Chef Ris Lacoste’s mentor, the Beard-winning Bob Kinkead, always pushed his prize pupil to open a diner. Kinkead wasn’t trying to suggest that Lacoste lacks the skills to lead her own fine-dining establishment. He was acknowledging something true about the woman who kept his restaurants humming for years: Lacoste always wanted her own diner—or, more precisely, her own “fine diner.” RIS, an elegant black-and-tan operation in the West End, may not fit anyone’s description of a diner, fine or otherwise, but it does have its simple pleasures. Such as Lacoste’s loosely formed cheeseburger with onion jam on a house-made potato roll. Or her grilled Portuguese skirt steak topped with a fried egg and served over rice blackened with reduced beer and beef stock. Or, best of all, her Wednesday special of spaghetti and meatballs. How good are her pork-and-beef meatballs, slathered in red sauce and served atop spaghetti tossed with olive oil and butter? When my dining companion and I decided to switch plates one Wednesday, she started putting the hurt on my pasta dish, to the point that I feared she might eat the whole damn thing right in front of me. I finally suggested we switch back. The disappointment in her eyes could have cleaved a serial killer’s heart.

2275 L St. NW (202) 730-2500

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The publisher of Roadside, the magazine long dedicated to the chrome culture of classic diners, is not at all happy with Silver Diner's plan to demolish its Rockville location and build a spacious new $4.5 million diner just down the road.

Roadside's Randy Garbin writes that he first visited the Rockville diner shortly after it opened in the late '80s and found that the retro Kullman structure "completely fooled me: I believed it was a vintage structure. Kullman reached deep into its past and designed, built, and transported one of the more amazing examples of the iconic American diner."

Now Garbin's frustrated at Silver Diner's plan to jettison the old property on Rockville Pike for a gleaming 10,000-square-foot showcase that will be lit up like a casino on the Vegas strip. Writes the publisher:

Despite the fact that the diner was built as an assembled diner in Avenel, New Jersey, separated into 8 sections, and trucked 300 miles to Rockford [sic], somehow they've determined it's "unfeasible" to do just this and move those sections a couple of miles (if that).

This all sounds like corporate blather to me. The diner is historic in its own right, and its construction quality is on par with almost anything Kullman ever built. Having visited the stores they've built since this unit, I can say with some confidence that the new building will pale by comparison.

Damn shame, folks. Just another damn shame.

Last year, I spoke with president/CEO Bob Giaimo about his decision to tear down the old property, a move that struck me as particularly anti-diner, given that history and nostalgia are such an integral part of the business. Here's what I wrote last year about Silver Diner's plans:

All that excess and space is needed, the president says, because the current location is already operating beyond its capacity. He calls the Rockville location “one of the busiest restaurants of its size in the United States.” It feeds 10,000 diners per week, he says, but the restaurant requires many turns a night to hit those numbers, which taxes every one of his employees, from hostess to cooks to bus boys.

The new Silver Diner will seat about 250 customers and, just as important, will feature a modern kitchen capable of handling the stress of so many diners. The bigger and better diner is expected to open in the spring of 2010, Giaimo says, at which time they will close down the old restaurant and raze it.

But isn’t tossing away an old diner really an anti-diner philosophy? I put the question to Giaimo because, to my mind, diners are about history. Giaimo is sympathetic to that view, which why he’s planning to donate much of the old structure to a diner museum, but he also acknowledges that he has a business to run. The old spot has taken a beating. It doesn’t serve either the customers or the staff well.

“If you stay the same, you’re going to be a diner, but your customer base is going to shrink,” Giaimo says. “We have plenty of data to back that up.”

When I spoke with Capital City Diner co-owner Matt Ashburn back in February, he didn't rule out the idea of serving liquor but thought he'd wait at least a year or two before applying for a license. He wanted to establish his business first in Trinidad.

The news last week that Cap City applied for a liquor license (complete with cover charge and dancing) stirred quite a buzz on both Frozen Tropics and Prince of Petworth. A number of early posters bemoaned the fact that a humble diner would stoop to serving alcohol. Here are two samples from the brave, anonymous naysayers:

Why in the hell does Capital City Diner need a liquor license? I'm not for this at all. Was this their intent all along?

Yeah, sometimes you just want to eat some greasy diner food. If I wanted to go to a bar or club, I would. But I just want food, dammit. I guess I’ll be sticking to Plato’s.

AHEM, Plato's sells beer and wine.  Anyway, I got a chance to talk to Ashburn last night, and he said that applying for the license was  not only a response to customer requests but also a recognition of the difficulties of running a small business.

It's not just a matter of needing the larger profit margins of alcohol. There's a period right after work, Ashburn says, when the diner doesn't get the volume of business it deserves. From 4 to 7 p.m., the owner says, you can spot a lot of folks pulling into their favorite bar or pub for an after-work drink and/or bite. Without beer or wine to pour, Cap City is often dead during this time.

"That's one of the reasons we're not attracting the after-work crowd," he says.

The naysayers shouldn't worry about the pending arrival of booze. Cap City doesn't have the storage space to become Trinidad's version of ChurchKey. Ashburn is looking to add three or four bottles of beer, and a red and white wine, to the beverage list. He's not sure which brands he'll favor yet. Oh, and he wants to serve a bloody Mary or a mimosa with his weekend breakfasts. (No one uses the word "brunch" in conjunction with a diner.)

"We certainly don't want to become a nightclub," Ashburn tells me. "The fact is, it's not going to become a bar...We're just going to sell beer with food."

For more explanation on Cap City's decision to serve alcohol, including its application for dancing and cover charges, read Ashburn's response on Frozen Tropics.

You know what? I don’t give a damn that Capital City Diner buys the majority of its ingredients from a giant food-service company, and I’ll tell you why. Sometimes I love a place just because of its history or its significance to a neighborhood or its atmosphere. (I’m sorry, but I don’t visit Florida Avenue Grill for much of anything besides a slice of D.C.’s past.) And Cap City is worthy in all three respects. Owners Matt Ashburn and Patrick Carl plucked a World War II–era diner from Avoca, N.Y., and moved it to sit-down-starved Trinidad. The diner’s cramped booths and tiny chrome stools speak to an era when our appetites may have been large but our asses weren’t. Of course, if the place were trading only in nostalgia and retro flapjacks, it wouldn’t resonate with many outside of a certain graying demographic. Ashburn and Carl, however, have adopted a flexible approach to their venture, quickly altering their original menu to a customer base that prefers chicken and waffles to spaghetti and meatballs. The result is a classic American diner car with the heart of a soul-food cafeteria. It’s a beautiful thing to experience. And the slaw dog ain’t bad, either.

1050 Bladensburg Road NE (202) 396-DINR

During an interview I conducted late last year with Ris Lacoste, the fixture for a decade at 1789, the chef revealed some of the inspiration behind her new place, RIS, in the West End:

Bob Kinkead, my dearest friend and mentor, said, ‘Ris, you look for an underserved neighborhood, you know.’ He would always say, ‘Open a diner.’ I always wanted to open a diner…My working title of the project was Lacoste Fine Diner, and that’s what helped me create my concept. It just said what it was. You know: fine diner...

RIS is indeed a fascinating blend of chef-driven, seasonal New American dishes and chef-driven All American comfort food, the stuff that can be enjoyed year-'round. At RIS, you can order a $36 veal chop with gremolata sauce or a $10 cheeseburger with onion jam.

If you want to know the truth, though, I favored one side of RIS over the other. You can find out in this week's Young & Hungry column.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

When Matt Ashburn and Patrick Carl first spotted the historic Avoca Diner on eBay more than 11 months ago, they had no idea what a hassle it would be to buy the 1947 prefab structure, move it to D.C., and prepare it for its second life as Capital City  Diner.

Nor did the owners know much of the history behind their 15-foot-wide diner, which has been operating, off and on, since 1949. That's where the children come in — the surviving children of some of the diner's original owners. Their memories of the old Goodrich Diner in Avoca, N.Y., are richer than the Super Happy Fat Boy Breakfast on the Cap City Diner menu.

Go back in history, both recent and mid-20th century history, in this week's Young & Hungry column.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The neon "OPEN" sign said it all: After months of headaches and delays and budget crunches (much of which Y&H will detail in tomorrow's column), Capital City Diner finally opened for business yesterday in Trinidad. It was packed with neighbors, well-wishers, reporters, and even a surprise out-of-town guest.

After the jump is my brief snapshot of opening day, but before you look at these pics, check out Darrow Montgomery's evocative, far superior photo essay on the diner.

Co-owner Patrick Carl, center, was the calm presence in the center of the storm yesterday afternoon. 

The short-order cooks were working non-stop trying to keep up with the tickets.

Lynn Dougherty is the daughter of Bill and Ruth Gilbert, the owners of the Goodrich Diner from the early 1950s to 1966 in Avoca, N.Y. The Goodrich was the original name of the diner that eventually became Capital City. Lynn and her husband, Tom, both retired, made a special trip from Chester, Va., to eat lunch at Cap City yesterday.

Y&H wasn't the only reporter on the scene. An unknown camera crew was also poking around for comments and pictures.

There was no time for fussy mise en place yesterday. It was slap-and-griddle time at the diner.

There was nary a seat to be found at either counter or booth.

Fresh carrot and chocolate cake were two of the dessert options.

The majority of employees at Capital City live in the Trinidad neighborhood.

According to Lynn Dougherty, these booths used to have little jukeboxes attached to them in the '50s and '60s.

No diner is complete without its Bunn warmers.

Carl, center, was performing a number of duties, from order-taker to manager to Capital City spokesman.

Tom and Lynn Dougherty step back in time

The last time Lynn Dougherty laid eyes on Capital City Diner, it was called the Avoca Diner, and it was run by a woman named Brenda Remchuk, a former Corning Glass employee who decided to get into the grease-slinging business. That was in Avoca, N.Y., in 1991.

Before that, Dougherty hadn't stepped foot in the diner since 1966 when her parents sold the business after running it for more than a decade in Avoca.

But this morning, Dougherty and her husband, Tom, made the trip from Chester, Va., to the Trinidad neighborhood to grab lunch at the grand opening of Capital City Diner. Lynn ordered a cheeseburger with potato salad. Tom got a tuna salad sandwich with a side of potato salad.

"It's right up there," Lynn Dougherty says when I ask her to compare the food at Cap City to the meals she enjoyed as a child at the then Goodrich Diner, which her parents bought in the early 50s.  "It's good food."

That's quite a compliment given what Dougherty had written me earlier: that her father, a former Army cook, prepared everything from scratch at the diner. She e-mailed:

"A lot of people started their day with a hearty breakfast at the diner, including homemade donuts that dad made. He also made homemade pies not with canned fillings of today, but made from scratch. He had all his own recipes, great comfort food made with only the best and freshest ingredients. One of my favorites was a hot roast beef sandwich with the best gravy you have ever tasted and mashed potatoes made with real potatoes not boxed. Goulash, chili, roast turkey, roast pork dinners. The list goes on and on...It was our home away from home. We ate dinner there every night."

Dougherty was impressed with what owners Matt Ashburn and Patrick Carl had done with the place. She thought it looked much the same as the diner of her memories. Well, except for two things: the bathrooms are much bigger than the little airplane-sized toilets of yesteryear and the tiny tabletop jukeboxes are gone from the booths.

She has very fond memories of those jukeboxes. So does her brother, Tim Gilbert, who e-mailed Y&H earlier about a sad day in rock 'n' roll history:

I remember the night I heard on the radio Buddy Holly, Richie Valens [sic], and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash out West and I played 'La Bamba' on the jukebox. There were snowflakes coming and slowly filling up the parking lot."

We here at Y&H Central have two suggestions on how to celebrate this important day:

1. Go to the nearest IHOP. (Location finder here.) Order a short stack of buttermilk pancakes. They're free today until 10 p.m. Well, they're free if you're a total assmunch and don't make a donation to the Children's Miracle Network, which supports children's hospitals. That's the whole point. IHOP raises money for charity on National Pancake Day. Read more here.

2. Go to the grand opening of Capital City Diner today in Trinidad. Order a stack of three buttermilk pancakes with pecans. Then sit back and enjoy the Silk City Diner model that owners Matt Ashburn and Patrick Carl have painstakingly restored to its mid-20th-century glory. It may be the District's only authentic diner. Don't forget to "tip" the one-legged man standing outside the diner. He is his own one-man charity fund-raiser.

Photo by D'Arcy Norman via Flickr Creative Commons, Attribution License

The Avoca Family Diner, circa 1993

Y&H received an e-mail earlier this week from Randy Garbin, publisher of Roadside magazine and its electronic version Roadside Online. Garbin's magazine is a love letter to diners and their role in American grease-tronomy.

Garbin sent me a PDF version of a piece he wrote in 1993 about the Avoca Family Diner, which was the name of the 1940s-era structure that Matt Ashburn and Patrick Carl  moved to Trinidad last year and rechristened the Capital City Diner. The D.C. owners didn't purchase the diner from the woman mentioned in Garbin's story but from a later proprietor, Pat McMahon, who sold it to Ashburn and Carl despite the fact the duo didn't have all their financing immediately lined up. McMahon must have sensed their passion for the project.

You can get a sense of their passion next week when Capital City Diner finally opens after months of delays. In the meantime, however, get a little history courtesy of Garbin's 1993 story:

The Avoca Family Diner is a Silk City, built in the late 40s or early 50s in Paterson, NJ, and it is run by Brenda Remchuk, a warm-hearted, sultry-voiced woman with an honest love of cooking and people. Brenda’s been running this diner-in-the-middle-of-nowhere for better than a year. Before this, she worked at Corning Glass for several years. She considers the diner to be a good career move.

The diner’s reputation required some rehabilitation, but she’s done quite well with it. It could have something to do with the plate-sized flluffy pancakes, the big juicy burgers, the cheese bread (ask for it by name!), the grilled apple bread, the English muffiin bread, the Friday night fiish-fry, homemade pies and cobblers, or the thick and hearty chicken soup (it cured my cold)—or maybe it was just Brenda’s easygoing, make-yourself-at-home manner.

The diner sports that classic Silk City diamond tile pattern in a light turquoise and black, and you’ll fiind Brenda right behind the counter at the grill. Probably one of Brenda’s best items is the fresh-baked biscuits, served with dinner, or with sausage gravy, a hearty breakfast found throughout this region (and rarely in New England). The diner also provides a prelude to Avoca’s other attraction, a caboose dining room. A railfan’s delight, there are photos of trains and locomotives hanging on the walls, and the caboose adds another 20 seats or so.

I think one of my favorite things about the Avoca Diner is simply its location. It is rare, these days, to be driving a remote stretch of highway and suddenly see, where there is little else, an excellently preserved, real classic diner. A diner in such a setting seems to both stand out and fiit in at the same time. Despite its classically industrial design, the rural landscape seems to wholeheartedly embrace this man-made touchstone into its geography. Brenda’s personality and cooking do this diner justice, and looking across the road, the thought of being able to actually spend the night within walking distance brought out the child in me.

Photo courtesy of Randy Garbin and Roadside magazine