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There’s something
I just love about diner food. It’s reliable, predictable and safe. Like
an old friend that you might not want to see every day, but are pleased as
punch to see them when you do. Maybe it’s the comfort factor of eating
“Mom’s food”. Knowing that you’re going to eat plain, old-fashioned good
grub instead of the trendy crap like “Venezuelan Beaver Cheese Soup,
served atop lemongrass-encrusted brochette and poached South African
quail eggs” that you started the evening off with at Café Snaab. I’ll
take greasy spoon food over that any day!!
But what could be
even better than diner food? How about diner food served in a David Lynch
movie?
Because that’s
what eating at the Dunk N Dine on Cheshire Bridge is like. The building
itself is ancient, perhaps even older than the wait staff - who all
probably qualified for Social Security benefits back in the 70’s. But
it’s the crowd and the ambiance that makes this place what it is,
especially late at night. I was once in there around 4am and got
sandwiched between a table of loud dykes on a bowling team and a table
with 3 average white businessmen... and a huge black transvestite. It’s hard
to believe that someone would be attracted to a 6’ 6” black “woman” that
could be mistaken for an NFL linebacker, but there you go. And speaking
of transvestites, the restaurant’s smoking section fills up after hours
with tons of catty drag queens. Sit and enjoy their witty repartee:
“Well, bitch
if you knew how to put on makeup worth a damn you wouldn’t be here with us
now, would you?? You’d be living in some big house OTP and driving some
rich man’s Mercedes wouldn’t you?”
Would you expect
any less from a diner whose jukebox is filled with Patsy Cline, Judy
Garland, Neil Diamond and Madonna CDs?
* * *
I stopped in at
the Dunk ‘N Dine recently, having completed some business in the area. It
poured down rain only a couple of hours earlier and was still coming
down pretty hard. I wanted the rush-hour traffic to die down before getting into a
rainy haul up GA 400.
Although the
parking lot was full, there were only three other customers inside the
place: a table of three men. One little Asian dude who reminded me
of the guy from That 80s Show, a white guy with 4 or 5 facial piercings,
a dozen tattoos and a laptop and an old redneck-looking guy that was
probably named Jasper and was probably born in Dooly
County, Georgia. It seems that the white and Asian guys where trying
to start up a business of some kind and strangely enough, the redneck guy
was doing most of the talking:
“Awwww, hail! Sonny, if your S-corp ain’t filed a Form 1052 yet, ain’t no VC gonna lend
you no money! ‘Sides, boy, look at yer A/L ratio – how th’ hail do you
‘spect to git vertical marketshayre with product placement like thayt? Sheeit, you can write the best damn code this side of Sillycone Valley and
it just ain’t gonna matter for sheeit, boy!”
See? It’s surreal
already and I’ve only just sat down. I ordered my old favorite –
Chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy and the vegetable of
the day, which just happened to be fried okra (score!) – and a Coke. "Flo" wrote down my order and waddled her size 62 ass back to the kitchen. Awwww, I shouldn’t knock them. The poor old ladies that work at Dunk ‘N
Dine are just white female versions of Horace from
Moe’s and Joe’s in
Virginia Highlands. So
what if they’re slow and forgetful. They’re just tired old Southern
ladies trying to make a dollar – cut them some slack, will ya??
The redneck guy
kept chain smoking and downing coffee while the other two guys hunkered
over the Toshiba laptop working on an Excel spreadsheet. I looked past them
into the jukebox and spied a copy of Madonna’s Immaculate Collection
next to Disco’s Biggest Hits. I looked through the window to some
poor bastard trying to turn left into Starship during rush hour in pouring
down rain.
Eventually, the
food arrived. It was as good as ever. That’s the thing – I bet the food
at Dunk N’ Dine hasn’t changed in years (“…and neither has the grease!”
Buddah-Bing-Buddah-BOOM!!! I’m a comedian!). The steak was great,
but I’ve always been perplexed by one thing: why does DnD go to the
trouble of serving real mashed potatoes, only to cover them (and
the steak) with commercial-grade gravy?? I mean, the gravy’s good and
tasty, but I bet they have 55-gallon drums of the stuff in the back. The
fried okra was straight off the distributor’s truck too, but was cooked
just right – not too brown and certainly no burned ones.
Dinner comes with
Dunk ‘N Dine’s standard “strip of rolls”. You know, those rolls that come
in the square aluminum pan that your mom always bought for church picnics? And you LIKED
them, admit it. See – gravy from a jar and those square rolls… it IS just
like being at Mom's! The funny thing is, at Dunk ‘N Dine the amount of
rolls they give you is directly related to how busy they are. Go when
it’s busy and you’ll get three. Go when I went and you get five.
Ah. Dunk ‘N Dine…
my consistently mediocre friend. You’re a joy. You’re always there, any
time day or night. And you entertain me while I’m there. My very best
memory of you is the time Sheila and I went and there was a guy passed out
in a booth face-down on the table. There was a Coke and plate of food in
front of him, but he didn’t move - not once - the entire hour Sheila and I were
there. He didn’t twitch, shift his weight… anything. By the time we
left, he was in the same position (to the millimeter) as when we came in,
his food past “getting cold” and the ice cubes in his untouched Coke had
melted, giving it that yucky “water layer” on top. Or maybe there
was the time I went with my pal Jefferson after Churchill Arms closed at
3 in the morning. Next to us was the table of businessmen and one
huge black drag queen I mentioned in the first paragraph. Hell,
you can't make stuff like this up! |
