What epitomizes a quaint sit-down meal for a bunch of college kids better than a stop at a local diner? One of the perks of going to school in the Capital Region is the abundance of local diners that offer homestyle grub at almost all hours of the day. Whether you’re in the mood for a cheap, hearty breakfast or a no-frills dinner (and don’t want the cold, mass-produced corporate decor of Denny’s crammed down your gullet), an independent diner is the way to go.
This week my travels brought me to Latham, home of the Latham Circle Diner. It’s right on the Latham traffic circle, and is convenient if you’re out shopping that way. Like many similar nostalgia joints, the Latham Circle Diner is decked out with more ’70s style chrome than was probably even allowed thirty-something years ago. One thing going for the diner is its sheer cleanliness: the chrome is brightly polished, the serving areas are tidy, and the tables are efficiently bussed and quite clean. Although work has gone in to making it seem like the average corner diner that has stood on the same corner since the baby boomers, either the ravages of time or an insipid interior decorator give the diner a somewhat tired look.
Diner fare is diner fare, and the Latham Circle Diner has most of it (noticeably lacking, according to my Long Island friend, was the expected wide selection of Greek salads and entrees). When I asked for the “classic” plate of local diner chow, the helpful waitress suggested chicken and biscuits, which came with a choice of soup or salad. My Partner-In-Crime ordered a manly burger and rattled off an engineer’s list of requirements for making it “his way,” demonstrating the personalization you can get at a diner just by asking for it. Other food choices include all kinds of breakfast egg dishes, chicken slabs, large salads, ice cream desserts, and other assorted slices of suburban Americana.
Now that the introduction is out of the way and the scene is set, it’s time to get down to what the meal was like, or, as in the PIC’s case, the almost lack thereof. While the small pile of fries that accompanied the burger was cooked to perfection, the beef patty seemed quite small (evoking images of simply being taken from a cardboard box and thrown on a grill). Through a strange quirk of fate, the PIC got to play a game of “find-the-lettuce” There was only a small leaf of lettuce on top of the slightly orange tomato and single slice of cheese. The rest was hidden (and shredded, it seemed) under the burger itself!
At first glance my classic chicken and biscuits looked like the inside of a chicken pot pie. Large chunks of chicken, mingled with diced celery, carrots and peas, all combined together in creamy gravy, with the biscuits lurking underneath. Although the presentation was nice, the taste left something to be desired. While the vegetables were (seemingly) fresh, the chicken was dry and limp, and the biscuits seemed to be more like croutons than actual biscuits.
Granted, one shouldn’t anticipate the world from a diner, but there are still some standards to be met. And while the food, if you get down to it, was only a bit below average, the prices can give you flashbacks to your RPI tuition bill (relatively speaking, of course…). I still believe that diners in general are a great place to grab some decent eats on the cheap, but the next time you’re hopping through Latham Farms or shopping at the Latham Circle Mall, you might want to just continue past the Latham Circle Diner.
Dinner for two with tax and tip came to be $18.
