Merchantville Diner

Doesn't Get Much Cuter

You know you’ve hit a stride- or not- when your family bribes you off the couch on a Saturday morning with the promise of going out to breakfast. “We’re going to the Merchanville Diner”, Chris’s father said, “You  haven’t been there yet”.

Well, that’s true. We turned off Dogs 101 and got dressed.

This diner is pretty close to Maritsa’s (see our review here) and similarly provides the cheap eats in a small space. With a cute hanging sign store front an eight-seater (breakfast) bar that lines the entirety of one side, it certainly looked cute enough. Our waitress however, was anything but. She definitely did not look happy to be there, and it reflected poorly in her actual service, monotone voice, and lack of punctuality after we had finished our meals.

The menu is standard- consisting of eggs-your-way, omelettes, French toast, and pancakes with crepe and Belgian waffles thrown in there for fun. However, unlike many other diners right now, I could not find any special seasonal pumpkin-flavored items. Disappointing.

Broccoli Omelette

A boring menu calls for a boring order: broccoli omelette. I fought with getting another vegetarian-egg dish but caved because their omelette specials provided for the most food. (Approximately 8 bucks for an omelette, toast, homefries, with coffee and a juice). I thought mine was pretty unflavored- unsalted, un-peppered, no onions for added greasy-noms, etc. It was huge- they claimed 3-eggs per omelette, but I suspect it was more like four. I ended up picking at it, and focusing more on my home fries (decent) and our basket of toast that needed to be conquered.  The coffee mugs were also very large, rivaling the ones at the (awful) Somerville Diner, but the coffee was thankfully milder, and more aromatic. It was much more reminiscent of what I think of when I think of a house blend- it seemed as if Somerville’s was some kind of distinct regional blend that was brewed incorrectly. My OJ was, you know, OJ.

Bread Basket for the Table

Food was decent, but completely unforgettable as was the service, and overall experience. Just as a FYI, we ended waiting around for about fifteen minutes after all of us had stopped touching our plates to be acknowledged.  I actually think I prefer Maritsa’s, even with their muddy mushrooms.

Scrapple, Eggs, and Potatoes: A Portrait

It is a bit strange that my parents tend to gravitate toward these small, non-shiny, main street locations (I guess I still see chrome whenever I think of a diner). The service was upsetting and our waitress, after I ordered, seemed to become even more dejected as if what I ordered inconvenienced her in some way. Aside from that my two scrambled eggs, home fries, and scrapple were all done very well. It was by no means my favorite meal, but everything on the table was consistently good. I think the real power of consistency is that if one thing is wrong, it can ruin an entire meal especially when we're only dealing with eggs and potatoes. My scrabbled egg situation was similar to Chi's omelette in that we were looking at more than the two eggs advertised on the menu, however they were super fluffy albeit they were slightly on the runny side. The home fries seemed a little more "mashed" than other places which i supposed made them a little smoother even with a nice crisp on the outside. I was surprised by the scrapple. I ordered this item on a complete whim (maybe sausage is getting boring) and before the Merchantville Diner the only other scrapple I've ever had and liked was at the White House Restaurant on Camden Ave and Lenola Rd. Merchantville's was in the ballpark. The outside was super crispy and the inside was creamy and piping hot with a little bit of spice.

Normal Interior

Elvis

Additional Notes: They have short hours, 7am-9pm Monday through Saturday, and 7am-3pm on Sunday. Sides are cheaper here than Marlton Diner. If you've never had scrapple you should try it next time, it's a bit of a mystery meat but it's also a classic and unique to the NJ Diner scene. If it's still too far out for you, go with pork roll (more of a philly thing). People as close as Harrisburg don't know what pork roll is. Also included in the interior is a cut out of Elvis watching you eat...creepy.

Marlton Diner

Flashy

The Marlton Diner's reputation precedes it with its multiple accolades as "Best of [insert location]" by a few local papers, including the Courier Post. One gets the sense that it knows just how popular and appealing it is, despite not being around as long as its competitors in the area. But just like the popular kids of our pasts, I felt the attitude to be complacent, vaguely shallow, and with a skewed sense of what things actually cost. It gleans off of Route 70 (in Marlton) like a prized baby blue convertible. (Yes, I quoted Santa Baby, but yes, it was kind-of teal).

French Toast, Eggs Over Medium

Chris's parents took us out for Saturday breakfast and since they paid, you would think I could just focus on the experience and critique the quality of food, but I can't. While breakfast meals cost about the same as they do at any other diner, many items didn't come in the popular combos that they traditionally do, or at those combo prices. For example, I ordered their french toast which came out to a little under $6, but as you can see, there's only the (3) pieces of toast, with butter and individual packages of syrup. I ordered a side of two eggs over medium, which cost me almost an extra two bucks. It wasn't terrible, just clearly not a bargain, which is something I've come to expect (perhaps unfairely) from diners. Plan your meals carefully and they can cost the same as they do anywhere else, but double check your sides, especially your meat-based ones.


I will say that the french toast was delicious with the pefect ratio of toast to egg. I think that I would been happier if they had just upgraded me to a bottle of syrup on the table instead of packets tacked on the side, but since I like my toast more buttery than sweet anyways, I can't really say it hindered my enjoyment. As usual by over medium eggs were runny and boring. But maybe ordering eggs over medium is boring...

Exhibit A

I wanted to order their french toast and eggs special (with coffee and juice) and then order a side of sausage. The combo of just french toast and eggs was eight dollars, a side of sausage was four dollars. Four dollars for sausage links. Four dollars. Until this diner, the most expensive side of sausage I've seen was two dollars and fifty cents. I guess having a building painted like a '50s Chevy made the Marlton Diner feel entitled to overcharge it's customers. Now that I've gotten that off my chest I must admit that they seated us rather quickly for showing up on a busy Saturday morning, and our waitress was very patient with our slightly indecisive party. The atmosphere was pleasant enough with classic diner feel and booths packed with families and old timers, the Marlton Diner clearly has their own set of regulars.

French Toast with Four Dollar Sausage

With good company at the table our food seemed to come out fairly quickly. Three pieces of french toast bordered by four sausage links. I'm a butter and syrup man, so I slathered up the slices and went to work. Let me tell you, this french toast was good enough to stand up by itself and I would go back to the Marton Diner just to order a short stack. There were three things that made this french toast better than other diners. The first key for yumminess is thickness of the bread. Most diners advertise super think slices of Texas toast. Well, that means the egg won't be able to get to the middle of the bread (there's a surface area to volume ratio theory that is important for diffusion) and that means half of what your eating is a core of warm bread. Marlton used more than Wonder Bread, but they didn't over do it, which made their french toast one hundred percent french toast. The second high point of their french toast was the perfection of "toasting." The Marlton Diner made sure that the outside reached it's nice golden brown exterior without overcooking the middle of the french toast remained soft, moist and delicious. The third golden start I'm going to give them is for not skimping me on butter. The amount of butter they gave us looked like miniature fluffy clouds. As for the sausage (the four dollar sausage) it was mediocre. Nothing about it screamed "I'm better than Jimmy Dean!" which solidified my previous statement, I would come back to get just the short stack of french toast.

Additional notes:
Apparently the Marlton Diner doubles as a museum and contains an antique cash register and jukebox, but don't touch them. Also, they sell giant, soft chocolate-chip cookies, buy one. The place was family-friendly full of Halloween decorations with clean, dry booths. If you can get over the $4.00 a side thing, might be worth a trip.

All Sides are Four Dollars

Like Mean Girls, being popular comes with rules. No subsituting your potatoes for fruit cups (waitress denied Chris's mother), or sharing (unless you want to pay $2.00 a plate), and always, always wear pink on Fridays.

Calorie Counting is No Way to Live

Club Diner

Front door of Club Diner

Post ballroom practice munchies call for wholesome food less than five minutes away. In the only state you can do this in, Chi and I typed "diner" into the GPS and sure enough there were seven diners within a three mile range. We picked the closest one, Club Diner, located on the Black Horse Pike in Bellmawr, NJ. We were coming down West Browning Avenue, about to make a left onto Route168, and we asked at the same time, "where is this place?" We were answered quickly when, around the corner of an art store, Club Diner's red, glowing, neon lights suddenly appeared.

Chicken Escarole Soup

Before the meal we were handed a giant basket of bread that appeared to have sourdough and a sourdough-pumpernickel swirl bread. I loved the sourdough-pumpernickel myself and Club Diner does a very nice job of combining the two bold flavors. And surprise, surprise! home made, super dense, sweet banana bread was hiding at the bottom of the basket, delicious.  Also, as an appetizer I ordered the chicken escarole soup. This salty and savory soup was a great way to start the meal. It had nice big chicken meatballs full of flavor and texture as well as diced pieces of white meat.

Wanting to try something new, I originally thought I would order a roast beef sandwich to see how it compared to the roast beef deli meet sold at Wegmans, but then I saw ravioli and meatballs and my stomach ended up deciding for me. Evidently I didn't know that cheese ravioli and meatballs is weird, but everyone (my girlfriend and parents) informed me that it's strange (I mean come on, Chef Boyardee has meet ravioli with meatballs in a can, but Boyardee isn't an expert on Italian cuisine, so that's that). Regardless of how different this plate selection was (by the way, you have an option between meatballs and Italian sausage. I think I made the right choice) it had some high points even though the plating was strange. 

Ravioli and Meatballs

You know how sometimes a dish can get boring as you keep eating it because it's a lot of the same thing? Well, the Ricotta cheese filling was very creamy and even nearing the end of the plate the dish never became repetitive. The pasta sauce was unique. I can't quite place my finger on whether it's homemade or just altered sauce from a can, but it had a nice sweetness and thick, not chunky, consistency. The meatballs were sadly the low point of the meal (maybe I'll do Italian sausage if I ever try it again). My best guess is that it was an all beef meatball (onions and other spices in the blend) that was moist like a meatball should be, but it was soft and mushy and had a downright strange texture to it (they should set their beef grinder to the same setting as their chicken grinder).

Blueberry Pie with Whipped Cream

Dessert came with the meal (awesome) and after our waitress (who was wonderful) listed off all the different pies they had, I decided on blueberry almost immediately. She asked if I wanted whipped cream on mine. I said yes. The pie wasn't exactly what I expected. The crust had a similar taste to a palmier and it was thin, soft, and almost had a slight chewiness. At first it was off putting but I grew to like it as I kept eating. The blueberry filling was kind of crazy. The whole reason I ordered blueberry pie was because I wanted some tartness to go along with the sweetness. This thing was all sweet, like blue sugar. I understand how people could really love this pie, but if you have a fruit that can have different flavor levels, then the pie should reflect that.

Outside

Inside

If there are different types of diners I think it would be reasonable to say that at least aesthetically, there are two kinds: the dreary, bordering on dirty diner, and the (kind of) trashy, flashy kind of diner. I think Club Diner wants to be the second kind (see pictures) with its red neon cutting through the black of the night and its digital jumbo-tron flashing advertisements and specials.


Given this, I was amused by the simplicity of the inside and the simplicity of the man sitting next to us who was talking about “a machine that puts bubbles into drinks”. Well sir, do you mean…a soda machine?

As I eavesdropped, I surveyed the menu that I thought to be rather dinner-heavy, including a whole page full of $9.99 specials. I settled on the fried flounder after much hesitation about having fish again at a diner so soon after the Silver Coin debacle. But I decided to take a chance, especially since the Club Diner’s $9.99 special comes with:

1 entrée

1 soup du jour or 1 salad

2 vegetable sides (they also had rice pilaf as an option)

1 dessert (they have a bakery on site)

I was charmed by this deal, especially since it cost me $11.00 earlier in the day for a grilled cheese sandwich and some chips in Philadelphia. I opted for the salad (because the veggie soup option was split pea) and soon enough presented to me was The Wettest Salad Ever. It was not soggy at all, nor were the greens especially juicy. It was physically wet. It’s like they washed the iceberg and cherry tomatoes proceed to throw it on my plate without so much as waiting for it to drip excess water away or heaven-forbid put it through a colander or salad spinner.  I was literary eating water, and not in the way that lettuce is water anyways. However, having been the one to find the hidden pieces of banana bread in our (extensive) bread basket (with whipped butter) I was quickly appeased.

Broccoli and Potatoes

Fried Flounder

My fish was surprisingly well-thought out. It was fried, but not so much that it lost the fish’s natural tenderness. The filet was a good size and the fish itself was fresh tasting and flaky. My sides of baked potato and broccoli were almost on par with the fish. My baked potato would have delicious if there was some fluffing of the actual starch to make it easier to eat, particularly since it came out sans toppings and still in its foil casing. My broccoli was the biggest disappointment of the night, as it came out in HUGE stalks and was chewy. But I should point that this probably stemmed from the fact that broccoli is the veggie I eat the most and the fact that my dinner knife was incredibly dull and could barely saw through it.

I chose pumpkin pie as my desert since I make it point to go out of my way to eat pumpkin in the fall. I am OBSESSED with pumpkin spiced lattes and pumpkin muffins, by the way. The waitress had said it was her favorite, and I can see why. The pie was sweet, but still flavorful with notes of different spices. The actual filling was not too dense or goopy as pumpkin pie can start to separate after a while. With the whipped cream on top it was the perfect not-too-unhealthy finish. Overall it was a good meal at a very good $9.99.

Pumpkin Pie with Chris in the Background