Giaimo and Von Hengst opened the first Silver Diner in 1989 Bob Giaimo doesn't come right out and contradict my assertion that classic diners are recession-proof, but he believes those diners that cling to a greasy nostalgia, at the expense of innovation, are bound to lose customers, plain and simple. Giaimo should know. He's the [...]
Waffle Shop 3864 Mount Vernon Ave, Alexandria, VA 22305 (703) 836-8851 The Waffle Shop, which occupies a strange, triangular peninsula of cement, like Alexandria’s own tiny Flatiron Building, is one of the city’s few 24 hours a day/7 days a week operations. A few years back, the Alexandria Gazette Packet wrote a story about the [...]
Bob & Edith's Diner 2310 Columbia Pike, Arlington, VA 22204 (703) 920-6103 Bob & Edith's offers, depending on how you count them, five or six different steak-and-egg combinations, in addition to breakfast platters that include turkey, bologna, and half-smokes. Such a wealth of wacky options allows you to never order the same thing twice, but [...]
The Diner 2453 18th St., Washington, DC 20009 (202) 232-8800 The Diner is fine. In fact, everything at the Diner is so fine that I imagine the restaurant was dreamed up somewhere in Northern Finland by a mad scientist bent on creating food that elicits neither complaint nor praise, food that will absolutely satisfy you [...]
Metro 29 Diner Restaurant 4711 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA 22207 (703) 528-2464 As far as color scheme goes, Arlington’s Metro 29 Diner delivers everything I want out of a primo diner experience: chrome, turquoise blue, and a smattering of magenta. In matters of cuisine, the eatery on, yes, Route 29 (just east of Glebe Road) [...]
Tastee Diner 8601 Cameron St., Silver Spring, MD 20910 (301) 589-8171 The scrambled eggs are not fluffy; more than anything, they look like flat, ragged pieces of torn cloth as they lie there limply on the plate. The butter for the hot stack is the whipped, salted variety—from tiny plastic containers. And the stale, thin [...]
Trio Restaurant 1537 17th St., Washington, DC 20036 (202) 232-6307 Joints along this busy stretch in long-since-gentrified Dupont Circle have long struggled to overcome the rap that they live off of happy hour revenues at their spacious patios. And Trio Restaurant, a classic diner both in layout (throwback booths and an art-deco feel) and pay [...]
Amphora Restaurant 377 Maple Ave. W., Vienna, VA 22180 (703) 938-7877 The Amphora Restaurant—not to be confused with Amphora’s Diner Deluxe in Herndon, that gleaming homage to the classic American roadside eatery—is, by far, the most ambitious diner in the area. And it has little to do with Amphora’s 350-item menu, which requires serious speed-reading [...]
The week started with the unexpected announcement that a genuine 1947 diner would be making its way to Trinidad, and it ended with the equally unexpected disclosure that Spike Mendelsohn and his business partner were evicted from their Capitol Hill rental home. In between, readers had tons of reasons to visit the Y&H blog. Here [...]
Y&H is still trying to untangle all the red tape that led to the bureaucratic snafu in Trinidad, where the owners of Capital City Diner were prevented today from moving their vintage 1947 dining car onto the foundation they poured at 1050 Bladensburg Rd NE. The problem, it seems, is that the contractor for business [...]
