Vegas Diner comes close to re-creating the diner genre, decorated with corrugated tin walls and framed photos of old and new Vegas, filling the room with the doo-wop music that was so popular in a kinder, gentler era. Gobbling up a plate of crispy, well-seasoned home fries, each piece golden-brown and wickedly crunchy, I had a vision of a waitress in my hometown who called me Peter Sellers, and was never in a good mood.
Vegas Diner took over for a place called the 5 and Diner, and until recently, had two locations. But the Eastern Avenue restaurant is now closed, leaving only the West Sahara branch.
Breakfasts, served all day, are hit-and-miss. The omelets and the chicken-fried steak are definite hits. My friend loved his vegetarian omelet, loaded with fresh mushrooms, broccoli, green peppers, onions, tomatoes and spinach, all topped with American cheese. And I ate far too much of my country-fried steak and eggs, the steak an ode to guilt-ridden cholesterol bingeing, topped with a creamy country gravy that you'd be well advised to eat sparingly.
But the pancakes, covered with a thin, commercial syrup, were tasteless, though made from a scratch batter. And a stuffed French toast oozed too much of its cream-cheese filling. The menu sensibly allows you to substitute fruit for home fries and toast, or even turkey sausage for pork sausage for a small extra charge. So why not allow the option of having a better pancake syrup as well?
Everything on the menu is served all day, which means that you can have breakfast at 10 p.m., or the Reuben burger, served on grilled rye bread with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and Russian dressing, at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning, which is what I did, to the vast disapproval of my wife and an elderly lady reading the Sunday Times next to us.
You'd better come for lunch or dinner, though, if you plan on digesting the roast tom turkey platter, the sautéed liver and onions or any of the seafood specialties. They come with a choice of the house soup or a hearty dinner salad, plus vegetables and rolls, so if you aren't really hungry, don't even think about it.
I must say I loved the turkey platter, but it's more like a turkey shawarma, crisped bits of meat on top of a rich, homemade dressing, than the usual sliced breast cloven from one of those turkey loaves most diners buy nowadays. The gravy tastes homemade as well, as do the lumpy mashed potatoes.
One of the best seafood specialties is broiled whitefish drenched with a lemon butter, and the broiled, stuffed shrimp remind me of what you get in New England, even if they are surely bought frozen and pre-stuffed from a restaurant-supply company. There is also a nice selection of stir-fries, chicken, shrimp, beef and scallops. I tried a beef and shrimp stir-fry, and it was delicious on rice, nicely seasoned with soy sauce and pepper and full of good vegetables.
The menu here is so extensive, actually, that it even includes a number of Italian dishes like lasagna and spaghetti and meatballs, a gargantuan affair that includes a pair of giant homemade meatballs and a serviceable marinara sauce.
Still, there may be one too many items on this menu, which is the case with dolmadakia, stuffed grape leaves that the waiter admitted were from a can, and strawberry cheesecake, where a perfectly good cheesecake made in-house is adulterated beyond being edible by a sweet, sticky red sauce that looks as if it had been made in a laboratory.
Do try the cheesecake plain, though, or any of the ice cream desserts, such as a nicely crafted banana split, or a double hot-fudge brownie sundae, big enough for a small family to share. Hey, Vegas Diner isn't the Miss Malden, but it'll do in a pinch.