Midwesterners' Guide -- Jersey Diners

Jersey Diners

In the Upper Midwest, we have cafes -- the down-home kinds of places where you can get roast beef sandwiches with a dollop of mashed potatoes and gravy on top, and coffee and homemade pie for dessert. In smaller towns, cafes serve the same function of those storied general stores of yore -- meeting places where the local gossip is shared and fish stories are swapped, over coffee. Jersey, to the best of my knowledge, has no cafes in the Midwestern tradition. (Any place that calls itself a cafe here is more likely to serve pommes frites than french fries, if you catch my drift.)

What Jersey does have is diners.

You've seen pictures of the chrome and enameled-metal Art Deco beauties that are, classically, diners. Those are diners, sure, and happily a lot of them are being restored. (My favorites restored diners are the Park West Diner on Route 46 in West Paterson, and the Tick Tock Diner on Route 3 in Clifton.) But diners also come with brick façades, castle-y looking stone fronts -- you can even find a diner inside a Holiday Inn, occasionally. The menus at diners vary, but the conventional wisdom is that you can expect to find ridiculously varied choices that go on for many pages. Many diners offer standard American fare -- cafe items like patty melts and cole slaw -- along with Italian dishes and Greek foods. (Many of the diners, I'm told, are owned by Greek families.) Some diners are known for their matzoh ball soup and other Jewish specialties. Diners often are open late, or around the clock. Diners are an authentic piece of Jerseyana, and if you come to visit, you owe it to yourself to eat in one at least once.

If you want to learn more about Jersey's diners, check out these websites:

New Jersey Online's "The Diner State" -- Includes a Jersey Diner Hall of Fame
Roadside Online -- Not Jersey-centric, but fun and stylish
Dave's Diner Page -- Created by Dave Goldberg at Princeton University; I have a small contribution to this site -- you'll know it when you see it

back to Eating and Drinking in Jersey

Oh, I suppose this material is ©1997 Shewi.
Most recently updated: 15 August 1997.

	Jersey Diners
	In the Upper Midwest, we have cafes -- the down-home kinds of places where you can get roast beef sandwiches with a dollop of mashed potatoes and gravy on top, and coffee and homemade pie for dessert. In smaller towns, cafes serve the same function of those storied general stores of yore -- meeting places where the local gossip is shared and fish stories are swapped, over coffee. Jersey, to the best of my knowledge, has no cafes in the Midwestern tradition. (Any place that calls itself a cafe here is more likely to serve pommes frites than french fries, if you catch my drift.) What Jersey does have is diners. You've seen pictures of the chrome and enameled-metal Art Deco beauties that are, classically, diners. Those are diners, sure, and happily a lot of them are being restored. (My favorites restored diners are the Park West Diner on Route 46 in West Paterson, and the Tick Tock Diner on Route 3 in Clifton.) But diners also come with brick façades, castle-y looking stone fronts -- you can even find a diner inside a Holiday Inn, occasionally. The menus at diners vary, but the conventional wisdom is that you can expect to find ridiculously varied choices that go on for many pages. Many diners offer standard American fare -- cafe items like patty melts and cole slaw -- along with Italian dishes and Greek foods. (Many of the diners, I'm told, are owned by Greek families.) Some diners are known for their matzoh ball soup and other Jewish specialties. Diners often are open late, or around the clock. Diners are an authentic piece of Jerseyana, and if you come to visit, you owe it to yourself to eat in one at least once. If you want to learn more about Jersey's diners, check out these websites: New Jersey Online's "The Diner State" -- Includes a Jersey Diner Hall of Fame Roadside Online -- Not Jersey-centric, but fun and stylish Dave's Diner Page -- Created by Dave Goldberg at Princeton University; I have a small contribution to this site -- you'll know it when you see it
	back to Eating and Drinking in Jersey
	Oh, I suppose this material is ©1997 Shewi. Most recently updated: 15 August 1997.