Your Favorite Chef’s Favorite Restaurant Is Probably a Diner

If I could only eat one meal for the rest of my life, it’d be a Lumberjack Special: scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, bacon, sausage, home fries, a single chocolate chip pancake, and bottomless coffee (obviously). Ideally, I’d be in a booth at one of my favorite diners. I grew up in coastal Connecticut, and on Sunday mornings, my family would drive to the Lakeside Diner in Stamford to linger over freshly made apple cider doughnuts, or to Gail’s Station House in Ridgefield, where we’d order rounds of cheddar-corn pancakes. I dream of them to this day.

Related: 15 Diner-Inspired Recipes, From Milkshakes to Hash Browns

The diner is a uniquely American style of restaurant. Back in the late 1800s, small lunch carts in cities throughout the East Coast served hungry workers affordable meals all day and late into the night. In the early 1900s, those carts became stationary and grew longer — big enough to fit a gas stove, a U-shaped bar, and barstools. They were intentionally modeled after dining cars on trains, known as “diners,” and the expanded carts inherited the same name. In the northeast, diners became an entry point for business ownership in the Greek community; over time, they spread all over the country.

Aside from the design, a few requirements must be met for a restaurant to be a diner. It must be laid-back — any guest should be able to nurse a cup of coffee as long as their heart desires. It must have an all-day menu; bonus points if that menu is available 24 /7. Most importantly, a diner must be for everyone — any person from any background should be able to walk in, order something sustaining without breaking the bank, and feel welcome.

Related: The Best Diners in Every State

If you grew up going to a diner, odds are it wasn’t just a place to eat, but a place where many of your core memories were formed. Maybe it was the only place you could order — without judgment — meatloaf for breakfast or French toast for dinner. Maybe it was the first restaurant you went to without your parents — a late-night milkshake after a football game, or a celebratory meal of eggs, bacon, and hash browns before heading out on a road trip with friends. Or maybe it was the first place where you became a regular. Maybe you’re still a regular there.

“After school, New Year’s Eve, or any time we wanted to get away from our parents and get some cheap food, we would go to our local diner,” says Sam Yoo, chef and owner of Golden Diner in New York City. “It was like a home away from home.” Yoo is one of a growing number of chefs with fine-dining backgrounds who today are paying homage to classic diners and opening versions of their own. At Golden Diner, Yoo leans into his Asian heritage with cross-cultural, comforting dishes like a chicken katsu club sandwich and green tea coffee cake.

"“After school, New Year's Eve, or any time we wanted to get away from our parents and get some cheap food, we would go to a local diner.”"

Sam Yoo, chef and owner of Golden Diner

After a post-pandemic craving for luxury, today people are wanting comfort and familiarity out of restaurant experiences, which diners deliver in spades. “There’s a lot of nostalgia and accessibility there,” says 2022 F&W Best New Chef Caroline Schiff, who is opening a diner in Queens’ Ridgewood neighborhood next winter. She’ll be serving dishes that reflect her years working as a high-end pastry chef, like butterscotch French toast, a vegetarian broccoli melt, and malted-milk French silk pie, but ultimately, Schiff says, “We’re not trying to be anything new. Our tagline is ‘We’re just a diner.’ We want this to be a timeless space.”

In Biddeford, Maine, chefs Chad Conley and Greg Mitchell also cultivate a sense of connection to the past — their restaurant, Palace Diner, was built in 1927. When they bought the space in 2014, they knew they wanted to continue that legacy. “We wanted to honor that concept and present a menu that made sense,” says Conley.

The menu features diner stalwarts with high-end touches, like their soft-scrambled eggs with cheese and their grapefruit, which comes segmented and brûléed. Last fall, chef Jackie Carnesi took over the kitchen at another storied institution, 97-year-old Kellogg’s Diner in Brooklyn, and incorporated Tex-Mex flavors from her South Texas childhood into the menu with dishes like poblano meatloaf, guajillo-braised short rib hash, and an omelet with green chile crema.

Related: There’s a Secret Ingredient in Fluffy Diner Pancakes (and It Isn’t Buttermilk)

Even one of the country’s most renowned chefs, 1990 F&W Best New Chef Nancy Silverton, is opening a diner in Los Angeles later this year in partnership with television personality Phil Rosenthal. Named after Rosenthal’s parents, Max and Helen’s will feature nostalgic dishes made with Silverton’s signature style. “There’ll be a Reuben, but I’m going to source the perfect mustard, the perfect rye bread, and the perfect pastrami,” she says. “I hope to turn some of these classics into a better version of themselves without a tremendous amount of effort.”

But what are “the classics”? At any given diner menu, you might find regional specialties or dishes that reflect the owner’s heritage. It’s why so many diners have gyros and Greek omelets. It’s also why there are breakfast tacos at diners in Austin and matzo ball soup at diners in New York City.

But then there are the things you’ll find everywhere — the sky-high pies, the milkshakes with two straws, the booths with the squeaky cushions, and all the many forms of potatoes. No matter where you’re from, or why you’re going, you can always count on a bottomless cup of coffee, and for the waiter to ask how you like your eggs.

Read the original article on Food & Wine