The American diner is a beautiful thing.
On our walk across the country, my lady and I patronized so many diners that we quickly memorized the standard menu.
You’ve got your basic egg breakfasts (made to order), your omelette options (ham and cheese, Denver, Spanish/Greek), your pancake orders (short or full stack), and maybe your waffle orders for fancy spots. Every order comes with a side of hash browns and toast (white, wheat, maybe rye, or, if you’re lucky, an English muffin). Biscuits and gravy is always a possibility, especially near the South.
Lunch is even simpler: you can choose between sandwiches (grilled cheese, tuna melt, BLT) or burgers (single or double, with or without cheese). For dinner, here’s the rule of thumb: Before midnight? Order from the lunch menu. After midnight? Order breakfast.
No matter the time of day, never order soup or salad. Never order pie.
Always. Always always always order coffee. The coffee poured at American diners proves even more consistent than the food, and far truer than the water. It is always black. It is always hot. It is, like the universe itself, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, and to the ages of ages. Amen.
And it’s not just the food and coffee that never change. The people stay the same too.
All the servers, for example, are women. They are all beautiful and charming, even the 80-year-old ones. Especially the 80-year-old ones. On occasion, they’re required to don silly pink diner outfits to make us nostalgic for the 50s, but usually they’re wearing the unspoken diner uniform: ponytail, plain shirt (slightly stained by cigarettes, sweat, and time), jeans or a modest skirt, and sneakers. Usually they’re not in the greatest of moods, possibly because they’ve been taking the same diner orders for several decades. If, however, you manage to behave one bar above the world’s biggest asshole, they may warm up to you. A warm diner waitress is to be treasured, for she will keep your coffee mug full.
Behind the scenes, one or two greasy chefs slave away in the kitchen. You’ll never interact with one except for, maybe, brief eye contact. When this happens, your eyes should convey respect and admiration, for the chefs are sustaining your very life for a few more hours.
The clientele, too, remain unchanged, day to day, state to state, coast to coast. Most weekday mornings, the young and middle-aged men present are farmers, proudly decked out in dirty boots, blue jeans, and stiff collared shirts. Evenings or weekends you may see couples or even whole families enjoying the rare dining out experience. On the Sabbath, the elderly run the joint, doing the two things they’d spent an entire church service fantasizing about: decimating greasy food and gossiping.
Finally, there’s the furniture and decor, which only differ between city and country.
In the city, diners typically go for that quasi-retro look with linoleum floors, stainless steel chairs, and chunky red booths. Country diners use simpler, wooden furniture, and feel a bit homier. The walls may be littered with hundreds of knickknacks, including photos of clientele and their families in the dawn of photography, crucifixes of various design, and all those cheesy printed signs that say things like, “Happiness is not a destination, it is a way of life.” After barely escaping death by big rig on the highway several moments earlier, you tend to just read that message and nod, hoping it sinks in a little deeper than the last thousand times you read its letters printed on cheap paper and hanging in a country diner.
The primary differences between these classic American establishments turn out to be tiny idiosyncrasies you could miss if you’re not paying close attention.
There’s Chubby’s on Broadway in Kansas City, MO, where you’ll find complimentary cinnamon rolls already waiting for you at your table.
There’s Tamarisk Restaurant in Green River, UT, where you can order “The Hungry Traveler,” designed not for people who have been walking for four days from the last town, but rather for people who’ve been driving on the interstate too long.
There’s the Omelet Shoppe in Parkersburg, WV, where after enjoying a nice, greasy dinner, you can try a few rounds on the Big Buck Hunter HD Video Arcade.
And then there’s Wanda’s Roadside Cafe in De Soto, KS, where you might discover the greatest diner menu item ever conceived: “the Kitchen Sink.”
THE KITCHEN SINK
Even though the Kitchen Sink seems divinely designed for a man of my making and desires, I’m disappointed to admit that I didn’t make its acquaintance until, at 26 years old, I quit my job, flew to New York City, started walking west, crossed the Hudson River, crossed the Ohio River three times, crossed the Mississippi River, turned 27 while tracing the Missouri River, entered Kansas, illegally camped by a mosquito-infested boat ramp through a violent, nightlong thunderstorm, and then, in the morning, woke up, walked a few miles to the next town, and stepped inside a humble country establishment — Wanda’s Roadside Cafe.
“You can tell they ain’t from here,” said a gruff man to no one at all, “cause they don’t just sit down.”
The waitress was gentler and directed us to a seat.
I pored over the menu, confirming all the usual suspects: egg breakfasts, pancakes, burgers… but “the Kitchen Sink” immediately caught my eye.
“The Kitchen Sink,” which for first-timers should be read with the antecedent clause “Everything But,” is ideally an omelette but realistically a scrambled mess including every possible ingredient at the chef’s disposal: a stick of butter, five eggs, onion, green onion, green bell pepper, red bell pepper, celery, tomato, mushroom, bacon, sausage, turkey sausage, ham, turkey ham, cheddar cheese, turkey cheddar cheese, red turkey cheddar cheese sausage… you get the idea.
It’s a big fucking omelette.
For the rest of the long walk west, every time I found “The Kitchen Sink” on the menu, that was my order. Why? The easy answer is “because it’s big” and big is good when you’re walking 20 miles a day. But the real answer is a bit more revealing.
It’s because I’m a pantheist.
EVERYTHING-ISM
Strictly speaking, pantheism is defined as:
a doctrine that identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God.
In a phrase, it’s summed up as “the universe is god.”
I love this creed because it accords nicely with whatever other beliefs you happen to have. Whether you’re monotheist (one god, one universe — great), polytheist (everything emanates from oneness), or atheist (there’s just one universe, right?), there’s something attractive about a doctrine predicated on such a simple concept: everything in one, one in everything.
And I promise this has everything to do with omelettes.
It’s no coincidence that my favorite meals are always massive medleys of innumerable ingredients: Rainbow-colored paella of saffron and shrimp, spilling over a thick, shallow pan. Steamy-hot soup ten-feet deep, gurgling with oily broth and vegetables of every variety. Super burritos stuffed as fat as infants con arroz, frijoles, y habanero picante.
What kind of pizza do I want? Combination. Supreme. Whichever has the most ingredients.
Which bagel do I want? Everything bagel.
I want everything.
I want to taste everything.
I want to experience everything.
I want to hear everything. I want to hear Aretha Franklin’s hit-you-in-your-soul tunes and Tony Scott’s new age zen. I want Bob Dylan poetry and Wanda Jackson rockabilly. I want Händel’s royal fireworks, Billie Holiday’s failing breath of jazz, desert apocalypse IDM, and blue blue blues.
I want to see everything. I want to smell and savor and touch everything.
I want to pursue the sublime, scandalous world of olive oil and wrap myself up in the omnivore’s dilemma. I want to hear the harrowing tale of a 10-year-old divorcee as much as the clear-as-water prose of the dreamer’s dream dying. I want to trace the dark, dismal trail of father and son in post-apocalyptic El Paso, Texas and compare it to the ceaselessly optimistic energy of the Dust Bowl-driven family. I want to lose myself to the rambling, metaphysical meditations of the nationalistic Buddha in America, and then rise up to the socialist’s call-to-arms.
I want everything.
I want to walk coast to coast and back again and then to the southern tip of South America, up to the Bering Strait, west, west, west to the heart of Africa. I want my hair to grow long and thick, plaited as much with ecstasy as with hopelessness. I want to love life so magnificently that, when it comes to an end, I greet death with a smile.
I want to crack an egg containing the universe into a buttery pan.
And yet.
Because I cannot eat the entire universe for breakfast, I order the next best thing: the kitchen sink.
