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Rock Island Diner

SOMETIMES when I find myself in one of the burgeoning number of All-American, Y'Have-A-Nice-Day-Now restaurants in London, I speculate on how visiting Amer- icans feel about being served tepid burgers by a pharmaceutically cheerful teenager in bobby-socks and a paper bow-tie. How would I feel if I walked into a restaurant in one of the sweatier quarters of Manhattan where only English tourists venture, and was offered authentic rusk-filled sausages and eggs fried to an authentic transparency by an American wearing an authentically grimy shirt who insisted on addressing me in rhyming slang and beaming `Right-ho, me old matey!' every time I asked for another glass of Mackeson?

As it happened there was just such an American couple in the next booth at the Rock Island Diner when I ate there last week, and they seemed to be loving every minute of it. It was only after I'd spent ten minutes watching them pointing out the signs reading 'Warning! Our Waitresses Pinch Back!' and the displays of vintage baseball bats that I realised that the reason they were having such fun was that, although they were American and this was an American restaurant, they'd never seen anywhere like it.

We asked for the quietest seat in the room, and the entirely non-American wait- er led us through to the back, between a bar sheathed in quilted aluminium sheeting and a photo-me booth, and gave us a menu each. He engaged us immediately in what we were assured was a typical Rock Island conversation, We looked at the menu and said, 'What does "milk gravy" mean?'

He said, 'What?'

`WHAT'S THIS MILK GRAVY?'

`OH, RIGHT! It's like gry whn lk the mmmm nnp...'

`WHAT?'

LIKE IT'S GRAVY WHICH IS SORT OF CREAMY, BUT...'

American this place may be, but the noise ensures it will never be the Round Table at the Algonquin. In the middle of the room is a glass booth from which a full-time DJ plays deafening Sam and Dave and Otis Reading oldies. Indeed, halfway through our meal a very tall bald man in Peg-top chinos and a very short girl in munition-workers slacks stood up and per- formed a horribly energetic jive at our table. 'Are they part of our eating experi-

ence?' I asked the waiter, imagining they might be the be-bop restaurant equivalent of the man who plays scratchy Liszt to your partner in a bad Hungarian restaurant. `WHAT?' he said. Eventually, after a lot more shouting he managed to tell us that these were part of a wandering troupe of rock 'n' rollers who hang out at the Diner, and we ordered.

The Diner's decor might come from some film set dresser's fantasy, but the menu is as near as London comes to a proper American short-order menu. The Diner understands that it's possible to cook an egg in half a dozen ways, or that chips can become a meal if they're served with the right combination of cheeses and gra- vies. Equally, chilli and hot dogs come in as many varieties as the burgers you'd find at the average United States airport snack bar, which is to say in three or more of each than London's other Fifties burger bars.

Not that the burger was up to the standard of, for instance, Ed's Easy Din- er's, being less coarse than a burger should be and, because no one asked how we wanted it, cooked over-brown. The Chick- en Fried Steak turned out, after a lot more shouting, to be a steak deep fried in batter, which is to say as Colonel Sanders fries his chickens. Luckily, though, while the Col- onel seems to use industrial grade card- board to flesh out his batter, the Diner chef uses something altogether softer which melts happily in the milk gravy. Better still, the mashed potatoes involve someone actually getting a potato and mashing it, which is a rarity nowadays in a world where Smash reigns.

The restaurant smacks of being the sort of place estranged fathers take the kids when it's their weekend, and you'll spend at least a pound for every dollar you would have spent on the equivalent on Route 101. But if you can bear the loud music and the poster decor and occasionally hanker for a proper chilli-dog or an honest corned beef hash, .there is no real alternative to the Diner in London.

Rock Island Diner, London Pavilion, Piccadilly, London WI. Telephone 01-287 5500

. John Diamond

Nigella Lawson has food poisoning. She will return in two weeks.