BUD

DAN

Main Dish

Firehouse Panini

Dan and I have made a lot of interesting discoveries about diners—and, dare I say, about ourselves—on this blog adventure, not the least of which is that diners are really fast and loose about the term “panini.” There is no consistency from one place to the next. It’s like if you ordered a Big Mac and one McDonald’s gave you a two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions on a sesame seed bun, while the McDonald’s down the road gave you two turkey patties, ranch dressing, arugula, goat cheese, unpickled cucumbers, and red onions on a Kaiser roll. Of course that would be unacceptable. What I’m saying is, diners need to coordinate their terminology. Thank you.

Case in point, my “panini” here was, in fact, just a Kaiser roll that had evidently been smushed in a panini press. I was expecting some sort of flatbread, which most diners use for their paninis. (Trust me, I’ve ordered enough of the things.)

This is all just quibbling though, because I loved this sandwich. It was straightforward, just a chicken cutlet with jack cheese, pepperoncini, and chipotle mayo, but it was just delicious. “Firehouse” is hyperbolic because it was only mildly spicy (enough to knock Dan out of commission for a few days, but she’s a lightweight), but I didn’t want Thai-restaurant hot anyway. The pepperoncini were the highlight, in my opinion. They serve a similar function to pickles, adding a little crunch and a little juice.

This sandwich loses half a burger only because I think the bread was improvidently chosen. I love a Kaiser roll in any other context, but here a flatbread would’ve been appropriate. The roll is too “fluffy,” if you see what I mean—when it’s pressed, the crust gets a nice crunch, but the interior is still soft, so when you bite into the sandwich you hit the crunch, then your jaws compress upon empty space, then you finally hit the sandwich filler in the middle. This description made a lot more sense before I tried to put it in writing. Just try to visualize, I guess.

Main Dish

Grilled Chicken with Mozzarella Panini

I couldn’t agree with Buddy more regarding the bread. When I first saw my meal coming out I was like, what the heck is this insult, and then I saw the grill marks and realized oh so this is their panini. I’ve gotten enough paninis over our journey through the diner world to know that a flat bread is the most common, and definitely the most well-suited for this type of sandwich. As you all well know by now, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of bread, so the fluffiness of this Kaiser was too much for me and I ended up tearing most of it off.

Aside from my bread complaint, this was actually quite a delicious panini. The chicken was cooked perfectly and was very moist. The peppers were lovely, especially with some balsamic to add some extra flavor. The real show-stealer, though, was the mozzarella for sure. I’m so used to those pathetic slabs of mozzarella that look like those Kraft cheese squares…it’s kinda visually unappetizing. On this sandwich, though, the mozzarella was fresh and thickly cut. As an Italian, it was much appreciated, but very difficult to have to eat the sandwich like this the whole time.

Fries

Love me a thin-cut fry. I don’t know if I was just especially hungry, but I ate my entire plate then half of Dan’s then half from one of our companions (hi mom). They lose a burger because they needed salt.

Fries

I’m just going to say it, guys: I don’t like shoestring fries. The only place shoestrings are appropriate is when they’re tied nicely to my Chuck Taylors. Shoestring fries, because they’re so thin, get too crispy at too high of a proportion. It’s hard to find a nice soggy friend amongst their crispy brethren.

That being said, these fries weren’t terrible for what they are. They just aren’t my personal favorite. Despite them being petite potates, I did manage to nab a few soggy ones before shoveling the rest onto Bud’s dish.

Dessert

Brownie Sundae

By now, Dan and I have rehearsed our dessert order nearly to perfection. There’s a series of contingencies: examine the cheesecake selection, consider whether there are any appealing cakes (usually some sort of apple crisp), and, if all else fails, order a brownie a la mode, futilely request hot fudge, and demand the waiter to absolutely ruin us with whipped cream. That’s where we ended up at Parkway Diner. I took a look at the desserts and saw a rather fudgey-looking brownie, and Dan was immediately on board.

Well, it didn’t disappoint. There was quite enough ice cream and whipped cream to match the generously sized brownie, which is most important to me. The brownie was also appropriately warm—can you believe that there are some places that promise to heat the brownie and then just deliver a room-temperature lump of chocolate cake? It’s like we’re living in a Third-World country over here. My complaint, if any, is that the brownie had a nice fudgy icing but its substance was too cakey. But it was swallowed up by the melting ice cream, so no harm done.

Dessert

Brownie Sundae

I, in no uncertain terms, told our waitress that if I saw even a crumb of brownie not covered in whipped cream, I’d throw a tantrum the likes of which she’ll never forget. Well I don’t know if it was her generosity or my threat, but this sundae was more whipped cream than anything else—just how I like it.

Overall, this brownie sundae wasn’t the best I’ve had. The brownie wasn’t as fudgy as I’d like. The ice cream was not included and we were charged extra for it (crazy, right!?). Also, I find walnuts to be an unwelcome addition in this dish. I like walnuts just fine, just not in my brownie sundaes.

It wasn’t a bad sundae by any means, but considering the price, I’d expect more.

Service

The service was bipolar. On the one hand, the waitress was sweet and patient and got all the orders right. On the other, she tended to disappear longer than we liked, especially near the end, when we wanted to order dessert and then when we wanted the check. Granted, the place was only thinly staffed and I’m sure she had other tables to care for. But it was also nearly empty, so even if she was handling it all herself, she could’ve been more present.

Service

Here’s my problem with the service, that I feel unfortunately outweighs how much I liked our waitress as a person: her lack of communication with us regarding prices. Like I said, our waitress was a lovely young lady. I liked her. Here’s my problem—it turns out soft drink refills are not free, but she went ahead asking our table if anyone wanted refills without once establishing that they were not free. I feel like that’s an important thing to disclose. In the same breath, she did the same for the brownie sundae. The brownie was one price, and the ice cream was another, the two combining to what I feel was a bit exorbitant to charge for a dessert. At the end of the night, we were shocked to see the itemized receipt. It woulda been nice for her to give us a heads-up at least.

Value

The check always come as a bit of a surprise because we (or at least I) don’t pay much mind to prices when we’re ordering. Money is no object when it comes to Burger Deluxe—not only because we’re very wealthy but also because we usually don’t pay (thanks mom and dad).

I would’ve guessed that Parkway would have middle-of-the-road prices because it’s a middle-of-the-road place, at least visually—it’s not a fancy modern diner like, say, Tenafly. So imagine my distress when I discovered some of the charges: $11.95 for my panini (acceptable but not great), $8.50 for the dessert, and no free refills. The sundae was actually $4.25 for the brownie and $4.25 for the ice cream, which is ridiculous. Most egregiously, the drinks ended up costing like $10 because we were never told refills were charged and the menu, as far as I could tell, never mentions it. When the waitress came to ask about refills, she never mentioned they would be charged. That’s poor form. Forget that they should be free in the first place, at least the waiter should notify you before bringing a refill. I’m salty about this (unlike the fries).

Value

“Middle-of-the-road prices because it’s a middle-of-the-road place.” Bud, your writing never ceases to amaze me.

Another thing that doesn’t cease to amaze me? The audacity of some of these diners charging so much money for one to two scoops of ice cream. Do you realize that you can buy an entire carton of Friendly’s-brand ice cream for less than $3.00 at Shop Rite? This diner charged more for two scoops of (let’s be honest—mediocre) ice cream than what you can buy an entire carton for. It reminds me of when you go to a concert and a Poland Spring is like $6.00. It’s insulting and not very hometown-diner-like at all.

My panini was $11.25, which I suppose isn’t too bad, considering the fresh ingredients I talked about earlier. The fact that every soft drink refill was charged separately as well is absolutely egregious.

After a look at the receipt, I gotta say this diner doesn’t give you your bang for your buck. You shell out all your bucks and you’re like hey, where’s my bang? Not here, guys. Not here.

Ambience

The interior of Parkway Diner is standard diner fare. I found it clean, well-lit, and comfortable. It was virtually empty, which I think makes the place feel a bit less cozy (I appreciate some background chatter to drown out my and Dan’s bad jokes), but that’s not a criticism of the diner itself. The exterior is a different story, and I found it quite ugly. It’s just a big building in the middle of a big parking lot on the edge of a big highway…it felt very barren. Could’ve used a topiary or something.

Ambience

I literally had to drive around this diner completely before I saw the world’s smallest “Parkway Diner” sign in neon. If I didn’t have my GPS on, I would’ve passed this place up completely for, I don’t know, a highway tile store, or one of the hundreds of “spy shops” within a five-mile radius. The outside was very nondescript, which is unforgivable because that’s one of the best and most memorable features of any diner.

The inside was empty and incredibly boring. If I wanted boring emptiness, I’d sit down and have a meal inside my head. There was only one waitress in the whole restaurant, which is super weird for a Friday evening dinner rush. I mean, the place was clean I guess, but not one thing stood out in comparison to the many other diners we’ve visited. I honestly can’t even remember one stand-out feature of this restaurant despite writing my review only two days after visiting it.

OVERALL

Usually, when my ratings vary this much from category to category, it’s an indictment of the food despite solid service and prices, and I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt that maybe I just made a bad choice from the menu. This time, I truly enjoyed the food but found the service inadequate and the prices downright bad. Sure, the food counts for a lot, but plenty of diners have good food and more reasonable prices.

OVERALL

Here’s what I think: this diner is smack in the middle of the highway. I’m sure Parkway diner has very few regulars, and instead a lot of people who find themselves hungry and in the area. People like me and Bud can say, well that was a bit of a ripoff, let’s never go there again. And there’s probably hundreds of Dan and Buds a month having their first and last diner experience at Parkway. It’s more forgivable for an off-the-highway, middle-of-nowhere place to be so greatly mediocre at so high a price than it would be for your local hometown diner that serves families of loyal, regular customers. That being said, I can’t in good conscience patronize a place more than once in my lifetime that charges over $4.00 for two scoops of ice cream.

If you’re hungry and in the area, there’s a Friendly’s within walking distance. Go there instead.