Mr. Goody's Red Wing Diner

A couple of weekends ago I noticed Mr. Goody's while driving up N. Clinton on my way to Atlas Eats and vowed to come back and check it out. Brian was visiting from out of town for the weekend and I asked him if he was up for an adventure. Indeed he was: egg sandwiches and estate sales here we come.

At 11am the tiny square dining room was pretty full and lively but after bumping a cook off a back table the waitress seated us in the booth by the kitchen. We checked out the menus and looked around. Great menu board behind the counter, lots of sunlight streaming in to counteract the heavy diner smells, and lots of corrugated plastic signs and faded posters (Obama, Michael Jordan, and Dr. J in view from our table). I didn't see breakfast sandwiches on the menu but ordered one anyway.
"Ham, bacon, or sausage?"
"I'll have...sausage."
"Beef or pork?"
I was too hungry to think: "Which do you recommend?"
"I don't!" Brian and I laughed as she leaned in to the table. "When you've been working as a waitress as long as I have you don't recommend a goddamned thing."
Point taken. I went with the pork sausage. I asked about my bread choices and she ran down the list: "White, wheat, hard roll, English muffin, or bagel." Of course I inquired about the roll.
"Yeah, it's a hard roll...Kaiser." This was the first time anyone has mentioned a Kaiser roll in a diner for a breakfast sandwich so I embraced optimism. And I got an order of home fries. Brian duplicated my order but opted for the English muffin.

A few minutes later our melamine plates arrived, mine with my breakfast sandwich on the dreaded hard roll, not a Kaiser by any stretch. Scrambled eggs, sausage, and cheese were up to diner snuff, but man, that roll is just a bun of twisted Wonder bread. Home fries were decent, though unremarkable.

Mr. Goody's Red Wing Diner
1470 N. Clinton Ave, 14621
Sandwich cost: $3.50
Rating: An average breakfast sandwich

Chestnut Cafe

Located in the first floor of Chestnut Plaza downtown (formerly the Knights of Columbus building), going to the Chestnut is always an experience. If you enter the building off of Lawn Street (where you will probably park) you get the Jim Jarmusch treatment walking by the concierge desk where you will either get the stink eye from left to right as you pass or completely ignored depending on who is working. If you enter from Chestnut Street you get to see the Wes Anderson-esque Manhattan Square Yacht Club to the left before entering the Cafe on your right. Once inside it's a potpourri of Hartley, Lynch, and Kubrick - at once familiar and surreal. The wood panelling (from it's previous incarnation as a lawyer's office?), the rotation of heavily accented waitresses, and a view of the Cadillac Hotel across the street all add up to a sensory delight.




I sat at the counter and ordered a breakfast sandwich with bacon. I engaged the waitress in my usual bread selection conversation much to her amusement and went with a bagel to avoid the Rochester hard roll. After a few minutes of taking in the burgeoning spring out the large front windows my sandwich arrived. It looked good and I always find the twisted slice of orange a nice touch. The filling was fine: bacon was crispy, fried egg had a little bit of goo left in the yolk, and the American cheese was suitably salty and melted  - which made the bagel all the more disappointing. I anticipated a breadle but this one barely had anything to it - after a few bites it just deflated like a three day old balloon stuck with a pin. Not terrible, just disappointing, especially given how much I enjoy the rest of this joint.

Chestnut Cafe
Sandwich cost: $3.50
Rating: Snow falls and then melts

Bread rises only to fall

Diner bagel blues