Dad and His Diners

By Raanan Geberer
(first published in "Smith" online magazine)

Ever since my wife and I got married, my father, when he met us, would only eat at diners. And he would only order three things: a tuna fish sandwich, a mushroom omelette or a cheese omelette. He’d make a big show of going through the menu, then summon the waiter or waitress and declare: "Ummm, I think I’ll have a cheese omelette!"
Sooner or later we got tired of this, and we suggested other places. We first suggested an Italian restaurant a block away. Dad got upset. "I don’t like spaghetti!" he said. Then we suggested a Chinese restaurant nearby. This made him even more alarmed. "Seventy-five percent of what you get in a Chinese restaurant is pork!" he declared. Dad wasn’t strictly kosher, but eating pork and shrimp was where he drew the line, and he would never take a chance on eating something new that turned out to be pork. We reassured him that the Chinese restaurant had many chicken or vegetable dishes. We ordered for him – pan-fried noodles with vegetables – and surprisingly, he liked it. "This is very tasty," he beamed. But after that, he went back to his diner-only regime. Every time we saw him, he would repeat over and over, "I’ll go anywhere you want," but "anywhere" usually turned out to be either the Regal diner, the Moonstruck diner or the Chelsea Square diner.
This continued until the time took us out to one of the People’s Symphony Concerts, a series of low-cost chamber music concerts held at a high school on Irving Place on the East Side. My wife had recently been to Irving Place, and was excited about the prospect of going to one of the interesting-looking restaurants on that short but historic thoroughfare before the concert. There was a Northern Italian restaurant, there was a place with the evocative name "Friend of a Farmer," there was a European-style coffeehouse that served sandwiches, and there was the historic Pete’s Tavern, which had been there since 1864. At last, we would have something different! She was elated.
The big day came. We told my father that there were several restaurants we were interested in near the school. But before we had the chance to mention them by name, he smiled conspiratorially and said, "I knew a place. It’s right nearby. It’s a secret. Follow me!"
"It’s a secret?"
"Trust me!"
We kept walking, with my father saying "Trust me!" every few seconds and chuckling. Suddenly, he stopped. "Here it is!"
"Oh, no!"
In the middle of this street of exciting restaurants, my father had managed to find the one diner.
"It’s got everything!" he enthused. "You can get pancakes, omelettes, sandwiches, soup, hamburgers, you name it! OK?"
"Well, I guess so," my wife said in a low, disappointed voice.
"I knew you’d like it. See, I told you I’d go anywhere you want to go!"
Well, we suffered through the diner, which wasn’t bad as diners go, and went to see the concert. We finally got the chance to go to one of those Irving Place restaurants a few months later – on our own. And my wife must have gotten over it, because she was one of the last people to see my father alive when he was in the hospital and was glad about that.
Now, when go out to eat, we go to a Chinese restaurant, a Thai restaurant, a burrito place, a pizza place – or a diner. And when we go to the diner, it’s because we want to go, on our own terms.
We tell this story a lot, with a slight laugh. And we hope that wherever Dad is, there are old-fashioned New York diners with tuna fish sandwiches, mushroom omelettes and cheese omelettes.