The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

So a quick playful one today. This past weekend E and I went up to her parent’s summer house in New Hampshire to help close things up for the season. On the way back to the city Sunday we met up with one of her high school friends Sarah and her husband Dan for dinner in Brattleboro, Vermont. After some quick searching on chowhound (the best foodie forum out there!) we came up with the Chelsea Royal Diner as a good cheap quick place to eat.

The place itself is cute, it’s been around since 1938 and it has a lot of character (not to mention some questionable insulation - it was freaking freezing in there!). Fairly standard diner menu, although apparently on Fridays and Saturdays they have Mexican cuisine (odd, but voted best in Brattleboro 07 by some magazine). Being it was Sunday we went with the regular menu. Can’t complain about the prices. Eleanor got the meatloaf, which came with soup and two sides for 9.99 and I got the baked ziti which came with soup and garlic bread for 7.99. This is definitely not New York.

I had the corn chowder to start, which was surprisingly good. Loaded with toasted corn and potatoes, flavorful and hearty. Eleanor got the split pea soup; which I hate, so I can’t speak to it.

The ziti was very disappointing - the pasta was flavorless and incredibly mushy, and the sauce was also surprisingly flavorless. A bite without the melted topping of mozzarella was pretty much inedible. Although that’s probably a good thing, since it meant I only ate about half of the quite large serving. The garlic bread was good though.

Eleanor’s meatloaf was much more successful. Far from the best I’ve ever had, but flavorful and old fashioned. The real winner of the main course was her side of sweet potato fries - perfect blend of crispy outside and mushy inside, salty and sweet.

As one of the selling points to me of the place was that they make their own ice cream, we clearly needed to order dessert. I had the vanilla ice cream sunday, which was pretty close to perfect. Their vanilla ice cream is fantastic, creamy and intensely vanilla, and there was the perfect ratio of hot fudge sauce, whipped cream and sprinkles. Definitely helped to save the meal for me.

On a final note, I’m going to chalk up the ziti disaster to my ordering. Ziti’s a hard thing to get right, and really easy to get very wrong. At a high end restaurant, I expect everything on the menu to be exceptional, but at a cheap restaurant I expect things to be a mixed bag. I can’t say I’d seek the Royal Diner out again, but if it worked out, I’d happily stop back in - although I might just order sweet potato fries and an ice cream sunday.

C

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