Something for you foodies, if you can stand my pedestrian tastes.

One reason I don’t blog more about food is that I don’t do fancy food. With my extensive list of allergies, the plainer the better. Some of y’all wonder why I keep going to the Cap City Club for breakfast when I’m unemployed. Well, first of all, I may not be doing it much longer if a job doesn’t materialize. Then, aside from the fact that it’s a great networking place — I’m going on an interview tomorrow for a job that was suggested to me by two people I see there almost every morning — there’s the fact that it is relatively SAFE for me with my food weirdness. It’s buffet, so I can SEE the food before putting it on my plate (thus ruling out things that are obviously not good for me), and since I’m a regular, the staff doesn’t mind setting aside a little corned beef hash without eggs on it for me, and such things as that.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, so I try to keep it simple. So when I’m traveling, I tend to eat in diners. Nice, plain food, without anybody in the kitchen trying to get all create with fancy sauces and such.

My all-time favorite diner anywhere in the world is the Middlesex Diner just outside Carlisle, PA. You can order breakfast pretty much any time, and I always get the home fries with those wonderful fat link sausages you can’t get down South. I’m also partial to the breakfast buffet at Shoney’s, mainly because of those diced potatoes they serve, which go great with bacon.

You could say that I have Barney Fife tastes — I could eat at diners all day.

Today, I’m reminded in particular of the Silver Diner in Rockville, Md. — mainly because I got an e-mail from the Silver Diner chain today. You see, I was sufficiently well impressed by the service my Dad and I got there that I happily filled out a customer-service survey at the request of the manager. The pretty much all-Hispanic staff was very attentive without being irritatingly clingy about it. None of that cute “I’m Juan and I’ll be your waiter this morning” stuff. Just good food served “hot and hot” (as Jack Aubrey would say) and promptly, and your coffee refilled as soon as you want it.

The thing that impressed me most is that here we were outside of the old Confederacy, and I ordered grits, and they were perfect. Creamy without being adulterated with dairy products (which are deadly to me), which means they were cooked at exactly the right temperature for exactly the right length of time. Not runny, not solid, but just right. You’d be surprised how few Southern eateries get that right, consistently.

They also had some very nice fat sausages. Not quite as good as what you get in rural central PA, but pretty good — better than anything I’ve been served back home.

Anyway, that’s my food report for today. Enjoy the pictures from the Silver Diner, showing the art deco, the 40s-50s motif, the faux railroad diner car design, the little juke boxes they have in each booth, etc. You see, I do compulsively take food pictures (or at least food-related pictures), even when I’m not planning on posting them…