Dinerz™ 2014: Diane's Restaurant

Diane's Restaurant is the de facto community center for Foster-Powell.

Every June,
The Oregonian
 publishes a guide to upscale Portland-area restaurants called
Diner
. Last June,
 published a guide to Portland diners, also called
Diner
.
 lawyer
asked us not to do that again
. So, as 
Diner 2014 content begins populating the various streams, verticals and digital reader engagement platforms of 
OregonLive.com
, we 
present Dinerz™ 2014, a guide to Portland diners. (
Dinerz™ is not affiliated, and not intended to be confused, with Diner.) 
Because there are so many diners in Portland, we needed a theme. This year, all five diners in Dinerz™ are named for a person.

We've also upgraded Dinerz™ 2014 to include more reader engagement by adding a famous OregonLive-style poll to each post. We will later write a follow-up blog post analyzing the responses provided by you, the reader, in the hopes that you will click on our site several more times to see what other readers think about such interesting topics as whether you would eat stew made from dead possums found on the side of the road.

Diane's Restaurant in Foster Powell, a diner, pictured in the year 2014.

 

Diane's Restaurant
5052 SE Foster Road, 777-7099. Monday-Thursday, 6 am-2 pm. Friday-Saturday 6 am-3 pm. 7 am-3 pm.

Who's Diane? Diane is the vibrant lady with a blonde bun waits on tables and quarterbacks the room at this de facto Foster-Powell community center. "I've owned it for 15 years but I worked here for 20 before that. I'm sort of a fixture," she says. As young as she looks, I figure Diane started working here in kindergarten.

Diane's neighbors: Smoke & Vape Beer Tobacco Gas Drive-Thru, Color Tile, Busy Bee's Cleaners

Diane's style: Thomas Kinkade painting a Jo-Ann Fabric store. A mix of suburban rec-room and country farmhouse elements topped with elaborate plastic flower arrangements.

Diane's rules: A chipped plastic sign by the booths warns of, "No booth service between 11:30 & 1:00 to one person for just coffee."

Diane's food: At many diners, the omelets are roughly the same size, no matter how you order them. Get it with bacon and ham, and you get an omelette the same size as the bacon, just with half as much bacon. Not at Diane's. Here, the eggs of the Farmer's Omelette with bacon, sausage, ham, peppers and onions, stretch to contain the filling while the Denver omelette seems half-deflated next to it. You'll want the pancakes, which are golden, nearly an inch thick and, on our visit, moist and sweet like a good birthday cake but miraculously gumminess-free.

White, wheat, sourdough or rye?
  
pollcode.com free polls 

WWeek 2015

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