Georgetown Cafe, Georgetown, D.C.

There's something comforting about a diner. The food is always simple, plentiful, and cheap, and one can always count on getting full without emptying one's wallet. Diners are surprisingly hard to find in D.C., probably because their low prices don't generate the cash flow needed to support the high rents in most parts of town, which makes it all the more surprising that we would find a diner not only in Georgetown but on the tony Wisconsin Avenue.

Ian has been trying for weeks to get me to try one of his favorite diners, the Georgetown Cafe, so off there we went last night. It was an interesting irony since this is one of the few times we've been out before midnight when lots of restaurants are still open, yet the Georgetown Cafe is open twenty-four hours a day.

Georgetown Cafe isn't your stereotypical diner. In addition to burgers and breakfast items, they have a large selection of Middle Eastern foods. Located on the upper floor of a narrow, old building, decor is sparse around the cheap, utilitarian tables and chairs. A long bar in the back suggests that at one time the space may have been a restaurant with a liquor license, but it's now used as a service station for the wait staff.

Diners always make me crave chicken-fried steaks and gravy; alas, there were no such treats on the menu. Then I looked at the burgers, but Ian wanted breakfast—omelettes, specifically—and he's not much of a carnivore, so I acquiesced to breakfast as well, ordering a ham and cheddar cheese omelette. Ian chose a Swiss cheese omelette with home fries, potato slices lightly pan fried until soft. Both omelettes came with buttered white bread toast which was rather lighter than I would have preferred for "toast," and little pre-packaged servings of grape jelly. We also ordered a basket of French fries; the fries had been lightly battered and expertly deep-fried; they were just great, being the highlight of the meal.




For beverages, I had an iced tea, which was fine, and Ian had a Coke, which I noted came from a gun in the bar and looked, I thought, a little weak.

Even though we'd eaten breakfast foods for supper, we both opted for dessert, Ian the chocolate cake and me the carrot cake. Both of the cakes were "homemade" and fresh; they both arrived covered in commercial whipped cream; the chocolate cake also got squirts of chocolate syrup.




It was nice getting to try Georgetown Cafe finally, since most of my eating-out friends like Svet and Tony are food snobs who don't like diner food; in fact, when Tony was in D.C. last January, we walked in to Georgetown Cafe and he refused to eat there, making us land at the incredibly overpriced and mediocre Cafe Milano. Ian will no doubt drag me to the cafe again, so I'll have to try some of the grill sandwiches and the entrees, which are really the true test of a diner, especially one that doesn't have chicken-fried steak.