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Nothing Gained, Nothing Ventured
By bukkhead | July 7, 2007
It might seem pointless to write a review of a diner attached to a motel. But I’ve decided, while I have the momentum, to take the skater approach to blogging and reviewing. When you watch a skater video, you see the wow moments—and sometimes they even show you the really bad crashes. But what they don’t show you is the hundreds and hundreds of failed attempts, the boring misses. But skaters do it anyway, until what looks incredible to us is old hat to them.
I suppose the same approach could be described as what hash-slingers do. Bacon, eggs, potatoes, flapjacks. After a few thousand of each, it becomes second nature. Maybe that’s what so-called gourmet chefs are trying to circumvent—they don’t want your meal to taste like a thousand before it, no matter how good. But there’s comfort in getting your eggs the way you like ‘em, your bacon just right. Unfortunately, the ABC Country Restaurant didn’t quite achieve this sort of perfection. Then again, they didn’t really screw anything up, either, which is more or less the gold standard for diners.
What I mean is, when you go into a diner, even if your hurtin from an all-nighter, or a long road trip, a rough sleep in an unfamiiar motel bed, you don’t really expect the diner to get everything just right. The comfort comes from good enough. This reduces any kind of rating to one of three: don’t go there, okay, and oh my god. So if a diner gets less than three stars, it gets one, and if it gets more, it gets five. This place gets three. That’s pretty much all you need to know.
But the skater approach means I have to generate 500 words per review, even if I end up writing fluff and over-the-top justifications. I’ll tell you one thing I really liked about this place: they sat us at a table with big comfy chairs. We’re talking the kind of easy chairs you can just loll in, and loll I did. That was worth almost another half-star right there. But there was no Splenda (might be a Canadian thing) and the potatoes were underdone. And they weren’t actual hashed browns, but those country-style potaotes. I’m a hash brown snob, you see. Some skaters prefer certain truck brands. To each his own.
I hafta admit I kinda liked that the hostess who seated us had a French accent. And our server was fast and efficient, which is all you ask for. I’m no coffee connoisseure, but the joe was fine with a shot of fake cream and some Sweet n Low. I guess coffee gets the diner rating too, since most of the time you just want it to not suck.
So a diner, then, is the ollie of eateries—one of the basics, nothing spectacular, but if you can’t do it, you can’t do anything. ABC manages to get off the ground in that respect. Good enough for me.
Topics: Dining | No Comments »