The Search for the Perfect French Toast - Diner Roundup

Good golly but I'm getting tired of diners. I've told you before about how I once romanticized diners as remnants of a vanishing America only to slowly realize that, whatever their charms, their food is usually pretty bad. Well, over the past couple of weeks, as I've visited a few more diners in the Valley, I've come to a further realization: although they may seem quirky and authentic compared to the soul-sucking sameness of the national franchises, diners can be quite boring and predictable when compared to each other.

Imagine a world without fast-food restaurants and casual dining chains. Are you imagining it? No? Maybe this will help: imagine a world before fast-food restaurants and casual dining chains. Okay? What year is it? Like, 1948 or something, right? Now imagine you're driving across the country, or maybe it's your lunch hour at your construction job and you want a cheap, quick meal. Where are you gonna go? What's that? Yup - you're gonna go to a diner. But which diner? That's right - the closest one. And do you know why you're gonna go to the closest one? Because it doesn't friggin matter which diner you go to! They're all the same: same atmosphere (a counter with some stools, a lot of chrome, maybe a larger dining room off to the side), same food (competently produced breakfast items, greasy burgers, some baked goods, watery coffee), same service (surly waitresses who look like they were born there), same customers. Okay, maybe there'll be a bit of variation - a daily special here, an exceptionally good peanut butter pie there - but it's 1948, how much uniformity do you expect?

My point? Diners aren't antidotes to the crushing conformity of the contemporary American dining scene, they're the cause of it. They are the grandparents of all the McDonaldses and Applebeeses and Joe's Crabshackses that are currently ruining our landscape, poisoning our groundwater, and perverting our children. They were the ones who first gave us a taste for the cheap, filling meal and the no-frills, no-surprises menu. They taught us - or they taught our grandparents, who then taught our parents, who then taught us - to treat food like a car treats gasoline, as something that's necessary to keep the engine from knocking and the wheels turning, but not something to be enjoyed. "Food is fuel," says the roadside diner, "perch on a stool, fill 'er up, and head off to where it was you were going." This, of course, is a lie, but we believed it - or our grandparents did - and now look what we're stuck with.

That said, a lie told by a crusty old-timer is always more interesting than a lie told by a youthful, corporate fast-talker, so diners remain superior to their progeny. But they're liars all the same, and we would all do well to bear that in mind.

I'm going to run quickly through the three diners I've hit over the past few weeks in the search for The Perfect French Toast. I was never expecting to find TPFT in these places, and I wasn't really expecting any of these meals to be that memorable - turns out, I was right about the french toast, but only partly right about the memorable bit. This, as you will see, is not a good thing. In what follows I'll be focusing on the differences between these diners, but these are pretty minor variations within the overall uniformity of the diner experience.

Here they are, in ascending order of disgustingness:

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The Route 9 Diner


I always forget about this place, probably because it blends in so well with the parking-lot sea that surrounds it. It's a new building masquerading as an old one, but not very convincingly, and all the exterior chrome (or chrome-like plastic) isn't exactly inviting, nor, to my eye, is the stars-and-stripes motif that dominates the place. When I popped in this morning the place was empty except for several groups of hungover college students boasting about last night's kegger. The waitresses were abrupt and sullen, there was neon track lighting running around the dining room (where I was seated, though not by choice), lots of air conditioning, a rotating pie case, and individual jukeboxes at some of the tables.

I was surprised, however, to see a variety of french-toast options. Theirs is a challah french toast, a phenomenon to which I'm becoming quite accustomed, and it was offered with all sorts of bells and whistles, if I wanted them: walnuts, bananas, strawberries, etc. I refrained, of course, and ordered it straight, no chaser. I noted that my waitress, who hardly looked at me, didn't offer me real maple syrup, as another waitress did at a table nearby, and when my plate arrived I was depressed to find two plastic containers of restaurant-supply maple-flavored corn syrup, alongside plastic containers of butter. The bread itself was crisp on the outside and not too mushy on the inside, a passable effort at gourmet french toast in a decidedly non-gourmet establishment, and I left feeling well-fed but considerably beaten down by the neon shininess, the serving-staff sullenness, and the fratboy gossipiness. I won't be back.



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The Bluebonnet Diner


The first time I tried to eat here, way back in the fall, it was Sunday and they were closed. The second time I tried, it was also Sunday and they were closed. Beginning to detect a pattern, but utterly failing to understand why a diner would close on Sundays, I tried again during a weekday, and they were open. Whatever I had at the time was fine, but completely uninteresting.

The Bluebonnet is certainly a much more attractive place than the Route 9. It's an old-style dining-car diner, and on the outside it advertises "Broasted Chicken" - which is a way of preparing chicken about which I must confess complete ignorance. Instead of looking into the matter further, however, I've simply been pretending that the sign says "Breasted Chicken" and having myself a good, juvenile chuckle whenever I drive past.

Inside, the place looks like any old diner, although it is worth noting that the dining room off to the side does sport a miniature toy train that chugs along below the ceiling. The customers are mostly old, mostly overweight, and mostly in sweatshirts. The waitresses are surly but not sullen, which suits me fine. They also have individual jukeboxes at the tables, a "Donut & Pastry" case on the counter full of shrinkwrapped donuts and muffins, and a clock on the wall that says "Worcester Diners." (Well, what it really says is "tick-tock, tick-tock.")




When I ordered the "thick-style" french toast listed on the menu, the waitress said, "They put some powdered sugar on the french toast, if that's okay," giving me the impression that other customers had complained about this wild culinary innovation (although looking around me, I couldn't imagine that this could be so). I told her that of course it was okay. Sure enough, when the toast came out it was dusted with powdered sugar, and it even came with real maple syrup, but the fun stopped there. The bread was cold and chewy, flavorless apart from the syrup and sugar, and much the same could be said of the side of bacon I got with it.



"Bleck," I said, and got up to pay my bill.

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Kathy's Diner


I really want to like Kathy's. According to the info on the back of the menu, a diner has been on this spot since 1923, although I'd guess the current building dates to the 1930s. It's been known by many different names - the Amos Diner, Mac's Diner, Jim's Diner, the Miss Northampton Diner, the White Castle Diner, the Red Lion Diner - and the current owner, Kathy, has been working there since she was a teenager. Kathy can still be seen behind the counter most days, presiding over the sizzling grill with the assistance of a larger, younger fellow whom I can only assume is her son or grandson. They're both friendly, know their regulars, love the Red Sox, and usually run the place all by themselves, with no additional waiting or cooking staff. It's also cheap - really cheap, like $3-for-french-toast-cheap.

Unfortunately, that's about $3 too many.

Part of the problem is that, while charming from the outside, Kathy's is kind of disgusting on the inside. The counter and tables are frequently crummy and greasy, several windows are broken and taped over with plastic, and the whole space behind the counter really needs a good dusting. But most of the problem has to do with the food, which is - not to put too fine a point on it - gross. Really gross. Almost inedibly gross. Almost vomiting-on-my-shoes gross.

Really, really gross.

The french toast I got, which was served alongside a plastic bottle of Vermont Maid corn syrup (no effort being made to hide its humble origins), appeared to have been made from a standard loaf of white Wonder Bread. It was thin as a communion wafer, but it still managed to do something that I've never experienced before, nor would have thought possible. The outside of the bread was crispy, like toast should be, but once I bit into it the two sides slid apart to reveal a slimy, eggy interior that had the consistency of custard. It was a bit like eating cow tongue, which is similarly rough on the outside and slimy on the inside, but at least with cow tongue you know why it's gross. And remember: thin as a communion wafer. This was, and remains, a complete mystery to me, defying all the laws of chemistry and physics of which I'm aware (which, I'll admit, don't add up to very many).

But this was nothing compared to what happened when I bit into the last slice. The other slices may have been wretched, but at least they were still recognizable as french toast. This last slice, though, had clearly gotten too much egg batter on it - I don't even want to think about how this worked - and so was almost more egg than bread, which made it a bit like eating a fried egg that had attached itself, parasite-like, onto a soggy piece of Wonder Bread. This might have been okay, or at least slightly less gag-inducing, if I'd been expecting a meal of eggs-on-toast, but I wasn't, and, what's more, it didn't taste like eggs-on-toast so much as it tasted like what might happen if someone next to you was eating eggs-on-toast and then burped in your direction. And you simultaneously had your mouth full of slimey mush.

When I started this quest, I had no idea that I was endangering my life. Now I know better, and will proceed with all due caution in the future.

Also in the future: much as I'll continue to wish her well, I do believe I will not be returning to Kathy's Diner.