August 3, 2011

• American Diners at the Cusp

  

  Seven score years ago, Walter Scott invented the diner to serve hot lunches to fellow employees at the Providence Journal. A Massachusetts manufacturer soon began fabricating rip-off diners and those brought hearty inexpensive meals to people who could not previously afford to eat in restaurants. During the Depression such diners introduced America to blue plate specials, 24 hour breakfasts, corned beef hash, hot beef sandwiches and chicken & noodles. Seventy years ago, Edward Hopper began painting “Nighthawks” in an immediate reaction to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. That iconic painting, of disconnected people trapped in a diner without doors, came to represent post modern urban angst. Hollywood manufacturers soon began fabricating “Nighthawks” rip-offs. Those turned the concept of the diner into an outpost of non conformity for angst driven teenagers (“American Graffiti”), gamblers (“Diner”), drug addicts (“Man with the Golden Arm”), criminals (“Natural Born Killers”), spies (“The End of Violence”), salesmen (“Glengarry Glen Ross”), and desperate divorcees (“Bagdad Café”).

  Another seventy years later numerologists are predicting a drastic shift in diner culture.

  

  I began looking in the past, at Susie-Q diner in Mason City, Iowa’s last standing Valentine diner, a Depression era prefab model that dominated the Great Plains states. Susie-Q recently began serving into the evening but I was the only customer on my recent visit. “I don’t think people know yet we’re serving dinner,“ said the cook, who also told me how OSHA had forced her employer to fire her a few months short of her pension. Signs advertised the owner’s magic business and touted the “Spic & Span” pork tenderloin.

  

  It had a very greasy, very thick batter that is more common in Minnesota than Iowa. It would take an act of magic to get me to eat another.

  Two new cafés in the northwest suburbs better suggest the futures of diner culture. Both are in zip codes that abhor post modern urban despair and ambrace family values and bargain dining. Both occupy corner locations in suburban strip malls, with lots of natural light and happy vibes. Both were immaculate and offered friendly table service, a suburban antidote to fast food culture. Cindy’s (Barnes) Corner Cafe replaced a similar café in Deerfield Crossing late last year and serves breakfast and lunch daily. On my visits business was brisk, with meetings in a private room and mostly families and groups of senior citizens meeting in the main room.

  

  Short order grill work is featured and breakfasts delivered hearty orders of biscuits and gravy, eggs & shredded hash browns, etc. Marvelously fluffy pancakes are the breakfast star though. Coffee did not impress this coffee snob.

  

  A hamburger disappointed with drab meat but the bun was nicely toasted and buttered. A chicken & noodles special was good enough to draw me back again, with lush gravy and home made mashed potatoes.

  

  The coffee was much better at Cozy Cafe, which serves Grounds for Celebration products in the Tuscany Center in Urbandale. This new era diner offers drive-through, which was constantly busy during my visits, three meals a day, and pizza, a very rare diner food. Both the hand breaded tenderloin and onion rings offered far more meat and less grease than Susie-Q’s. Cinnamon rolls were frosted with cream cheese. Pizza was tavern style, with thin sturdy crusts that had lackluster flavor.

  

  “Cavatelli” were not cavatelli but a mix of different pasta, Highland Park style, with rich red gravy and lots of cheese. Burgers tasted less prefabricated here but “home made” pies tasted of prefab fillings.

  

  Hot beef sandwiches were the epitome of that famous blue plate special – good gravy and mashed potatoes with divinely tender pot roast of beef.

  

  Homemade pies had canned fruit flavors.

  
  Bottom line – The suburban era of dinerdom seems cleaner, friendlier and more service oriented than old stereo types. Old fashioned blue plate specials though are still the strongest suits at these places.
  

  Cindy’s Corner Café

  2731 100^th St. Urbandale, 868-0200

  Mon. – Sat. 6 a.m. – 1:30 p.m., Sun. 8 a.m. – 1 p.m.

  Cozy Café

  3855 121st St., Urbandale, 278-8899

  Mon. – Fri. 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Sat. 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Sun. 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

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