The idea at first seems so ridiculously fattening it makes us shudder. The plan is to drive from one end of the Chesapeake Bay to the other, eating at carefully chosen roadside diners along the way. We will start our day with eggs and breakfast meat; lunch on hamburgers, french fries, and mac ‘n’ cheese; sup on liver and onions; and top it all off with chocolate milkshakes and slices of sweet potato pie. More than the food, we think, it will be a nice way to see the area, a good way to meet some locals—and a great way to gain five pounds in a single day.

We draw up a list of criteria first. We won’t stop at just any greasy spoon that promises “breakfast all day,” and we will ignore places that simply have “diner” in its name without delivering the proper atmosphere. We’ll also pass by the new breed of diners with ersatz vintage chrome and suspiciously clean restrooms. No, we want historical relics, diners that have achieved folklore status. You know the sort: mid-twentieth century neon-and-chrome-swathed beauties with vinyl booths, counter service, and well-traveled waitresses named Betty or Louise or Alice who are just as quick with a joke as they are with the refills of coffee.

Hungry for adventure and high-caloric meals, we set off on a sunny weekday morning from the southern end of the Bay, on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

Exmore Diner
4264 Main St.
Exmore, Va.
757-442-2313

According to the aged art-deco clock atop the Exmore Diner, it’s a hair past 9 a.m. With our appetites working in our favor, we’re ready to start the Great Diner Tour of 2001 with the most important meal of the day—breakfast.

Stepping over the well-fed cat lounging in front of the entrance door, we enter the chrome-plated railcar-cum-diner and saddle up to the counter’s red vinyl stools. Our waitress greets us with menus and freshly brewed Folger’s coffee, scant words, and predictably suspicious eyes that all non-regulars of a small, Southern town diner inevitably receive. Respectful of the quiet morning mood of those eating around us, we study our menus in silence, broken only by grunts and whispers over the tasty-sounding choices.

We make predictable selections: an egg sandwich with a side of potatoes and onions, creamed chipped beef with the obligatory toast, an English muffin. Our waitress shifts her weight to one foot while CL photographer Ryan Hulvat makes his decision. “I’d like the trout sandwich and an iced-tea,” he matter of factly requests.

We all stare at him in horror, including our veteran waitress. “You sure? Never heard anyone order that for breakfast,” our waitress admits.

“I figured that I’d just go for whatever was distinctive here,” Ryan says with a smile.

While waiting on our food, we sip our coffee and take in the scene. There’s clearly a woman behind this operation: Every inch of the place is spotless and orderly, spider plants and yellow gingham curtains hang throughout, murals of Chesapeake county scenes cover the arched ends of ceiling, and the two-waitress staff is effortlessly efficient. Turns out we are correct in our assumption. After working here as a waitress for seven years, Evelyn Pruitt bought the diner in 1989 and has made it into a family business, employing her son, her brother, her sister-in-law, and her husband, who tells us the diner’s history. The diner was a railcar brought to Exmore from New Jersey in the 1950s. It remained in operation for five years before its then-owner, who swore he’d never serve African-Americans, closed the establishment when desegregation came to the South. It reopened in the ‘70s and now thrives under Pruitt’s care.

As she disappears with our order behind wooden swinging doors, it’s hard to tell if we’ve won her over with our humor or if she’s gone back to the kitchen to solicit help from the cook and dishwasher to bounce us outta there.

And it’s easy to see why the diner’s food is a staple part of the locals’ lives. The creamed chipped beef is quite tasty, as is the egg sandwich, served on a properly toasted English muffin. And the trout sandwich? Just what you’d expect: a sad slab of fried trout between two pieces of untoasted white bread—no mayo, no tartar sauce, no nothin’. Trout aside, everything is delightful right down to the background conversation of the local gents behind us who are gossiping about outboard engines, fishing, and each other.

With breakfast over, we take our leave from the Exmore Diner, but not before ogling the hunks of lemon meringue pie in the dessert case. That would have to wait until next time. Besides, a defensive-tackle-sized lunch awaits us only miles down the road.

English’s Family Restaurant
North Salisbury Blvd./Rt. 13
Salisbury, Md.
410-742-8183

In 1933, entrepreneur James English—the Ray Croc of the Eastern Shore—opened his first English’s Restaurant in Salisbury, a thirteen-seater with seven employees. Nearly seventy years later, the English’s empire consists of seven locations, a catering business, and 480 employees. Normally, such a place would qualify as a chain—a no-no on our list. But James English’s first railcar diner still thrives on Route 13 in Salisbury, sandwiched between a more ordinary English’s Restaurant add-on and a take-out bakery.

The diner itself is an excellently preserved specimen, right down to the red-vinyl-topped stools and well-polished mirrors and chrome behind the counter. We grab a booth and peruse the menu. Interspersed between the cheeseburgers and chicken and steaks are pictures and facts about skipjacks, the Pocomoke River, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, and other Eastern Shore tidbits. Nice touch. We order a feast of diner favorites from Stacey, our talkative twentysomething waitress, who’s dressed in the standard English’s uniform of white shirt, black pants, and a black bow tie.

According to the diner’s general manager, Mitch Ginn, a soft-talking, mustachioed man with arms the size of dinner plates, all of English’s food is made on the premises except for its trademark chicken and biscuits. They are made daily at a nearby commissary. He says the chicken recipe is as carefully guarded as the one for Coca-Cola, and only a few people in the company know how it’s made.

A basket of English’s famous sweet-potato biscuits arrives first. Rust-orange and the size of silver dollars, the sawdust-like biscuits are fun to eat but cry out for butter—or any moisture for that matter. Mac ‘n’ cheese is Velveeta orange and as gooey as Elmer’s Glue. But the cheeseburger is tasty and fat and cooked to order. And the turkey sandwich with gravy and mashed potatoes tastes properly like Thanksgiving leftovers. The famous chicken is drier than we remember, but still a notch above KFC. The real stars of the meal are the sweet-potato fries, fat and moist and tasting like autumn.

Dessert turns out to be a mixed bag. The sweet potato pie is sublime, but the rice pudding has far too much nutmeg and possesses a strange acidic tang, as if it’s gone bad or someone has spilled orange juice in it.

Overall, the meal is decent and there’s definitely a friendly vibe to the place. Stacey tells us she sees the same faces every day during her breakfast shift, including a group of ten or twelve men who come in three times a week and drink coffee all morning. “They say they’re solving the world’s problems, but they just sit back and bull,” she says.

As we’re getting ready to leave, an old man with checkered slacks and a blue fishing hat walks to the cash register to pay his bill. “My meal was terrible,” he says to Stacey. “And my tea was ice cold.”

“Maybe because you ordered an iced tea,” Stacey shoots back. He winks and walks out.

As do we.

New Ideal Diner
104 S. Philadelphia Blvd./Rte. 40
Aberdeen, Md.
410-272-1880

After lunch, we dawdle a while, sleepy from the turkey, and take our time leaving the tranquillity of the Shore and crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. A couple hours later we find ourselves fighting traffic northbound on I-95, tired of listening to the same CDs over and over again. Exiting at Route 40, we turn up our noses at the imitation old chrome of the White Marsh Double T Diner and continue heading north, past Pat’s Concrete Products, Bed World, the cavernous Pulaski Bingo Hall, Big Al’s Bar & Grille, and the Sins on Skin Tattoo Parlor. Finally, we reach Aberdeen, the land of Cal Ripken—and the New Ideal Diner.

The New Ideal is a prototypical diner. Manufactured by Jerry O’Mahoney, Inc. of Elizabeth, N.J., it was transported in four sections to Maryland in 1952. Its exterior stainless steel is original, and the gorgeous “New Ideal Diner” in a red neon has served as a beacon for hungry travelers for almost fifty years. Inside, there are jukeboxes at every pistachio-colored booth and table, and a horseshoe mounted above the entrance to the kitchen. Unfortunately, all the jukeboxes, which feature plenty of Reba, Shania, and Patsy—are out of order. “When Hurricane Floyd came through a couple years back the basement flooded and wet the wires to the jukes real bad,” our gray-haired waitress Marge informs us. Marge also tells us that the Maryland crab soup is real good, so that’s where we start.

Indeed, Marge is right on. The soup has just the right amount of spice and is loaded with big chunks of fresh carrots, tomatoes, green beans, and strands of backfin crabmeat. Unfortunately, it’s also the highlight of our meal. There’s nothing special about the chef’s special, a fried fillet of fish and shrimp, other than the price—$6.45. (The meal includes hot rolls and butter, choice of two vegetables, coffee or tea, and rice or bread pudding for dessert.) The fillet is flaky enough, but the shrimp live up to their name, and lie trapped in far too much breading.

Marge doesn’t ask us how we want a cheeseburger cooked—apparently one size fits all. The result is positively ordinary. The fries are good and crispy, however, and we smother them with stubborn ketchup coaxed from a glass Heinz bottle.

The New Ideal’s menu features a big section of seafood specialties—normally taboo at most diners, but judging from the crab soup, next time we’d certainly try the crab cakes, touted as “Maryland’s finest.”

Bridge Diner
U.S. Rte. 40 and Ontario St.
Havre de Grace, Md.
410-939-8255

Feeling somewhat—no, totally—bloated we pull into Bridge Diner, which sits several hundred yards from the bridge over the Susquehanna River. It’s a squat, red-and-white affair, built in 1930—and looks it. Inside the poorly lit interior are just eight booths and sixteen stools and a general feeling that the grease stains and grime won out years ago. The red and beige wall tiles are chipped and cracked, and the maroon window valances look like they could use a cleaning. We like the place immediately.

In a blur of activity behind the counter is a petite blonde with three gold chains around her neck and a flower tattoo that runs from her ankle to midway up her calf. She wears cut-off jean shorts and a white T-shirt that was probably much whiter at the beginning of her shift. She’s apparently the lone waitress for the night and lets an anxious beer-bellied gentleman at the counter know it: “I’m only one person, Sunshine.”

We soon find out that the waitress’s name is Mandy and that she calls everybody “Sunshine,” as in, “What’ll it be, Sunshine? Are you finished here, Sunshine? Do you need anything else, Sunshine?”

As Mandy flits from one table to the next, she simultaneously holds ten conversations at once. Everybody in the Bridge Diner knows her—as well as each other, which gives the place the feeling of a big family dinner except that everyone’s sitting at different tables.

We order a couple of cups of coffee, a slice of cherry pie, and a chocolate milkshake. When we tell Mandy we want ice cream on our pie, she lets out an excited, “Yea!” then bounces away singing the opening lines to “Chain of Fools.”

The rest of the menu at the Bridge Diner is typical diner fare: breakfast all day, cheeseburgers and T-bone steaks, a half-dozen types of club sandwiches. A trucker tells us the Wednesday night spaghetti and meatballs special is excellent. Not surprisingly, someone has crossed out the chicken and the beef stir-fries, a chancy undertaking that apparently wasn’t greeted as warmly as management had hoped.

Watching our waitress fly from table to cash register to blender to kitchen, we finish the cherry pie, which, unfortunately, tastes as if it had been bought at the Giant Supermarket down the road. The thick chocolate milkshake served in a blue plastic cup, however, hits the spot wonderfully.

With 250 miles and what feels like 10,000 grams of fat under—or more accurately—over our belts, we waddle to the cash register to pay the bill.

“Hope you had a nice time,” Mandy tells us.

“Thanks, Mandy,” we say, anxious to get back to the car and a roll of Tums we specifically purchased for this very moment. “We certainly did.”