Coffee Shop or Diner?

[MarketStEl]

This question was inspired by a recent lunch I had at a popular eatery in Brookhaven, Pa., just up the road from where I work.

The place is called Tom Jones Restaurant, and it's very popular with Widener students as an after-party hangout (it's open 24/7). It's also renowned for its super-cheap specials and breakfast anytime. (Interesting aside: In the waiting area inside the main entrance is a newspaper article about the lawsuit Tom Jones the '70s pop singer filed against Tom Jones the restaurant asking it to cease and desist using the name. Obviously, the singer lost.)

The restaurant menu is very extensive, much as you might expect at a good diner: Breakfast anytime, club sandwiches, burgers, dinner platters, varying lunch and dinner specials, the usual array of nonalcoholic beverages.

The decor is a total throwback to the era when Tom Jones the singer was popular: chocolate-brown plywood walls, burnt orange carpet, orange seats in the booths and the counter, low-end 1960s modernism throughout. There's a slit window separating the kitchen from the counter seating with one of those carousels on which the waitstaff hang customer order slips.

The food is cheap, filling, and competently prepared. Nothing to write home about, but something that will do when all you want is a basic good meal.

It reminded me very much of a coffee shop on the Country Club Plaza where I occasionally ate as a teenager.

And that's where the confusion comes in. "Coffee shops" as I knew them also had extensive menus of sandwiches (always including a patty melt, which is also on Tom Jones' menu) and breakfast fare. Their decor, at least by the time I was old enough to notice, was 1960s modern, middle-of-the-road and unoffensive. Seating consisted of a counter in front of the kitchen, which you could see through a slit window, plus booths all around the counter.

So what exactly is it that makes one restaurant a "coffee shop" and another a "diner"? Is it geographic? Does it have something to do with the menu? It's certainly not the decor. Clues, please....

[mojoman]

Sandy,

Without benefit of googling, I understand that a "diner" has to be based upon the old railcar structure and, theoretically, can be easily transported. A "coffee shop" is a permanent building. I think their menus are interchangable.

[Toliver]

As mojoman said, what makes the difference is the building itself.

From the Diner Museum web site:

A true "diner" is a prefabricated structure built at an assembly site and transported to a permanent location for installation to serve prepared food. Webster's Dictionary defines a diner as "a restaurant in the shape of a railroad car." The word "diner" is a derivative of "dining car" and diner designs reflected the styling that manufacturers borrowed from railroad dining cars. A diner is usually outfitted with a counter, stools and a food preparation or service area along the back wall. Decommissioned railroad passenger cars and trolleys were often converted into diners by those who could not afford to purchase a new diner.