Voice-Tribune review by Robin Garr
What’s a diner? This question would be easy to answer in New York, New Jersey, and across much of the Northeastern U.S., where diners abound. In Louisville, not so much. There’s a fine line between a diner and a family restaurant. If it’s located in an old railroad dining car or a building made to look like one, it’s definitely a diner; but this is by no means a necessity, and in fact I don’t know of any railroad-style diners in or around this town. (If you know of one, please let me know.)
This much is certain: A diner serves breakfast any time it’s open. It serves traditional American fare. Even if it’s run by Greek-Americans and offers Greek dishes, too, as many diners in the Northeast do, it will invariably offer eggs any way you like them, pancakes and bacon and sausage and biscuits, and all the strong dark coffee you can drink. If you’re in the South, grits will unfailingly be on the menu; in the north, hash browns. Here in the happy in-between, we get both.
A diner must serve grilled cheese sandwiches, patty melts, and burgers, of course, and probably a Reuben. Hearty, home-style side dishes are mandatory, to the extent that just a bit farther south, the moniker “diner” shifts seamlessly to “meat-and-three,” denoting an eatery that offers a main course plus three side veggies … or two veggies and bread, whatever.
So, what’s a diner? Louisville’s Twig & Leaf arguably makes the cut, and you could make an argument for Lynn’s Paradise Cafe. I would submit, though, that it is well worth the trip out wide, wide Dixie Highway to Frontier Diner to enjoy about as good a sample of the diner genre as the Derby City has to offer.
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes.com:
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/diner ... r-on-dixie
and in the Voice-Tribune:
http://www.voice-tribune.com/life-style ... -on-dixie/
Frontier Diner
7299 Dixie Highway
271-3663
In other words, dunno. It's not visibly on the block.