Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet

[Globetrotter]

That guy from Man Vs Food was at Doogies last Friday...the show will air in December. He was eating their 2 foot hotdogs, which they put back on the menu.

[Mallard]

Originally Posted by Globetrotter

Newington is about 15 miles south of Hartford.
I actually prefer Abate's....Pepe's and Sallys are the same quality in my book, if you want a greasier pie, go to Sally's, if you like your pie burnt, go to Pepe's. Tower of Power always goes to Sally's when they're in town. Actually, you would probably prefer Pepe's, inside the restaurant, they have a picture of Ronald Reagan, and his entire motorcade on Wooster St, stopping in for a pie from Pepe's at the spur of the moment.

i prefer hole in the walls....there is one on my street that is pretty good, cash only and they have signed portraits of the sopranos cast on the wall.

i should hit up all the remaining diners before they are outlawed. i go to kimberlys up the street from me.


New Haven Advocate (CT)
December 22, 2005
Section: News

Diners!
A love story in 12 parts.

The ding of the cook's bell echoes down the quilted metal walls of the Forbes Diner. My toast is ready. The waitress stamps out her cigarette and comes in from her perch overlooking industrial Forbes Avenue in New Haven.

Eight o'clock, Wednesday morning: not the busiest shift at the Forbes. When I came in I found the waitress asleep, head tucked in her arms on the counter. I took a booth, fed the jukebox, selected a number by Bad Company. The waitress sprung up in animation as if I'd just fed a quarter to her.

"Sleeping off a headache," she explained, tidying her hair. "... Coffee?"

I take in the surroundings as she attends to my order: pink-black-grey terrazzo floor, metal sunbursts stamped into the walls, recessed fluorescents lighting pink Formica boomerangs.

This is the diner I'd hoped it would be. This is what diners used to be. This is what the artists of the Fodero Dining Car Company were thinking in the 1930s when they started molding steel into arcs instead of angles. When they baked their initials right into the porcelain, or set a North Star into the crushed shell and cement floor, or fashioned a clock bearing wings of stainless steel.

Diners came into adulthood just as Art Deco began to curl the edges of American architecture. Employing new materials like glass block, Bakelite and Formica, artist-businessmen of the classic diner manufacturing companies welded new-world optimism to streamline aesthetics, giving birth to an American art form. Like other buildings of the times, the diner represented movement, progress, modernity; the architecture of the quick, the short-order aesthetic that cruised in on the wheels of the automobile age.

There are not many of these diners left. Most have been remodeled, replaced, or just scrapped. A few were taken down and rebuilt in museums. Others have been shipped via freighter to Paris or Kyoto, to cater to Americaphiles and homesick expats. Diners have been immortalized on canvas by Edward Hopper and John Baeder, captured lovingly in film, and remain stuck like vintage postcards in the collective nostalgia of a whole country.

Only about 60 real diners remain in the state of Connecticut, from the tiny lunch cars of the 1920s and '30s, to the chrome-and-neon flyers by the Fodero and O'Mahony companies, to the post-war Mediterranean palaces of Musi and DeRaffele. Some of these dining-car manufacturers are still in business; they will build a classic diner to your specifications and ship it to you, in halves, up I-95.

New England happens to be the center of American dinerdom. The diner's roots can be traced back to 1872, when Walter Scott could be found pushing his sandwich cart through the nighttime streets of Providence, R.I. He had come to feed the hungry night crews of factories, print shops, and newspaper establishments, serving them ham sandwiches, boiled eggs, coffee and pie. Scott had found and cornered a market, making a living off the first laborers of the industrial revolution. Soon he replaced his cart with a horse-drawn wagon; other entrepreneurs then jumped into the business, and by the turn of the century nocturnal fleets of lunch wagons could be found parked alongside factory buildings in industrial towns across New England.

By the early 1900s, these "night lunch wagons" and "fancy night-cafes" had dismantled their wheels and taken root, staying open after sunrise to become round-the-clock eateries. Running water, grills, steam tables, and stools were the next innovations. Daytime business did not immediately take off; the lunch-cart first had to shed its reputation as a hangout for dog-house drunks and murky characters who scurried off at first light. It would be years before mainstream consumers warmed to a meal at one of these little establishments. To attract them, lunch-car manufacturers began outfitting their structures with porcelain and mosaic tile interiors, etched and stained-glass windows, plate-glass mirrors, skylights and marble counters.

The "dining car" etymology could also be traced to the availability, around that time, of discarded electric streetcars, which were renovated and converted into "dining cars." These didn't last longthe cars fell apart quickly under the strain of commercebut their shabby presence contributed to the second-class reputation of diners.

Diners were able to weather the Great Depression because of their low overhead, small size and cheap menus. In the 1930s they streamlined and went Buck Rogers futuristic. When World War II took most of the men and steel to war, diner production slowed to a near halt. But many existing ones stayed in business, employing women to fill the ranks. Female workers helped soften the diner's image, opening doors to female clientele and, eventually, families.

Buoyed by the post-wartime rejuvenation, diners thrived in the 1950s. Economic and societal optimism made dining out easier for families with growing incomes; many of these families chose diners because they were not too expensive and thus a good place to consume conspicuously. Diners began to expand, in square footage, in architectural design and in menu. It was their heyday, and it continued until the 1960s, when another American phenomenon, the fast-food chain, began metastasizing across the United States.

Those diners that survived are now relics, living dioramas of vaguely simpler times. The real ones are loved not so much for the food but for their history, kitsch, local color, hard but good-hearted waitresses, cheap, bottomless cups of coffee, tome-sized menus, and the constant renewal of breakfast all day.

This is my travelogue of classic diners in and near New Haven, the route of the peripatetic dinerphile, in search of more than mere food.

The Forbes Diner, 189 Forbes Avenue, New Haven, is open daily from 6 a.m-8 p.m.

Next stop: The Twin Pines A Jeep Cherokee with plates that read "2Pines" is parked in its usual spot in the lot of the Twin Pines diner on Main Street in East Haven. Inside the dark, quasi colonial-themed restaurant, I take a small booth near the counter. A waitress materializes with a big vinyl-clad menu and the universal diner greeting:

"Coffee?"

It's a weekday morning, around eight. The senior citizens take their places for breakfast. The morning news plays on the counter TV with the volume turned down, quiet enough for me to enjoy my newspaper and coffee. Just then a roar, followed by a wave of helpless cackling, erupts from a table in the dining room. Then giggling, then quiet. Then another roar, more cackling.

I peer over the high booth wall to see where the noise is coming from: a posse of white-haired retirees at two pushed-together tables.

"The drunks couldn't be as loud as the seniors in the morning," says the waitress, who has arrived with my coffee.

Debbie Colavolpe has been serving breakfast at the Twin Pines for about eight years. She calls her shift Senior Happy Hour. "They don't miss a day," she says. "They're here after church on Sundays, too, walking around from table to table."

The seniors, a group of three couples that commandeers the dining room each morning, call it the "therapy club." They tell me they've all just retired, and that "this is how we spend our retirement." They keep a weekly kitty just for meals at the diner.

"We come for the toast," jokes one of them.

"On Sunday, we have eggs," says another.

"But only one of us does."

"And we share it."

"This way we don't go over budget."

They've been coming to the Twin Pines "since they rolled it down the highway in three pieces."

"We stay here as long as we want," says one of them. "When they want us to leave, they turn up the airco."

Mornings belong to seniors at most of the diners I've been to. Nights belong to the young, the rowdies pouring out of the clubs after two a.m. Most waitresses prefer the seniors. Debbie knows each of their names.

The Twin Pines bears the clashing colonial/ Mediterranean decor of the late '60s and early '70s. I love its big fake fireplace, hanging amber-glass lamps and fake burled wood. I love its carpeted, wine-cellar coziness, its endless coffee, hyper-vigilant waitresses, perfectly over-easy eggs, and brown-crisp home fries. I love its noisy breakfast crowd. Most of all, I love its logo: two pine tree silhouettes, set into each booth in remembrance of the 60-foot evergreens that stood next to the diner 25 years ago. At that time, owner Dimitrios Triantis' plans to expand were stymied by the hundred-year-old trees, which stood right in the spot where the driveway of the new construction would go. "We wanted to keep those pine trees," he says. That spring, one the trees was struck by lightning, cracked in two. It was a sign, perhaps; the other was subsequently sacrificed in the expansion to what is now the Twin Pines Center.

The Twin Pines Diner, at 34 Main Street in East Haven, is open 24/7.

Third stop: The Parthenon DinerOn the sunset side of Rte. 1 in Branford, down the road from some red barns, sits the heralded Parthenon Diner, open 24 hours.

A tall boy in a pressed white shirt takes my order.

"I'll have the salad bar," I tell him. "The whole thing."

The joke is lost on him; he barely speaks English.

"And a slice of banana cream pie."

This he understands. "Now," he asks, "or later?"

"Whenever."

On the way to the salad bar I stop to inspect the cake display. Well-placed near the entrance, its temptations are unavoidable: fruit pies, cream pies, chocolate pies, mousses. Tall cakes like stadiums, rotating slowly in the mirrored case, waiting to be crowned your dessert, your Miss America.

The salad bar is dull in a suburban way. No olives, no feta cheese, no rice pudding. Frigid vegetables. The bacon bits, however, are real bacon, and the croutons are plentiful. I load both over the iceberg mound on my plate.

When I get back to my table, a slice of pie is there, resting on its side, in a stiff yellow-and-white bouffant like it's going to the prom. I poke it with my fork. I'll have just a bit, as an appetizer. With one taste of the dry yellow fluff I am struck with the vaguest dissatisfaction, my stomach remembering what my head forgot: that these pies are not food but whipped edifices, constructed to appeal to the eye rather than the palate. The flavor of reconstituted nothing, beaten to a high fluff and colored yellow dye #4, as bland as a pre-fab house in a Rte. 1 development.

Despite its pies, the Parthenon is a holy place, tenderly lit, with a hand-painted frieze of ionic capitals adorning the walls, living philodendrons hanging over the booths, and personal jukeboxes. It is among the most date-worthy of diners; one only has to utter, "I'll have a Vergina" while rolling one's r's (Vergina is a Greek beer). Like its namesake throned high above Athens, this Parthenon is a temple, not to the virgin goddess Athena, but to the glorious reign of the Hellenic-American diner empire.

The Parthenon Diner, 374 E. Main St., is open 24/7.

Fourth stop: The Foxon DinerKamal Uddin learned how to roast a turkey by watching Citizens TV. He had been living in the States for a few months, and wanted to hone his skills as a cook at the Twin Pines diner. The rest of the menu he learned from his boss's father-in-law. Twelve years later, he is serving gyro, spinach pie, hamburgers and other modern diner foods at his own establishment, the Foxon Diner on Foxon Road in East Haven.

When he arrived from Bangladesh in 1983, Uddin's first stop was New York, but he got out of there quick. "Too crowded," he says. A cooking job at the Twin Pines brought him to East Haven, but Uddin didn't set down roots until 1992, when he came back from a visit to his home town of Chittagong with a new wife. "She loves it here," he says. They have two sons now, and live a couple miles from the diner.

The Foxon is an unassuming but real diner; it is steadfastly local in its clientele and in its ownership. Perhaps this is its strength, and what keeps it afloat in the sea of McDonald's, Wendy's, KFC, Bennigan's and Chili's along Rte. 80. A sign near the kitchen door, next to the varnished bamboo counter, reads Beware of Attack Waitress. I wonder if Bennigan's would allow that.

Uddin, in his cook's apron, is taking a break at the table next to Tony and Betty, two of his regulars. The waitress has wrapped up their leftovers in Styrofoam to-go. "Keep in touch. Let me know what happens," I hear Uddin say as his customers gather up tomorrow's lunch. "All right," says Betty. "See you Wednesday."

The Foxon Diner, 913 Foxon Road in East Haven, is open 6 a.m.-10 p.m. Mon.-Sat. and Sun. 6 a.m.-9 p.m.

Fifth stop: The 91 Diner RestaurantTuesday night, 8:21. A man of about 67, white hair parted and forced to one side by an unbreakable comb, pot belly preceding him by a league, takes his usual seat at the counter near the TV and orders his coffee and Jell-o, bringing the sum total of patrons at the 91 Diner Restaurant to eight.

In the old days, diners were unquestionably the province of men. Women, or more specifically, ladies, were unseen. Booths for Ladies, read the masthead of the Haye's Diner menu in Lewiston, Maine, in 1945. Booths were introduced in diners because a lady wouldn't be seen sitting on a stool.

Generations later, it is still rare to see a woman dining alone at the counter, unless of course she is a serious dinerphile. For the dinerphile, male or female, nothing beats a perch at the counter.

"There's a directness about itit's a feeding trough," says Sandy Isenstadt, a professor of modern architecture at Yale and professed dinerphile. "There's no pretense. Or maybe it's because you're more anonymous there. There's something satisfying in that."

The 91 Diner Restaurant bears the birthmark of authentic dinerness: exit mints. Tonight they are freshly stocked by the door in a hygienic, no-hands dispenser. I tip the container twice before heading back on the road.

91 Diner Restaurant, 420 Middletown Ave., is open Mon.-Sat. 7 a.m.-11 p.m. and Sun. 7 a.m.-9 p.m.

Sixth Stop: The Olympia DinerEvening, Berlin Turnpike. Driving. Driving. Searching, searching. How will I see it among all these high-rise boxes? Driving, driving... am I lost? Driving... a light... I think I see it... yes! There it is, on the right: the smooth chrome flank of genuine 1950s O'Mahony diner, reflecting the headlights on the highway. Pink, green and orange neon bleeding the words Olympia Diner prettily into the night sky.

Inside, the Olympia's cool green-and-stainless-steel feng shui is as peaceful as a grandmother's kitchen. "Anywhere," says the matron at the register, her hand outstretched to offer the whole diner. As I take a booth by the window I see the Friendly's restaurant standing directly opposite, on the northbound side of the turnpike.

There is something disconcerting about a restaurant that has to tell you it's friendly.

The matron rings up some guy's check. "How are you?" she asks, not because her regional assistant manager has instructed her to do so, but because she knows this guy, knows his name, knows he just got divorced, that his ex-wife has left the state with the kids, and that he likes beef barley soup.

The Olympia Diner has been in the Gavrilis family since 1975. A framed shot of the patriarch, Manny Gavrilis, sits atop the lighted pie cabinet. The Olympia has served lunch, dinner and breakfast-all-day for 50 years. There are smooth ruts in the terrazzo floors where waitresses have stood taking orders since 1955. I wonder how long the Friendly's has been there, or how long it will take before it is torn down and replaced with a bigger, more lucrative, even friendlier franchise. Or written off and abandoned after friendly gross sales fail to meet friendly corporate royalty and marketing fees for the second friendly fiscal year in a row.

I browse my jukebox, using the mechanical dial to flip through its book of songs. When the music fades in, instead of "In the Ghetto" by Elvis Presley I get something called "Flying Without Wings" by American Idol winner Ruben Studdard.

The waitress on her way to the kitchen sees me pressing "Reset" repeatedly. "Same song," she explains. Meaning every song chosen by each patron plays on all machines, one at a time. You have to wait for yours. Luckily the place isn't crowded. I lower the volume and occupy myself with a Greek salad.

Downtimes are best for assessing a diner's haunt factor. At 7:21 on a Sunday night, it is quiet enough to hear the Olympia's stories; they rise out of the booths like steam. Play number 110 on the jukebox and watch the movie of the night your parents conceived you, his hands reaching past her mushroom omelette to hold hers while Louis Prima sings:

and by the little jewelry shop
we'll stop and linger
while I buy a wedding ring for your finger.
In the meantime let me tell you that I love you
Buona sera, signorina
Kiss me goodnight.

The Olympia is a movie set, unchanged since the black-and-white photograph near the door was taken in the 1950s. Parfait glasses gleam in their original lighted cabinets; recessed lighting diffuses on pearlized green formica; a stainless tank holds seven gallons of coffee on a counter shined all the way down to the curved-glass corner windows. You can even assess Your Weight and Horoscope on the same black-and-white enamel scale in the vestibule that your ancestors used. The Olympia is the best place for a romantic meeting with another dinerphile.

The Olympia Diner, at the intersection of routes 5 and 15 (3413 Berlin Turnpike), Newington, is open daily 6 a.m.-midnight.

Seventh stop: The Acropolis of HamdenGreece, reads my placemat. Picturesque & Historical Land of Antiquity.

The Greek word acropolis refers to the upper part of any city; there are acropoleis all over the world. New Haven's is on Dixwell Avenue. It is not much higher than sea level, although its patrons do have to ascend a flight of stairs to enter it. The U.S. has, by my guess, at least a hundred Acropoleis, all diners.

This one is a treat; its grill is just behind the counter, not hidden in the kitchen, as it often was around the time these newer diners were built, in the late '60s and '70s. (The Acropolis is a classic of this era, made by the DeRaffele company.) Sitting at the counter affords a direct view of the short-order man at work on your hash browns. What better entertainment for the lone and hungry? Yet most people come in twos, and, preferring to look only at each other, they sit at the booth.

My first visit to the Acropolis was with a friend, so we sat at a booth. It was during this visit that I decided I had a favorite diner waitress: a spicy, rosy-cheeked Asian lady who chastised my friend over his unfinished Moussaka. ("You don't touch nothing. You don't like.") Her English-language limits didn't slow her down; when I ordered a salad, she brought two cruets of dressing to our table and waggled them in front of us, asking "Which one want?"

I am hoping to be seated at her table again tonight. Instead I am ushered to the other end of the diner by another waitress. This one, a veteran, wears sparkly white eye shadow and gold necklaces, and her thin, bleached hair up in a ponytail. She is attentive, almost saccharine in her ministrations, but something about her edges tells you she can and will kick your ass. As the tables fill up around me, I listen as she repeats the phrase "peas carrots stringbeans pickledbeets applesauce coleslaw," five times. Her other litanies are "bakedpotato mashedpotato frenchfries homefries" and "ranch Italian thousandisland honey-dijon vinaigrette." I leave her a forty percent tip.

The Acropolis Diner, 1864 Dixwell Avenue, Hamden, is open 24/7.

Eighth stop: The Athenian DinerSome diners are spotless. The Athenian squeaks. It also glows, under its neon and soft lamplight, and shines, with scrupulously Windexed mirrors and glass. The booths are a pleasant lavender, the floor is carpeted in florals, and thewait, haven't I been here before? I've seen this same neon-and-mirror motif at the Duchess, the Parthenon... is there a Diner Ikea somewhere? If so, where? I want to redo my dining room.

Diners' prewar reputation of quick 'n' dirty blue-collar hash houses stuck to them, like grease, for years. The truth is that many really were dirty, grease-covered hash-houses, crowded with smelly laborers. Diner owners had to work to shed that reputation. They wanted to draw the rest of societywomen and familiesinto their establishments. So they cleaned up their acts and redecorated. In the '20s and '30s, glossy white porcelain, signaling cleanliness, became the material of choice in diner manufacturing. (This white theme worked well for marketing the diner's cousin, the White Castle/White Tower). Later, diners were outfitted with glass and chrome, the same glass and chrome polished obsessively by the present-day staff.

It is not yet 7:30 on a Saturday morning at the Athenian. Sharon Borucki, a lean, sixtyish, soft-spoken waitress who's been here thirteen years, wipes an already-spotless cooktop. She folds the rag and leans on the counter to chat while waiting for her breakfast crowd to arrive.

"Diners used to be in-and-out. Now people linger."

"Now they have business meetings at the diner," adds Maggie Biewald, another waitress. A fiftyish, full-bodied Southern belle with bright blue eyes, she has been at the Athenian for six years.

"And we all bring our problems to the diner," says Maggie. "People come here to vent."

"If it's slow," says Sharon, we'll sit down and talk with them. At a restaurant, you can't do that."

Two of Sharon's regulars come in. "Straight ahead," she tells them.

"Years ago," says Sharon, "a diner was roast beef, meat loaf. Now you get seafood, steaks... "

She daydreams for a second.

"I miss the greasy hamburgers."

"Dripping down your arm," joins Maggie.

"Diners used to be greasy spoons."

"These days, there's not enough grease. They gotta bring the cow back."

"We had a healthy menu for a while," says Maggie. "Remember that? we were doing the health thing."

According to Sharon, the most ordered dish at the Athenian is the "scrambled with bacon." The cook is good at eggs; mine are perfectly over-medium, fried crisp at the edges. My "golden brown buttered toast" has been spread with real butter, not the yellow pap from vat-sized cans found sitting next to the grill at some diners.

"People hook breakfast with diner," says Maggie. They come in two, three o'clock and ask, 'Can you get breakfast?' 'Sure, it's a diner!'"

Next to the exit is an autographed head shot of Senator Joe Lieberman. "He comes in all the time," says Sharon. Lieberman must be a dinerphile. On his website, under "Diner Stops," he writes: "So far, I have visited more than 130 diners in 60 Connecticut towns."

I wonder what he orders.

The Athenian Diner, 1426 Whalley Avenue in New Haven, is open 24/7.

Ninth stop: The Duchess DinerauntDuchess or Duchess? Duchess Restaurant or Duchess Dineraunt?

What's the difference? They're both Connecticut-based dining establishments. They both offer a variety of dishes, inexpensively and quickly. They both claim to make their soup from scratch, every day. Both promise fresh ingredients, careful cooking, quick service.

There are a few things Duchess Restaurants, Inc. has that the Duchess Dineraunt does not. An advertising budget, for example. A "drive-thru." A tag line (Fresh Food, Served Fast). A CEO. Corporate headquarters. Fifteen "conveniently located" clones, strategically dotting the map of Connecticut. Visit one Duchess, and you've visited 'em all.

The Duchess Dineraunt has, on the other hand:

1. Exit mints and exit-cookies.

2. Pink neon.

3. Custom 1980s-style tinted-glass DeRaffele construction.

4. An owner who works there, answers the phone, knows her customers, and considered changing the name to Liberty Diner, because, she explained, "of liberty in this country." (She is from Delphi, Greece).

5. Mirror-paneled walls, a spit-shined bar, flattering downlighting, and, in its foyer, not only a "Talking Palm Reader," but a finger-reading "Love Tester" with flashing red Cupid hearts.

There are 16 Duchess Restaurants but only one West Haven Duchess Dineraunt, open 24/7, at 706 Campbell Ave, West Haven.

Tenth stop: The Elm DinerRobert Daly is a borderline dinerphile. "If I have a choice between McDonald's and the diner, I'll go to the diner. They make the food fresh. They're back there peeling potatoes at 3 in the morning."

One of the most lively and well-kept of the classic stainless-steel diners, the Elm has been a West Haven favorite for about 60 years.

"I been coming here since Armstrong," Robert says, referring to the Armstrong tire factory, now abandoned, that looms next door. He and the guys would meet there during the seven-hour break between shifts, back when there were jukeboxes at each of the booths.

This was long before owners Ted Vidalis and John Theodoridis bought the place, in 1989. Ted was five when his parents emigrated here from Greece. He was running his own pizza place by his twenties. I cannot help but ask him every dinerphile's most burning question:

Why are so many diners owned by Greeks?

"You'd think you'd get off the plane in Athens and it would be lined with diners," he laughs. "But there's no such thing there."

"The Greeks, Ted explains, "worked for the Irish, who owned the diners. When they sold them, the Greeks bought them." The Greek diner, according to Ted, is now becoming the Pakistani, Indian, or other immigrant-entrepreneur's diner. "My kids don't want a diner. I'm probably the last in my generation to own a diner. Now the new immigrants take over."

It is a concise history of the ever-evolving American dream, illustrated by the fact that the original Elm diner, which once stood on the corner of Chapel and Park, is now an Indian Restaurant called Tandoor.

Would he retire from this business? "I hope not," he says.

"God, I hope not!" jokes Gloria, a waitress who has worked at the Elm for 19 years, as she whisks past, three breakfasts on each arm.

The Elm Diner, 427 Elm Street, West Haven, is open 24/7.

Next-to-last-stop: Cody's Diner 2:55 a.m.: Traffic jam, Water Street. There's been a fender-bender. One of the guys involved steps out of his car and carefully inspects his back bumper. The other stays cautiously put. Car horns start to honk. Subwoofers pound. To the right, another scene: silhouettes clustering like moths in the bright light of Cody's Diner.

Young people mill about the parking lot. A boy hikes up his hangy-down jeans. A girl yells at someone to "Shut! Up!" I'm trying to park as a man calls through my car window for a light.

The cash register at Cody's is manned by a guy who looks like a retired union shop-steward. Next to him, filling the doorway, a police officer stands, legs apart.

The booths are full. The counter is full. Cell phones go off like alarm clocks. Some guy answers his while the waitress takes his order. She leans down and puts her ear close to listen. Another waitress is doing a dance for a table full of her regulars. On her way back to the kitchen she picks up the ringing phone.

"GOOD MORNING, CODY'S DINER!... No mashed potatoes!... No baked potatoes! Fries, potato skins. Potato skins! The skin of the potato. The potato is taken out. It comes filled up... broccoli, cheese... now who is this? You comin' right now?"

A girl in white skin-pants, gold sequined belt, lime-green stretchy top and extensions down her back is trying to get past a guy in a Yankees cap, who has his arm out like a toll booth.

The back is where the girls sit, in clusters, pretending to ignore the guys at the counter. The guys eat their french fries while half-turned in their stools, perhaps to avoid having their backs to the door, perhaps to assess the arriving females.

A big guy gets up from the counter to leave. "Thank you darlin'," he says to the waitress. I zoom to his spot.

A man in a dress shirt leans over and confides his takeout order to the waitress, a fiftyish white lady who looks like a crossing guard I had in grade school. "Sausage, egg and cheese with homefries," she repeats, then peers up over her glasses at him.

"Who's this for? I hope it's for the wife. If it's not, I'm tellin'."

A woman and her boyfriend hang at the counter, eating their sandwiches from the bag.

"I gotta put that on a plate if you're gonna eat that here," says the waitress. They ignore her.

The cop strides up in one long step.

"Gotta take the takeout out."

They scowl, gather their breakfast bags, pay and leave.

There are rules at some diners, especially the all-night ones popular with the bar crowd. Cody's has them posted on its "after-hours" menu:

"All orders to go must be taken out!"

"Minimum charge of $2 per person during busy times."

"No doggy bags available until 3:30 am on Friday/Sat/Sun."

Cody's is the only all-night diner in downtown New Haven; it can afford to have rules. Most patrons follow them willingly, including myself: There is no way these pancakes, which are hot, fluffy, and loaded with blueberries, are going to end up in a doggy bag.

One of the cooks emerges briskly from the back, carrying a 5-pound plastic bladder of white stuff. 10% Ice Cream Mix, reads the label. In one movement, he reaches up to the top of the formidable steel milkshake machine, opens a hatch, dumps it in, and flips a switch. I am wondering about the other 90 percent as I watch the next wave of customers come in. A young guy takes the booth behind me, slouches back, flips open his phone, and proceeds to call everyone he knows, including his mother. He wears a sideways cap and speaks slurred Spanglish. By the time his French toast arrives, he has fallen asleep sitting up.

By 3:30 the first of the local third-shift workers has arrived. He nods at the policeman, opens his Register to the sports page, and eats soberly. By 3:40 the bar crowd has diminished to two. Cody's grows quiet; you can hear the machines. The cop shifts his weight but remains by the door.

"All right," says the head cook, who is visible through the short-order window. "Second wind." He looks like Nick Nolte playing a Vietnam war veteran who is unable to keep a job longer than three months (on account of the voices). He starts scraping the griddle for the hundredth time tonight.

The waitresses review the evening's events to no one in particular.

"... the alcohol smell tonight was brutal. This one here, with the wingsohh!"

"... fat guy over there, the one who paid for all those girls, he says to me, 'Everything is so good.' Well, where's the fuckin' tip? Go to fuckin' McDonald's."

By 4:01 the smell of cologne is replaced by one of frying bacon. The cop leans on the counter, discussing life with the owner and two of the waitresses.

"Both my children were C-sections," he says.

"Both of mine were too," says a waitress.

"I said, long ago," says the cop, "if I were a woman, I'd be a virgin my whole life."

At the cash register, I ask the owner how the diner got its name, and he points to a picture on the wall of a smiling boy of about eight-Cody, his grandson. He shows me another picture, this one of the chrome-plated Highway Diner, the predecessor to Cody's. Today it is a renovated concrete box showing only glints of its former self: the Formica counter, terrazzo floors, and the 24-hour anthropology of a real diner.

Cody's Diner, 95 Water Street, New Haven, is open 24/7.

Last stop: The New Star DinerNot much is new at the New Star Diner. The plate glass is cracked; the entranceway is patched with old boards. There's nobody at the booths, nobody at the counter. Cheerily lit, with the TV on and the air warm with the smell of coffee, it is weirdly vacant, as if its customers had suddenly been vaporized in a nuclear attack.

Gold-flecked tile walls, amber glasses in a row, mosaic floor, stools jutting from the counter, a hybrid of a diner, the New Star's structure is genuine 1964 Fodero. I think of the Forbes, less than a mile south, where I started my journey, and its similarity to this place closes some karmic circle of unknown but deep import.

A waitress appears. She has a long gray braid and chipped teeth. I order the breakfast special, two eggs plus homefries, anachronistically priced at $1.19.

There are two other customers now: an older man in a cap and blue coveralls, and younger, moustachioed guy, both up at the counter, both having only coffee.

My food comes in about three seconds. I take two bites of the tepid eggs and dry home fries, put down my fork, and move the plate to the edge of the table. I realize then that out of the New Star's three customers, I am the only one eating.

No matter. I didn't come for the food. One step into the New Star and I was instantly locked in its eerie, dead-end thrall. Breakfast is secondary; I've got my own personal jukebox and two dollars in quarters from the nice waitress. I'm going to play Shaggy, Dru Hill, Marc Antony and the Charlie Daniels Band. My coffee is hot, caffeinated, and brownall I need. As I pick out my songs, I recall the words of a fellow dinerphile:

"There is something that attracts me about the low end."

There is something that attracts me to places like the New Star, which is less a new star than a black hole, invisible in the restaurant universe, but with a gravitational pull so intense it sucks time, light, the imagination, and any body that passes within range of it.

The New Star Diner, 585 Lombard Street, is open 24 hours Fri-Sat, 6 a.m-8 p.m on Weds and 6 a.m-6 p.m. the rest of the week.

[Globetrotter]

Originally Posted by Mallard

i prefer hole in the walls....there is one on my street that is pretty good, cash only and they have signed portraits of the sopranos cast on the wall.

i should hit up all the remaining diners before they are outlawed. i go to kimberlys up the street from me.

I thought that was called the Bridgeport flyer? Kimberly's is across from the police station.
Abyssinian is the best hole in the wall place you've ever eaten at...unless it's a Pizza joint...

[Mallard]

Originally Posted by Globetrotter

I thought that was called the Bridgeport flyer? Kimberly's is across from the police station.
Abyssinian is the best hole in the wall place you've ever eaten at...unless it's a Pizza joint...

lol...ive been to bridgeport flyer 3 times and two of those times it took them a half hour to ring up the charge on their cash register.

Jimmy's Apizza in Milford is the best



http://www.jimmysapizza.com/

[Globetrotter]

Originally Posted by Mallard

lol...ive been to bridgeport flyer 3 times and two of those times it took them a half hour to ring up the charge on their cash register.

Jimmy's Apizza in Milford is the best



http://www.jimmysapizza.com/

Kimberly's has better coffee...speaking of which, I'm going to go for my stroll through the terminal to the Dunkin Donuts.
Today is a boring day, just reviewing an MCP D of O...

[Mystery]

Originally Posted by Bronkowitz

You can split one with my MIL.

I'd rather give up nice and thick meat for life.

[Globetrotter]

Originally Posted by Mystery

I'd rather give up nice and thick meat for life.

You're dumping me?

[Mallard]

Originally Posted by Globetrotter

Kimberly's has better coffee...speaking of which, I'm going to go for my stroll through the terminal to the Dunkin Donuts.
Today is a boring day, just reviewing an MCP D of O...

are you exiled to texas again?

[Globetrotter]

Originally Posted by Mallard

are you exiled to texas again?

No I'm in Miami....biggest project (conveyor-wise) going on in the country right now.

Did I ever tell you about that spider bite I got when I was in Thailand?

[Mystery]

Originally Posted by Globetrotter

You're dumping me?

I'll sacrifice sharing pork chops with Bronkie's MIL just so I won't have to. Who loves ya?!?!