The Edinburgh Diner: Attack of the Killer Tenderloins

The Edinburgh Diner, 413 S. Eisenhower Drive in (duh) Edinburgh, Indiana is (yay!) NOT in a strip mall.  It's in what used to be a very nice Dairy Queen, with large greenhouse windows in the front. That, unfortunately, is the one thing I didn't like about it:  It has a long front counter and a large open space that accommodated lines of people waiting for their ice cream, but which now is a big waiting area for people who want a table in the relatively tiny dining room.  On the early Saturday afternoon we visited, it was packed!  I asked The Little Woman if we should perhaps choose another establishment, but at that moment a server passed by with one of their Breaded Tenderloin sandwiches and our decision was made for us. "I don't care HOW long we have to wait," said TLW, "I'm having one of those."

We actually didn't have to wait more than about 10 minutes for a table: one of two hard-charging servers waited on us promptly, and our food arrived a very short time later. The GIANT pounded-out thin (half-inch thick, breading included) tenderloin patty was rectangular, roughly 12" square with a 4" round bun top whimsically perched in the middle. It came with your choice of either fries or a bowl of vegetable soup. For some insane reason we ordered Mozzarella Sticks as an appetizer: they were better than most I've had, dense cheese with just a thin coating and accompanied by a too large bowl of Marinara sauce.  The vegetable soup was chocked full of fresh ingredients but lacked seasoning.

And now we return you to the Breaded Tenderloin: I hate the modern use of periods for emphasis but IT.WAS.EXCELLENT! (Did I do that right?)  I took a photo but it doesn't do justice to the beauty of the rough-hewed culinary artwork placed before us-- it was a delightful golden brown and smelled delicious. Not being a chef, it's hard for me to say exactly what makes this particular sandwich so great.  I'm generally not a big fan of pounded thin patties, but this one had a kind of light coating that was incredibly well-seasoned, though not so much that you lose the flavor of the meat inside, which was light and perfectly cooked.  TLW and I split the sandwich THREE times, eating a little less than half in the Diner and then, after a suitable bloat-recovery time, two more meals at home. AND it was just as good reheated each time.  COME 'N GET IT!

Larrison's Diner: Old-School Cool

As you can tell, we've eaten at a lot of small-town restaurants with widely varying experiences, and it's not just the food that makes a place memorable.  There's that one really odd place, for example, in Markle (or was it Markleville?) that smelled like a musty old library because they actually sold old books and antique kitsch items as well as food.  It may be the name, like Come 'N Git It! in Martinsville, or it may be the wide variety of food (also Come 'N Git It!)  

With Larrison's Diner, located on the far, far, south side of Indy in Seymour, Indiana, it's hard to articulate exactly why I like it so much. The food's decent for sure, but the menu is just the basic breakfast, burgers, and sandwiches.  Their space in a couple of old storefronts in a building downtown is clean and simple but nothing fancy, with a row of booths, a row of 2-person tables, a lunch counter with stools and a menu board up on the wall, and two small dining rooms in the back.  I think it's that it is somehow just so, so COMFORTABLE overall.  The food ain't bad, either!