Greasy Spoon

The Summit Diner in downtown Summit, New Jersey.

In the midst of offices and clothing boutiques in downtown Summit, New Jersey, a wealthier-than-average town in a dense and affluent state, squats the classic train-car-style building. Compared to some of the garish chrome replicas that have sprung up all the way from New York City to San Francisco, this original is almost nondescript. A lot of people drive right by. Others dismiss it as dirty, ugly, old: "That place? You go there?!" You have to squint to read the faded lettering that boasts "WE DO OUR OWN BAKING" and "BOOTH SERVICE" on its white-paneled side. Opening the heavy steel door, with its ovular window and three horizontal bars reminiscent of a streamlined locomotive, you're greeted with soothing warmth and smells, and, almost as palpably, a sense of equality, a sense of ease. Investment bankers in tailored suits sit on stools next to telephone repairmen in grimy canvas jumpers. Over by the windows, a young family nests in a booth.

Everything down to the seat upholstery, a lumpy burgundy vinyl, is a throwback, made the way they don't make things anymore. Even the toast is industrial-strength—thick, perfectly square slices from long loaves in plain wax-paper wrappers. The coffee cups and saucers, and the soup bowls, are somehow larger than life to match the portions, as if waiting for Paul Bunyan to stomp in. Oblong plates, made of heavy off-white porcelain, are carved deep to allow plenty of room to pile on grub. A lot of things are broken or jury-rigged: a styrofoam cup for a coffee spigot, a bare bulb where a glass cover should be, raw plywood in place of paneling in one of the booths, the butcher block that could be flooded to form a small reservoir. The ramshackleness is endearing, as if the original craftsmanship is at once too good to let die and too masterful to match. The men's room door closes with a quarter-inch dead bolt. It's tiny and none too clean, yet the cooks wear surgical-white scrubs. Conventional wisdom holds that you can judge the cleanliness of a restaurant's kitchen by the cleanliness of its bathroom, but I have my doubts: the cooks here are too busy working the grill and dishwasher to waste time on the bathroom. They won't win any awards for hygiene, but hardly anything sits still long enough to gather germs.

There are no menus, and familiar customers don't look at the letter-board overhead, which hasn't changed in years. It seems that the urge to raise prices is trumped by the annoyance of having to get on a stepladder and shift all those little white numbers around. An erasable whiteboard lists a handful of daily specials that rotate reluctantly. While many "family restaurants" seem in competition to produce the world's thickest menu, they understand here that less is more. I dream of the day when I can walk in and ask for "the usual," the way the regulars do, or expect the cook to recognize me and have my eggs half-ready before I've got my coat off, without even asking for my order, as he does for the real old-timers. Being an occasional patron, I must articulate my order: "Ham and Eggs over easy, wheat toast, and a large grapefruit juice." Coffee is something you have to decline. Sitting at the counter, I make my request directly to the man filling cups, laying out silverware, and stuffing the toaster. The man at the grill listens and starts shuffling piles of potatoes around. Nobody writes anything down; when I finish I'll move to the huge mechanical cash register and tell the man what to ring up. Three people can walk away stuffed on a twenty; they don't take American Express. Whenever I take a friend here, she'll ask "How's the French toast?" or "How's the soup?" and I'm forced to confess that I don't know; the...