It often happens that I am at Cross-gates Mall and hungry. It’s a situation I try to avoid, as the food court consists mainly of a bunch of overpriced, low-quality options, but it still happens on a regular basis. Recently, in an attempt to find a better choice in these situations, my wife and I went with another friend to the Metro 20 Diner, located right next to one of the mall entrances on Western Ave.
The Metro 20 is, by appearance, a standard diner—lots of chrome and neon. However, the interior lighting and the partic-ular shade of green on the vinyl seats combine to make it just a bit uglier than most.
The menu is also fairly standard, containing a slightly larger than average selection of breakfast, lunch, and dinner items. (The alcohol list, on the other hand, is impressively long). Prices are also average—you can easily get out for $7-8 per person and just as easily spend $20 each if you like. Most meals are on the lower end of that, though.
We opted for typical diner fare: hash and eggs, a tuna melt, and a reuben. Drinks arrived quickly and were a harbringer of what was to come—while it is difficult to screw up a soda, the coffee was mediocre and the iced tea was very weak.
Dinner was also disappointing. The meat on the reuben was extremely stringy, the corned beef hash was overcooked to the point of being slightly crunchy, and the tuna melt was the blandest thing either my wife or I had ever tasted. Potatoes, at least, it seems they can work with: both the french fries and home fries were passable.
Being unsatisfied with dinner, we probably should not have tried dessert, but our folly was not punished too harshly. The brownie was extreme-ly dry and crumbly, even topped with ice cream, but the bread pudding was actually tasty.
Overall, I think next time I’m hungry at Cross-gates, I’ll probably stick to the food court. Or, better yet, just wait until I get home.
The Metro 20 Diner is located on Western Avenue in Guilderland. To get there, take Route 7 west out of Troy to Interstate 87 (the Northway). Take I-87 south past Exit 1—it stops being I-87 at this point, but keep going. After the Crossgates ramp, the highway comes to an end at a traffic light—this is Western Avenue. Turn right, and the diner is about half a mile ahead on the right.
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