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The Highland breakfast

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Written by James Dempsey

The Highland Park Diner is easy on the eyes, a tidy barrel-roofed gem on South Clinton Street in Rochester, New York with pink neon caressing the clock smack in the center of the building.

The Rochester Wiki web site reports that the diner was manufactured by the Orleans Diner company of Albion, New York in the late 1940's. To my uneducated eyes the style is heavily reminiscent of the Worcester diner, though somewhat wider. The diner has never been moved from its site, though for a period served as an off-track betting center. Across the street is the Cinema Theater, whose pink and aqua color scheme seems to be trying just a little too hard in a neighborhood of mostly muted colors.

I entered alone, and the waitress told me to sit anywhere, which sadly suggests that fewer and fewer people understand diner etiquette these days. I asked if she minded my taking a booth. Just don’t take the biggest one, she said. It was 7 a.m. Saturday morning, and there were only a handful of customers.

The interior seemed quite authentic, apart from the brown foot-square floor tiles, whose inoffensiveness made them inconspicuous if not complementary. Also, the counter had no fixed stools, just 13 free-standing padded bar stools along the counter. I don’t know if this is common for Orleans diners (evidently only four were ever made).

It also seemed curious to my eyes that all the grilling and cooking was done in the room at the rear, so if you’re the kind of person who likes to watch and admire (or critique) short-order skills as you wait for your food, you’ll be disappointed. Perhaps this lack of activity behind the counter explains the owners’ decision to hang a couple of small flat-panel televisions behind the counter, to give diners something to look at beside the sunburst stainless steel back-splashes and another clock haloed in neon. The television volume was turned down, and classic rock was playing in the background.

The coffee was hot and good. I ordered the corned beef hash, having heard that it was homemade and excellent, along with poached eggs, home fries and wheat toast. My food arrived within minutes.

The poached eggs were perfect—hot, strained of excess water, the yolks liquid sunny gold. I asked for butter for my toast, which the waitress had forgotten. She asked if I wanted a refill of my coffee when my cup was still half-full.

The hash was certainly pleasant and tasty, neither overly nor eccentrically spiced, but loose and a touch dry for my taste. It was hot but had not been fried to a crust on the underside, which is how I am used to eating it; no doubt I could have requested this. The home fries were thoroughly adequate.

Critics on the Internet review sites complain that the prices at the Highland Park are too high for diner fare, but I think my plate of food was well worth the $8.96 I was charged.