Unmodern Modern Diner, Pawtucket, RI, April 2012

Sad days. The days of Providence's Special One were numbered. After brutalising my stomach with Hooters' chicken wings the night before I put my stomach back in front of the cholesterol firing line. Having driven past this static time warp some months before I made a mental note to come back. This was the perfect opportunity - Jose's last breakfast.

Breakie gets a thumbs up

Looks like a piss take...

It was a fresh sunny day in Rhode Island. We turned up to the address and Jose parked his car recklessly half in the carpark and half on the pavement next to a telephone pole. The Modern Diner was a clever (or lazy) description of the diner. It quite clearly used to be some sort of mobile truck but over the years its reputation must have outgrown its tin can fabrication, and the owner just stuck an extension to the back. The extension being a new building.

I was expecting Ron Howard to skate up to me with a 24/7 smile and lead me to a table. Instead we made our sorry ways to the counter. My attention was grabbed, though, by the guy next to me generously seasoning something in his bowl with maple syrup. I couldn't work out what it was as it looked sinewy like corned beef. But no, it could not have been corn beef because that uncouth neanderthal is glazing it liberally with maple syrup. Unbelievably it was corned beef as confirmed by our stoic waitress. Un-fucking-believable. Surely mixing maple syrup with corned beef results in a colloid that even the Large Hadron Collider would have difficulties in explaining. I'm sure that Heston Blumenthal would blow torch that shit to carbon puffs and bury it in the Greek economy.

I asked our waitress whether the owner was still around. I got a stout 'yes'. End of conversation. Great. I would have got more information from doing house to house calls in Chongqing investigating Neil Heywood's tragic death and Lord Lucan's whereabouts.  So, I ordered an Eggs Benedict with sausage. Obviously the sausage did not look phallic like a sausage should but it looked like a burger that was placed neatly on top of a muffin. Although I wonder whether this sausage was actually made from pork after picking up a copy of a Jewish daily newspaper whilst meandering to the bathroom. Whilst on my bathroom tour I managed to sample the atmosphere in the rest of the The Modern Diner. It was definitely modern and Rhode Island; i.e. devoid of atmosphere. There was no character. It was full of normal average boring people from boring Rhode Island being boring. Back to my breakfast. It was actually really good save the suspicious kosherness of the 'sausage'. The poached eggs were cooked exactly how I liked them. The yolk was neither too runny nor overcooked but rather it might be considered like foetal fibronectin if you have a vivid imagination. The hollondaise sauce tasted real too. It was creamy, rich and bland but with an obtuse punt to it. It was not spoilt by the addition of superfluous bullshit ingredients that I have come to expect. If it had a bit of zest, say with a squeeze of lemon and a bit of pepper it would have been A star. Nevertheless, I liked it because it was probably bad for me. All of this was served on a standard muffin and garnished with a couple of parsley leaves positioned at the right place at the right time. What was also interesting was the potato hash, which had just enough spice for an interracial marriage. Squirt on some ketchup and bang! Bob's your uncle.

The Ho Down says: There was nothing special about The Modern Diner. It was old and tired as was the food but the old guard never lets you down.