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.
WWeek 2015