Thursday, August 25, 2005

D is for Diner


An important American institution which originally, in the middle of the 19th century, was a railway dining car. However, by extension it came to mean a cheap roadside restaurant which could be either a disused railway dining car, or something built to resemble this, or something else giving the impression of mobility. Although diners, almost by definition, offer modestly priced food of an unsophisticated nature, they offer scope for connoisseurship and even minor cults, and various publications had been devoted to them in the latter part of the 20th century.
I had no idea that diners originated with railroad dining cars or that conveying mobility was essential. Though I'm mourning something I never got to experience, I wish we still had real diners.

No comments:

Rum-ish Goodness: Captain's Blood and Jade

First posted in 2010. It's pretty obvious that I haven't been cooking much lately. And what I've been cookin' ain't been...