If the words “diner”and “breakfast” fill you with joy, you’ve come to the right place. There’s something so familiar and satisfying about going to a good diner on a Saturday or Sunday morning. Or any morning, really — but especially on the weekend.
All that coffee and bacon, the leatherette booths and the counter where you can sit and watch the short-order action and overhear tidbits of other conversations.
Diner breakfast is comfort food and then some. Exhibit A is the photo above. Bonus points for being served in a skillet, keeping everything hot and looking so good.
This was a breakfast I thoroughly enjoyed at the 100-year-old classic diner, Lou Mitchell’s. I sat at the counter and had country sausages, thin-sliced fried potatoes, toasted Greek bread with homemade orange marmalade and the fluffiest omelette — it was like a cross between the best scrambled eggs and an omelette.
I asked Audrey, the wonderful manager of Lou’s for the past sixteen years about the eggs and she told me it’s 3 steps: 4 eggs go into a blender for a few seconds, then into the skillet for a bit, and then finish in the oven. I’m trying this at home.
Lou’s is family-owned and opened in 1923 as a place specializing in breakfast and lunch dishes. That vision continues to this day — the hours are 7am-2pm.
The original Lou’s was right across the street from the current spot built in 1949. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.
Jackson Boulevard, where the diner is located, was the start of the original Route 66, known as the “Mother Road”.
Route 66 was created in 1926, and when the signs went up on Jackson Boulevard, commuters found Lou Mitchell’s waiting for them. We’ve been feeding the hungry travelers with comfort food since 1923.
— Lou Mitchell’s, 2024
How did Route 66 become known as the “Mother Road”? That’s John Steinbeck’s doing.
In The Grapes of Wrath, his 1939 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Steinbeck describes escaping the Dust Bowl on the road to California this way:
66 is the mother road, the road of flight.
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939.
It’s at places like Lou’s that I really feel the ghosts tugging at my sleeve. I was seated at one of the stools in the photo above — they are original.
I looked at the empty one next to me and thought of the decades of history, all of people who sat there enjoying a meal or some conversation or maybe just quiet time alone with a cup of coffee.
Moments like this give me a sense of perspective and a feeling of continuity and connection and are as comforting as my perfect breakfast was.
If you come to Chicago, treat yourself to a morning at Lou’s while you’re here, I think you’ll love it.
Thank you so much to Audrey and Ariel and Virginia—you make Lou’s so special!
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Follow-Ups
Mustard Speaks!
is a Substack publication that’s written by a self-described “semi-sentient condiment” who loves music and interviews musicians. Everything “Mustard” posts on Notes makes me laugh, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to get a shout-out from the beloved condiment and writer after my visit to the Wienermobile.
Thank you so much, Mustard. It was a pleasure meeting you as well! 😂🌭
Egg Cream Surprise!
The nice folks at Fox’s u-bet syrup saw the egg cream photo I posted on Instagram and sent me a pair of official u-bet glasses and a big bottle of syrup. Thank you, u-bet! I feel like I won the Oscar for egg creams!
The same week I wrote my post,
wrote this fantastic piece about “sparkling milk” with great recipes, too. Egg creams are en vogue! Definitely check out Michael’s post, linked below.Thanks for reading, see you soon. Let me know in the comments if you have any favorite diners where you live!
Jolene
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I'm glad I grew up with the diners. It was a special time that I doubt can be replaced.
Lovely piece, Jolene! Thank you.
Thanks for the trip to Lou’s, Jolene—delicious food descriptions both written and visual, but your musing on the long history of rumps which those original stools have known gave me a little mental explosion of diner stools *I* have known. Oh the TIME TRAVEL!
The antithesis of diner breakfasting also sprang to mind, and this immortal sketch from the geniuses Key & Peele: https://youtu.be/yPhLlniGGVs?si=a_ksvNElUFxQq2Lh