Tenafly's Classic Diner

[Rachel Perlow]

Just reopened after changing ownership and a major renovation. We just stopped in for some dessert (pie). Not outstanding, but its still good to have a local diner! We'll post more after visiting for a meal.

[shugga]

Good to know it is now open. Drove past it a few weeks ago and they were still working on it.   We will have to try it for breakfast on Sunday.  I'll let you know how it is.

[tommy]

totally unrelated:

on my way through tenafly the other day (actually it was probably riveredge or a town near there, is saw a sign for white manna.  however, it wasn't there.  was there a white manna there?  where did it go?  

[Rachel Perlow]

What a coincidence! Last night, Jason and I went in search of this very location. There is a sign on River Road in New Milford that says ___ Tavern has White Manna burgers. We stopped there specifically to compare them to the place in Hackensack. However, the bar & grill in question is completely closed, so it is now irrelevant.

Interesting to note that they spelled the Manna on the sign with two n's. The White Mana in Hackensack is spelled with 1 N. According to yp.yahoo, the White Mana in Jersey City is also spelled with 1 N, but I thought it was spelled with two. Does anyone know the real story?

[tommy]

the sign i saw was on the corner of henley and river, and yes, it looks like it was new milford.  the sign for white manna even had a picture of the street signs for that cross section.

[Rachel Perlow]

Exactly the same sign I was referring to above.

[tommy]

Exactly the same sign I was referring to above.

i also noticed an asian market on henley on the south side of the street.  any comments on that?  not to mention a "foods of the world" type shop on kinderkamack in riveredge....

[dodge621]

[not to mention a "foods of the world" type shop on kinderkamack in riveredge]

- I have driven by this place several times and it seems like no activity.  If anyone has been here please comment.

[ngatti]

totally unrelated:

on my way through tenafly the other day (actually it was probably riveredge or a town near there, is saw a sign for white manna.  however, it wasn't there.  was there a white manna there?  where did it go?  

Tommy, you were on River Road (not River Street, Hackensack) in New Milford.  The bar was Henly's and in their last months of operation, the White Manna people took a concession on the Kitchen.  They got to put a  large sign outside.  The entire operation tanked soon after.  Henly's is no more.  But the sign remains.

If you're really interested in details and dish, message me

Nick

[Rail Paul]

[not to mention a "foods of the world" type shop on kinderkamack in riveredge]

- I have driven by this place several times and it seems like no activity.  If anyone has been here please comment.

I wonder if this is a characteristic of some Asian food shops? There is a little place on US 46W in Pine Brook which has a wide selection of produce, noodles, newspaper, etc but I've never seen more than two or three other customers.

Do people shop in the middle of the night? Or in the middle of the day?

[shugga]

Well, we finally got to this Diner for breakfast, this morning.

The coffee was good and they have a nice selection of coffees.

I'm not into any of the flavored coffees, so I just had my plain decaf

with half and half.

I think they might still be trying to get the kinks out because I ordered

a Florentine Omelete (spinach and feta cheese) with no potatoes or toast and a side of crisp bacon.

My DH ordered a short stack, nice and brown with very crisp bacon.

My order came out with potatoes and almost raw bacon. His order came out

with very light pancakes and barely cooked bacon. We could not find our waitress

so we asked one of the other waiters to take back the bacon and cook it more.

As he took away the bacon, we spotted our waitress walking past our tabe and

asked her for more half and half. She grunted at us and walked out the door. We

saw her go out to her car and take off. Guess her shift was over! Another waiter

then took care of us for the rest of the meal.

My omelet was a little short on the feta cheese, but otherwise, OK. Like I said they

have a few kinks to work out!

[Jason Perlow]

Well, we finally got to this Diner for breakfast, this morning. 

The coffee was good and they have a nice selection of coffees.

I'm not into any of the flavored coffees, so I just had my plain decaf

with half and half.

I think they might still be trying to get the kinks out because I ordered

a Florentine Omelete (spinach and feta cheese) with no potatoes or toast and a side of crisp bacon.

My DH ordered a short stack, nice and brown with very crisp bacon.

My order came out with potatoes and almost raw bacon.  His order came out

with very light pancakes and barely cooked bacon.  We could not find our waitress

so we asked one of the other waiters to take back the bacon and cook it more.

As he took away the bacon, we spotted our waitress walking past our tabe and

asked her for more half and half.  She grunted at us and walked out the door.  We

saw her go out to her car and take off.  Guess her shift was over!  Another waiter

then took care of us for the rest of the meal.

My omelet was a little short on the feta cheese, but otherwise, OK.  Like I said they

have a few kinks to work out!

Amazing shugga. Evey time we try to go back to this joint for dinner it is PACKED, like its freakin Balthazar.

But if its still got kinks, we'll probably wait a month or so while the novelty wears off.

[Jason Perlow]

Well, we finally got to eat dinner at the TCD this evening.

I ordered chicken noodle soup, the meatloaf dinner and a side salad greek style. Rachel got a mesclun salad with grilled shrimp on it and the yankee bean soup.

Although I specifically asked for the regular meatloaf and not the turkey meatloaf, out came a plate with very white slices of meatloaf which appeared to have a lot of herbs in it. I sent it back, and they brought me back the same thing, insisting that it was the regular meatloaf. I ate it, it had no beefy taste whatsoever, perhaps it was heavy on pork, or had a lot of fillers as well. Either way, rachel didn't like the taste of it either. However the mashed potatoes that came with it were very good, and the vegetables (a mixture of zucchini/yellow squash, carrots and broccoli) were properly steamed and were not overcooked.

My chicken noodle soup had a very watery broth and had no peices of chicken in it with mushy noodles. Not good. Needed a ton of black pepper.

My salad, which I expected to be a small greek salad, was a regular green salad on a plate with some raddichio tossed with some feta cheese. No olives, no dolmades. No red onions. I expected it to cost $2.50 like the regular side salads (maybe 75 cents or a buck more for the greek treatment?) but in fact it was r $5.75. This seemed like a huge premium for little bit of feta cheese and a vinagrette, but they happily took the whole thing off the bill.

Rachel had to ask for salad dressing as her salad had virtually no salad dressing on it, and felt the grilled shrimp on it did not taste fresh. Her yankee bean soup according to her description was very tomato-ey and tasted like pasta fagiole with no pasta.

To top it off, the service was pretty spotty and rachel felt that it might have even been the server's first night.

I'll give this place the benefit of the doubt, perhaps we'll go back in a few months after they get their service issues ironed out and get burgers or breakfast or triple decker sandwiches there, as it seemed the other diners were enjoying those things and they actually looked pretty good. But to call yourself a good diner and screw up a meatloaf and serve watery mushy chicken noodle soup with no chicken in it? I dunno.

[Rachel Perlow]

Jason wants me to add my comments, but I think he summed it up pretty well. For the record, my "Key West Salad" had shrimp and scallops, the scallops were better than the shrimp, which tasted a little fishy. Maybe I shouldn't have ordered seafood on Monday? My soup was good, I thought Jason's was just OK. Service issue - the main course came about two minutes after the soup, in other words we were still eating the soup. Bussers were non-existant. When I was ready to start on my salad a more competant server than our own was nearby and grabbed the bowl.

Jason didn't mention the bread. We were served a plate of sliced bread, laid out in a spiral pattern with a little dish of diced tomatoes, like for do it yourself bruscetta. Half of the bread was toasted hard, presumably to be eaten with the tomato, half was soft, and an eggier bread. However, the bruscetta toasts were much, much thicker than the fresh bread, too thick for bruscetta. I would reverse the thickness, or just skip the bruscetta thing and simply serve good bread or rolls, which I was hoping would be served.

We were asked when we left "how was everything?" What could we do? We told them. I was trying to be nice about it, because I really want it to be a great diner, as we live in the area. I gave them the web address and hope they take the notes offered here by us and others as constructive criticism and make improvements. If you are here, please feel free to log in and post replies. Let us know what changes you agree or disagree need to be made.

I'm surprised Jason didn't mention this part: the first time we were there he noticed their computer ordering system. Very sophisticated for a diner. Cool.

I think they have aspirations to be a sophisticated restaurant with a diner atmosphere. However, what Tenafly needs is not another sophisticated restaurant, but a real diner. We'll go back in a while like Jason said, I suppose we shouldn't judge too harshly without having sampled the standard diner fare like a turkey club sandwich or burgers.

[201]

Ahh... the diner. It's usually the first thing I miss when I'm out of the NY/NJ area, but it's the last place where I'd try to order something complicated. Well, when I say "complicated", I mean anything where there could be serious complicaTIONS. I don't think I've ever seen anyone I've dined with ordering seafood at a diner. It's usually not worth the risk.

Actually, most of my friends think that I'm being too adventurous when I order pasta, but I've found their fears are usually unwarranted. USUALLY. The Stateline Diner on Route 17 in Mahwah is a frightening exception... even their coffee and WATER can be horrible.

Generally speaking, I only hold about 30% of any diner's menu up to a higher standard and completely write off the rest. I like to tell that to friends visiting from out of state, but I let them try to figure out what a diner can cook well. I feel it gives them a nice sense of adventure their first few times out. Of course, different diners do produce different results, so I like to take the occasional gamble myself.

Anyway, from the Perlows' meal I would've gambled on the meat loaf, but only the Greek side salad would fall into that 30% of dishes that I would hold to a higher standard (I usually think salad is safer than soup). And from what Jason wrote, it seems like the salad failed. I think Rachel certainly did the right thing in being honest about her opinion of the food, but I'm cynical enough to think it won't do much good. Well, it might do more good than a suggestion to the owner of a McDonald's, but probably not much more... especially if the place is always packed with customers who likely wouldn't even THINK about discussing diners on the web!

Still, by all means... support your local diner! (unless it happens to be the Stateline... or the Horizon for that matter)

[Rachel Perlow]

I know what you mean. Meatloaf is a dish that a diner should do well. I was in a "big salad" mood, and that one sounded good to me. It probably wasn't as much the 'seafood in a diner' thing as it was the 'seafood on a Monday' thing, I suspect. My dad's regular order at the Millburn Diner was the whole baby trout or flounder. My mom almost always gets stuffed flounder or sole, but I wasn't about to try the halibut francaise they had as a dinner special. As for soups, Jason loves to get matzo ball soup as a diner test, TCD didn't have it, we tried the soups they had. I didn't think either was bad. Actually, I liked mine.