Improbably good. The first-glance details tell one story. From the hours posted on the door--6 a.m. til 2 p.m., five days a week--to the L-shaped cafeteria-style sandwich counter and steam table, to the styro-and-plastic plates and utensils, the whole place screams non-pretension. Strictly breakfast and lunch for the breakfast-and-lunch crowd, right?
Only the food tells a decidely different story. Sure, they'll sell you a five-buck roast beef sandwich--but it'll be jammed full of kosher Angus beef, roasted on-premises. Ditto the roast turkey. You can get a plain tuna salad, but you'll be happier with the spicy tuna and ginger noodles. The guys at the steam table will be happy to load you down with some divine chicken pot pie, but if you're feeling hoity-toity, they'll be just as happy to serve you up a moist, delicate chicken marsala, or a lovely sweet-potato-and-leek bisque. And two sides. Don't forget your two sides.. The crisp, buttery sauteed green beans are too good for their own good.
And once you slide your tray around to the register, and load it down with bread they baked that morning, and a lovely beverage, Don's still only going to charge you maybe six bucks.
How does he do it? More importantly, why does he do it? Why does Don, a Culinary Institute-trained chef, run a breakfast-and-lunch joint in a strip mall smack-dab in the middle of RTP? I've never been in the kitchen of a hotel (which is where, after all, your average Culinary Institute graduate's going to spend 10 or 15 years after graduation), but I'll bet it's not nearly as much fun as Park Diner.
I've never asked Don why he decided, a couple of years ago, to plop down in the middle of the Park and start fixing breakfast and lunch for overpaid, weird hightech workers. I've always just figured it had something to do with the sheer fun of being able to yell at you from behind the register, ask about work, ask about your missing dining companions, ask you how the food is. Probably beats hell out of whipping up omelets for invisible hotel guests in some Marriot somewhere.
Though I bet he'd make a killer omelet. I'm way too sleepy on weekday mornings to ever get in there to find out, so if you ever get one, write me and let me know.
This part (the end part) seems like an appropriate place to remind you that we only write about stuff we think is swell, here. Nobody pays us a dime. Though Don gave me a cup of coffee on the house the other day. What a nice guy.
--Ross Grady
Okay, take me back to the Luncheon
Dining in RTP page.
Or, take me all the way back to the Eating
Homepage.
