Thursday, February 19, 2009

Arlington Diner

New Jersey is well known for it's diners. There is at least one diner in every neighborhood (usually more than one). I just love diners. I love how it has that retro 50's feel to it and how we can get good tasting comfort foods without breaking the bank.
We checked out Arlington Diner in North Arlington, NJ last weekend. I have always wanted to check that diner out every time we drove by. It has this retro shiny, lots of lights diner look on the exterior and wondered if it also looks the same in the interior.

The diner had ample parking spots that evening and we managed to get a spot real close to the entrance. I guess it was a little bit past dinner time when we walked in (we decided to have a late dinner cause we had a big Popeyes chicken lunch :P) so it wasn't really packed with people. We were greeted by our waiter the moment we walked in and was seated promptly. So, was the interior as retro as the exterior? Yup! We even got to sit in a nice booth, complete with a jukebox.

The waiter gave us this huge menu, it's seriously big. Looks like there is a pretty wide selection of diner food, ranging from burgers, wraps and sandwiches to pastas, steaks and seafood! They even have a large selection of desserts and they boast to have the best cheesecake in town. We also learnt from the menu cover that this diner was established in 1958! After all this years, the exterior still looks pretty the same.

Kevin and I decided to order from the 'specials' section of the menu. Your main comes with a choice of soup or salad, choice of potato, choice of vegetable and dessert. To start things off, we had a choice of Vegetable and Chicken Soup or Vegetable and Barley Soup. I chose the Vege & Chicken Soup. It was alright, not the best soup I have ever tasted but not bad either. There were a lot of chicken and vegetable chunks in the soup though. However, I do find it to be on the oily side.

Kevin tried the Vegetable and Barley Soup. He said he liked it but it would have tasted even better if it wasn't so watery. Both soups came with crackers on the side.

For our mains, Kevin ordered Pot Roast ($9.85). The portion was pretty large, about 7-8 pieces of meat. Kevin said that it tasted good. I guess it must be good, he finished everything up!

I ordered the Chopped Steak ($10.95). The portion was really really big. It was cooked medium well, just like how I ordered it and they were not stingy on the big chunks of mushrooms. It was also juicy and the gravy tasted good. Not too shabby for $10.95 :P

We were given the choice of french fries, home fries, baked, mashed and potato pancake for our potato side. We initially ordered potato pancakes but the waiter came back later to tell us that the kitchen just ran out of potato pancakes. So, we order mashed potatoes instead. I'm glad we ordered the mashed potato. It's really one of the best mashed potatoes I have ever eaten. Really creamy and yummy. Very very good. We had a choice of string beans, carrots, corn or mix vegetables. We both chose corn. Yesss....I know. It just happened that we both liked the same thing. So sue us :P

For dessert, we had a choice of chocolate, vanilla or rice pudding. We could also add $1.25 more and get to choose a slice of any cake or pie from the menu. We were pretty stuffed by then so we decided to stick to the pudding. I love rice pudding, so I had that. Nothing much to say, it's just pudding. Hahaha.

This is Kevin's chocolate pudding. He loveeeeeeeeeees pudding too, especially chocolate pudding. He couldn't even wait for me to take a photo of it. While I was taking a photo of my pudding, he already ate half of his!

Overall, it was a good meal. We also had two sodas (refillable) for $1.75 each. The total bill came up to about $27. I feel that it's a good price for so much food. The service can be a little bit slow at times but the good food makes up for that. I would definitely recommend this diner to anybody who is looking for an all American diner experience.


Arlington Diner
1 River Road,
North Arlington, NJ 07031
Tel: (201) 998-6262
Fax: (201) 998-4454

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