a British cabby. Sometimes the patrons look like a freak show. Sometimes they were sublime. Always people Ina diner or people. And when you are there at breakfast they are normally very real. They also, unless they come in with a friend are looking for a little solace. A little silence. At the beginning of their day or at the end of their night.
"Now the waitress said
Eggs and sausage and a side of toast
Coffee and a roll, hash browns over easy
Chile in a bowl with burgers and fries, what kind of pie?"
Unless you were a regular. Then you get to chat with your waitress. Chat with the gal cooking. Because you got to know them and during the course of the Diner Review I reached retreat must troubling status twice. I was nice. They knew me. But it was bad because I was no longer necessarily alone in my head, with my newspaper, preparing for the day. The Courtesy was my original home track. The "new" Courtesy on Hampton, not the original on Kingshighway. I was slightly embarrassed by that but it was so damn convenient. Hash browns with cheese and onions, two sausage patties, white roast. Bacon, when it was good" and the cook would always tell me when it was "good" because there would be days when it was not. I would drive from Webster and hit the Curtesy and then head back to Clayton but...
"In a graveyard charade, a late shift masqueradeAnd it's two for a quarter, dime for a danceWith Woolworth Rhinestone diamond earringsAnd a sideway's glance and now the register rings"
I got a new job. Downtown. The Courtesy held on on for a while but right across the street from my new job. Big Ed's Chili Mac Diner. They adopted me. They had good iced tea and it was so close to work. The place was operated by two sisters and they still man the place with one cooking and one serving. Their younger sister comes in later. I settled on a simple sausage sandwich with American cheese. Sometimes with a side of potatoes. They did not have hash browns but I forgave them. Breakfasts potatoes are odious but I learned to eat theirs occasionally. It was a good run. 7 years later I headed back out to Cayton. But I would drive all the way downtown for the pleasure of my home course, the casual conversation with the girls as FOX News (Fair and Balanced) played in the background and for their pork sausage which I loved. It was 1/2 hour travel time each day down and back and it was fine, until the incident.
I've been 86ed from your schemeNow I'm in a melodramatic nocturnal sceneNow I'm a refugee from a disconcerted affairNow I lead pipe morning falls
Being diagnosed with Celiac changed everything. I needed to learn how to eat again. I needed to go see a dietician. Bread was out so the sandwich was done. American cheese is out because the dietician said "it's not even food!" I tried to go and just eat sausage and eggs but as I became educated I realized that they cooked French toast on the same griddle they fried my sausage and eggs on and I learned the words "cross contamination". And at that point, with my knowledge of diners, their employees and their exacting standards, I realized that my days as diner reviewer were over.
Bt they were good days. I saw a lot of them come and go. I ate some great food. I saw some great people and I read a shit load of newspapers. It was sad when places closed but a lot of the classics are still here. But what do we do now with this space? It was never devoted solely to diners. Different restaurants made it in. My aberrant political whining really kicked in during Obamas first run. There were of course the KUBE scribbling a each year. Erata sections of mind numbing blather. Some chronicling of Becker events. A little of something, a lot of nothing.
So what do we do now? The St. Louis Celiac Review seems like the saddest idea that I could conjur up. Do I abandon the Diner Review? Do I start up a new one? With a new name? With a new purpose? I don't know. I know that there has been very little of brilliance or interest here. Sme of you have been nice enough to read my error plagued and poorly constructed prose and it always served a cathartic purpose when I was. Able to squeeze out a few words that pleased me or that unlocked my feelings or allowed them to be...unburdened. So... let's see if I can muster some time and creativity to do something more interesting. Maybe in July.
Had some time to killJust come in to join the crowd'Coz I had some time to kill
