... at a diner on the corner

Having breakfast or brunch at a diner is something I particularly missed. Diner is a specific American culinary culture – the East Coast, or Northeast, to be more specific. The choice of brunch menu at every diner is quite typical. That’s a kind of place I can find a burger, a true one, not the junk food version, good pancake, and coffee. Just coffee; no latte, au lait or frappe. I don’t know the local equivalence for diner in Indonesia, but maybe Warkop is the closest one.

Unfortunately, not many diners around the Harvard Square part of Cambridge, Mass. I had to go to Davis Square, Medford, or Brighton Avenue on the way to Waltham. There are more choices in New York City. My friend used to take me to one near NYU, in the Union Square neighborhood. And of course, the famous Tom's Restaurant on the corner of Broadway Avenue and 112 Street, Upper Manhattan, near Columbia University. This place had been the regular meeting place of Seinfeld and co. It was also featured in Suzanne Vega’s single hit, Tom’s Diner, in the late ‘80s (I am sittin’/in the morning/at a diner/on the corner).

Last long weekend, my wife and I found one ‘American Diner’ (that’s what the place claim itself) in Kemang, about five hundreds meters down the street from my high school (as well as Sjamsu’s and Ujang’s). They do offer diner-type menu. The taste and quality was OK. Not great, but not bad. However, it was not the type of setting I expect from a diner. For one, the place was too fancy, too colorful and too decorated for a diner. And the guests, I think they are over-dressed to go to a diner.

But maybe it is just me. It is Kemang, and it is ‘American’ gitu loh… Expecting informality and casualness from the place is perhaps too much, or too few. And maybe it will be the same thing if sometimes Warkop becomes a global culture, or a place for socialites.