by Robert Spalding

Created on: January 06, 2009

New Jersey may be nicknamed the Garden State but I assure you there are many more diners in New Jersey than there are gardens. It's impossible to drive a mile in many areas without passing a chrome and neon greasy spoon. Let's be honest they all look alike, they really do. They all look like they were designed by some art deco obsessed architect and you'd be foolish not to think you will get some form of food borne illness just by walking through the door.

When you walk in the door, though, they are generally clean or at least cleaner than your average Denny's which is to say there is no mold clinging to the ceiling and the floors have less than three days grease on the floor. The menus vary from the very small and basic to well over a hundred items but there is always one common factor, the desserts. The desserts all look identical in every New Jersey diner, every cherry cheesecake looks like every other cherry cheesecake, every black forest cake looks like every other black forest cake, you get the idea. Despite this apparent cloning of sugary treats every diner has a sign that states "All baking done on premises" how can this be? How can every single of the nearly infinite number of diners in New Jersey bake their own desserts yet every dessert look alike? One late night I learned how.

I had just finished work, a long late night managing a restaurant. The deposit did not add up to what it should despite the tape adding up. It turned out one of my servers came into the office tipped out the bussers, talked to me for a bit and I forgot to take his money, stupid him, even more stupid me. He called me while I was tearing the office apart looking for the missing cash, I managed to act like I was about to call him, I'm sure I was quite convincing. He returned and gave me the money and low and behold the deposit matched.

After this experience most people would want a nice stiff drink, but me? I wanted a nice greasy burger and I knew just the place, a place simply known as The Diner. The Diner server the greasiest burgers in the county and they were open twenty four hours a day which was convenient because by the time I got there it was well past three in the morning. To my surprise the place was a little busy, numerous drunken college kids milled about. I was sure that if I had looked I would have found some of my employees so I did not look. I sat at the counter and promptly stuck to it. I did not need to look at the menu which is good because it, too, was stuck

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