This morning I'm having breakfast with a friend at a local diner. Man, I love diners. There's just something about their history and the way that they resist the inevitable creep of corporate food (Denny's pseudo-diners excepted). Me and TheWife™ actually have a collection of diner mugs as well as some diner prints on the kitchen wall (check out Don Sawyer's Diner Art). In honor of this, allow me to go on a bit about a few of our favorite diners.

The A-1 Diner, Gardiner, Maine. With an extremely eclectic menu and a very interesting location (on metal stilts), we must stop at the A-1 on the way to Bar Harbor.

Moody's Diner, Waldoboro, Maine. This place has been here forever (just check out the old photos). Fun to stop at in the winter, completely mobbed in the summer. It's worth the wait.

Becky's Diner, Portland, Maine. My goodness, we were in Portland a little while ago and thought they'd closed Becky's. No, they'd renovated the place. So much so that I didn't recognize it. The customers didn't seem to care though, as the line spilled out into the parking lot on a cold and nasty morning.

Chelsea Royal Diner, Brattleboro, Vermont. This place is about a 90 minute drive from where we live and it's totally worth it. Fantastic food, great service, and a very cool environment.

Littleton Diner, Littleton, New Hampshire. In the White Mountains, up past Franconia Notch and the (now faceless) Old Man in the Mountain lies the town of Littleton. It's a great getaway for us because we can stay at a hotel that's flanked on one side by a book store and on the other by this fine establishment. If you go there for breakfast, you can have pancakes made from flour ground at a local mill.

Peterborough Diner, Peterborough, New Hampshire. Ah, our diner. They know us by name, and the cup of coffee (for me) and the glass of diet RC Cola (for TheWife™) show up at the table before we've settled in. Try the Boston cream pie. It's insanely great.

This particular diner I'm going to this morning is a new one. 'New' in the sense that the ownership has recently changed. Renovations involved ripping out the swanky restaurant that had failed there and restoring the diner atmosphere that had been there long ago. I'll be listening to the fabulous Martin Sexton on the way over as his great Black Sheep record contains "Diner," one of best tributes to diners ever. C'mon, how many tunes fit in the word 'Bakelite'?

Anybody out there have a favorite diner? A favorite diner meal? Song?