Blondie’s Trolley Diner
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And who made her way back behind the counter as I walked in? Oh, but only exactly who you’d hope would be working at a place with Blondie’s in the name. “Anywhere you’d like, hun,” the woman with the blonde slinky-mid-walk bun gently offered. I looked around—four more seats at the bar, one four-person table left. Even though it was just me, I went for the table. When I sat down, I was greeted with mini trolley cars braked along the window sill—specifically the French Montrouge streetcar and San Francisco’s Powell & Mason St cable car—and one of my all-time childhood favorites: a Tic Tac Toe board, with little blue and red pegs leaning in all sorts of ways out from their respective notches. The woman behind the griddle was a one-woman show. She took the order of the couple behind me and then was off, firing up the griddle, pulling the ice, answering the phones, and holding the requisite diner conversation. When the dry-erase board outside says they make everything to order, they aren’t kidding. In her stoplight red hoodie, her back and forth went almost laser pointer. The place was full of eccentricities, ones that are pretty standard (dollars taped to one wall and peeling red vinyl cushions), ones that can be fit in thematically somehow (the Christmas train decal stuck to the roof and the impressive oil lamp collection, hung all over but mostly situated along the top of the griddle exhaust hood), and ones out of complete left field (I dare you to find Olaf, and I certainly hope that you take a moment to appreciate the pride that is the Gloria Rose General Store puzzle, fused and transformed into wall decor). However, the true lob out of the metaphorical baseball park was THE COUNTER. If I hadn’t gone up to pay, I would never have noticed that it was foggy but transparent. Encased beneath each plate and literally right under everyone’s noses is a full model town and railway. COLOR ME HALTED. The loudest conversation was at the bar, and it was consumed by the usual dose of adult immaturity and hypocrisy (not even worth exhuming the common gripes here). Needless to say, this generic chatter made the restaurant’s elemental richness even more crucial, even more precious; atop miniature cars and facilities (Crescent Gasoline and Fueling Distributors) they all feign wisdom. And, it’s precisely this layer of childhood and play that compels diners like me to just chuckle and not pull an Ozzy Osborne, staying on the rails of this crazy train.
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Drink: Coffee
It’s diner coffee. Truly. When I type out this statement, I mean it with the utmost affection. It barely skates by as not tasting like instant, and it almost tastes like caffeine. What I loved about this routine cup was two-fold: the vessel it came in was a ceramic with the slightest conification and pin-stripe ridges, and they actually took pride in where their coffee comes from (announcing on the sign out front that it was from BK. The pot, which was pouring more coffee into my cup moments after she brought the initial cup full, also read BK. Love me a proud purveyor). Unfortunately, while off to a strong start, she topped everyone else except me off the second time around (when I really needed it) and never returned. What I realized was that coming around with the pot wasn’t a service, but rather a way to show the customers that still didn’t have food that she didn’t forget about them. Moral of the story: you will need to start Googling coffee while you consume your last few bites.
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Food: Cheese Omelette
You get a choice of cheeses: “American, Cheddar, Pepper jack, or Swiss.” I was in the mood for a kick, so I went pepper jack then proceeded with the usual, potatoes and toast. She didn’t ask me for what kind of toast. I realized it before things were made, but she was so busy that I couldn’t catch her. I mean, I could have interrupted, but it felt so superficial. And, maybe she’d give me a different kind of bread? No, this hope was definitely in vain. So, this breakfast earns the medal for being my first with white bread ever. My omelette came out before everyone else’s—despite two couples ordering before me—and yet all of my food was slightly cold. I have no idea how this happened. I watched her stand in front of the griddle. It was three feet away from me...then, the ultimate sin: the potatoes were tragic. Microcubes of “potato” tasted dry and so sapped of everything that made them potatoes that they tasted akin to cubed bread. These little cubes glistened (from what?) in certain spots, and they were somehow dusted red (my previous question still stands). They could have had the addition of a sneeze-worth of paprika, but you couldn’t taste it. One unexpected positive? While virtually unnoticeable (unless you’re me) she did add in some flakes of sautéed onions. But, these onions added nothing to flavor, amounting to, at best, garnish. When I asked for hot sauce—to salvage what I could—she asked me whether I wanted the homemade or bottle stuff. I opted for the bottle (which was the teensiest bottle of Tabasco pepper sauce that I’ve ever come across) because I thought, with the way she asked, that the homemade stuff cost extra. It doesn’t, so I missed out. Drenched in Tabasco, I wondered three-quarters through the omelette whether the cheese was pepper jack. I eventually got to the colored specks that visually indicates the cheese‘s spicing. I had to ask for some jam, and she didn’t clarify what type, bringing me strawberry in a plastic dish (probably scooped out of a oversized Smucker’s jar). That being said, her intuition was right on the kind of jam (I just wish that I could have said the same about the toast). To conclude, this diner fare is probably the worst I’ve ever had. The only positive takeaways that I have are that the eggs didn’t have that sink taste that I abhor and that it was a lot of food. Besides these minor bright sides, I have nothing more to offer here. Maybe try ordering the Peaches N Cream Stuffed French Toast? That was my second choice, but maybe it should have been my first…
Price: Cheese Omelette=$5.95; Coffee=$1.75
(but my total came out to $9.67 before tax? I’m so confused. It might have something to do with the price fluctuation notices taped up on the wall, but I wish I would have been told or given an order slip then...)