Cindy's Diner

Cindy’s Diner
830 S Harrison St
Fort Wayne, IN, 46802

While looking up the address of this diner, I came across the following article about Fort Wayne being American’s Dumbest City. It’s tangental at best, but worth reading.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/2005-01-19-dumb-cities_x.htm

So anyway, I was paying my gentleman friend Don Piano a visit in Fort Wayne for a while, and on my last day, May 10th, we decided to head over to Cindy’s Diner for breakfast. I’d come across the out-of-place little prefab diner while he and I, bored out of our gourds, decided to wander around downtown Fort Wayne on a Sunday afternoon. There’s not much of note downtown — the diner and an amazing perpetually-growing mechanical loaf of bread on a billboard were the highlights for me, though there’s also a new library in a building resembling an airplane hangar, a Rally’s, and a Taco Bell.

Cindy’s is somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 seats, all at the counter. We were asked what we wanted to drink almost as soon as we sat down. I got diet Coke and Mr. Piano got regular Coke, as we both enjoy a good soda with our morning meal, especially if our morning meal is around 11AM. I ordered a two eggs, potato, toast, and meat item combo, gladly giving my companion my sausage patties, while Mr. Piano chose to sample the hotcakes and meat platter. In classic diner style, the food was cooked not more than a few feet away from us, and I was pleased to watch my two eggs being cracked and scrambled and Mr. Piano’s hotcakes being poured onto the grill. Also, the potato item, which I’m fairly sure the menu called “American fries,” were Midwest-style sliced homefries, which also pleased me. I have a devotion to determining the exact boundaries of the homefries region — it doesn’t seem to extend to New York City or Philadelphia, and I’ve only ventured as far as Fort Wayne and Milwaukee in the other direction.

In any case, our food was quickly served and consumed. The homefries qualify as definitive — not overcooked or overly greasy, slightly salty, and pleasantly flavorful. I would rank only the homefries offered by Cleveland’s Expressway Diner over these. The eggs were also surprisingly good — I usually need to eliminate any egg flavor with ketchup to make it tolerable outside of a cheese omelette, but these were light, fluffy, and very edible. The toast was also enjoyable, as toast should be. I have every indication that Don Piano also enjoyed his meal, but my recollection of his experience is blurred by the events which followed.

Not remembering that Cindy’s has a strict no-credit-card policy, Mr. Piano had to visit an ATM after his meal to acquire some cash, wisely leaving me in the restaurant as collateral. I sat quietly and absent-mindedly stared at the TV for what seemed like an awfully long time for a grown man to travel a city block and return, noticing a few cop cars rushing down the street outside in the meanwhile. A customer came in and asked if anyone knew what was going on down the street — apparently a large number of Fort Wayne’s finest and their automobiles had congregated outside the downtown branch of the Wells Fargo. Moments later, I noticed my gentleman friend returning to the diner, and the waitress said, “Well, we’ll ask this guy, he just got back from the bank!”

From what Mr. Piano could piece together, someone had attempted to rob the bank. He had driven to the ATM, and was pulled over by the police on the way, who also attempted to pull over a car in front of him. In a sequence of events I could at best misremember, Mr. Piano heard an officer behind him pump a shotgun and later saw the police putting a man in handcuffs in a police car. All of this was quite strange for Mr. Piano, but he managed to get his required funds and make it back to the diner in one piece. He was the star of the diner for a brief period, but we quickly paid and departed.

All in all, it was probably the most interesting event in downtown Fort Wayne this year, and I ate breakfast the day after my birthday a block away with the man who saw it.

Oh yeah, and Cindy’s has an old-fashioned donut machine, the product of which I hope to sample at a later date.

$ (dirty cheap just like the rest of Fort Wayne)
**

Crow's Nest a.k.a. The Hole In The Wall

Hi. I'm Jeff. I've known Ray Speen since we were both correspondents back in WWII, being plagiarized by that hack Hemingway. I still eat lunch sometimes, so Ray invited me to sling some hash here on his lunch counter blog. So I thought I'd start with this place that I get lunch from sometimes when I'm at my job in Downtown Cleveland, Ohio, where I now work as a corporate cryptanalyst.

The official name of this place is "The Crow's Nest," but actually, I usually refer to it as 'the hole in the wall,' because, really, that's exactly what it is. A hole in the wall.

Specifically, there is a little convenience store on the main floor of this great old building downtown that's made of old white ceramic tiles called the Standard Building, that is home to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, which I would give my eye teeth to be a member of, just because that sounds so cool. And in the back of this convenience store, there is a little hole in the wall, about one foot wide by about two feet tall. Behind this hole is the kitchen for a restaurant that's on the other side of the building where they actually have tables and a bar; for carry-out service, though, they opened up this HOLE.

To get your food, you walk up to the hole, wait for someone to walk by it and acknowledge you, and quickly tell them what you want before they lose interest and wander away. If you're smart, like me, you'll soon learn to order the exact same thing every time you go there, so that when they see you walking up, all the kitchen workers have to do is make eye contact, nod their head slightly to confirm that you want 'the usual', which they then shout out to the grill cooks while writing up your order on the styrofoam take-out box. A model of efficiency.

All of this would be simply quaint and taken for granted were such a thing not the rarity it is downtown these days. But the best part is, the food that comes through that hole in the wall is actually pretty good - and very reasonably priced as well.

Their menu is pretty extensive, actually, too, with plenty of choices, and lots of daily specials. Just about anything you want they could put together for you. They also have a pretty good number of vegetarian-friendly items on the menu, which is great for me, because, hey, I'm a vegetarian. What's it to ya? OK. Anyway, they have a big variety of hamburger variations, all of which they are happy to make with a gardenburger patty, and, I'm told, they do it pretty well too. I've never actually had one there though, because I found that they make probably the best grilled swiss on rye you're likely to find downtown - complete with fries and a big quarter pickle slice. It'll keep you tied over 'til well past dinnertime.

The atmosphere of the convenience store is kind of interesting too, and you imagine it hasn't changed much at all in probably at least 30 years. In fact about the only thing I ever see there that forces me to realize I'm standing there in 2007 is a clip-board hanging up next to the cashier which holds print-outs of email-forwarded internet jokes, which they change every few weeks or so..

Am I supposed to rate this place? If so, I'll give it 4 mustard packets out of 4. Or whatever our rating units are supposed to be.

Ok, that's all from me for now. Thanks.