And so it continues ... a brand new set of tastes for 2017 ...
here's the FOURTH of FIFTY tastes of FLORIDA
(coming to you on sequential Thursdays. All. Year. Long.)!
Establishment: Diner By-The-Sea
Location: Lauderdale By The Sea
Meal: Brunch
Drink: Hot Chocolate
Appetizer: English Muffin
Main: Famous 2-2-2
2 eggs, 2 strips of bacon or sausage [I chose bacon, of course], 2 golden pancakes or toast [I chose pancakes]
Side(s): Home Fries
Dessert: Miniature slice of watermelon
Server: unknown but completely my fault because I got her name (and made her say it twice because it was unique) yet I didn't add it to my notes
Website: http://dinerbytheseainc.com/diner/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Diner-by-the-Sea-161662490517465/
It's the first diner of the new year ... and if the distribution is anything like last year, that means that more will be featured soon enough because a full 10% of the tastes from 2016 were in diners. But first up is this little charmer (more about that below) within walking distance of the beach. The good news is that they scored in the top half of the six diners featured ... and to see how it all came about on the Troy-score, check below:
AMBIANCE: 9/10 (let's put it this way -- if you are an employee at this place, you better get along with your co-workers, because it is tiny ... and by tiny, I mean four or five small booths and a dozen stools or so and that's about it ... that being said, cozy can be cute, and there's something about being so close to the grill that you can watch your food getting prepared to perform your own quality control check ... and when we were there, it quickly became clear that the majority of customers knew most of the guests in a Cheers-y kind of way ... just a point deducted for the stools being slightly too close to each other -- in a budget airlines kind of way)
FOOD: 8/10 (hot and fresh with crispy "pressed" bacon and well flavored [and textured] home fries perked up my breakfast [see a bonus shot of the corned beef hash morning meal that my tablemate ate] ... if there was an area for improvement, it would be the pancakes -- as you can see from the photo, my "2" were really one big one and one baby one [so a point lost] ... I also was disappointed that my hot chocolate wasn't creamed as happens at the other diners at which I've eaten [the second lost point])
SERVICE: 8/10 (here's the truth -- the end was better than the beginning ... because, as previously explained, this place is so tiny that you can't hide anything ... so on *our* visit, we knew that our server was frazzled because the other server who was working the booths wasn't moving fast enough that morning [so a point lost for us knowing all that diner drama in the first place] ... and eventually we were able to get her to smile and be personable enough to learn that she was selling all her things and moving to Canada, but the early going was just too painful for us to watch [which explains the second lost point])
BACON: 8/10 (as happy as I was to see bacon all over the breakfast menu [as it always should be], I was dissuaded from placing my usual order an extra side of of bacon by the price of $4.50 for three slices [a point dedcuted] ... which also means that my expectations were pretty high for the 2 slices that came with my 2-2-2 meal ... and while it was good and crispy, it wasn't as amazing as I had built it up to be, possibly from the "pressing" of it ... [the second point deducted])
BONUS: 10/10 (+3 for squeezing us in on the last two open spots in the joint, +3 for there being absolutely NO wasted space in the place at all, +3 for getting to use the full bottle of syrup like a big boy, and +1 for being a place to which we will return -- although likely at lunch in order to try out *that* menu)
TroyScore: 43 out of 50 -- aka 86, a B
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