In the great American roadside idiom, the diner is sacred ground, stainless in a rusting world, unchangeable and enduring, a waitress named Mary watching over you, dispensing a bottomless cup of joe (= love).
So of course the recent relaunch (after 15 months downtime) of the Silk City Diner at Fifth and Spring Garden was bound to set off an intense round of grousing: What, no breakfast hours? Or lunch, either (at least for this summer)? What's with the prices?!
Even the vegetarians had a beef: A few old favorites had been 86ed.
Diner change is traumatic, no getting around it. But by Week Two, the puckish new owner, Mark Bee, a plumbing contractor who'd opened N. 3rd in Northern Liberties three years ago, had heard enough.
He picked the brains of his staff of merry pranksters; jotted down ad copy for the local giveaways: "If you miss the old Silk," one line went, "quit your bitchin', and get in touch with our kitchen. . . ."
Well, I decided to do just that one morning, stepping past the conjoined lounge (where Bee is staging late-night DJs, rock bands, and drag queens), and the blinding glitter - on a column up front - of disco-ball tile.
The vintage Formica counter has been jacked up slightly. The place has been spiffed up (but not gutted like the old Continental was in Old City). Its harsh, Night Hawks fluorescence, happily, has been softened to a cherry-pink blush.
In the kitchen, chef Peter Dunmire was scraping the bottom of a big stove-top pan, sizzling backs and wings with rough-chunked carrots, onions, and celery for the rosemary chicken gravy he'd be serving with the roasted chicken (with mashed potatoes and sage stuffing, $16) that evening.
He was building flavor the classic way: In went the homemade chicken stock, and syncopated glugs of Chateau Luzerne, the jug wine, coincidentally, that they used to serve by the glass at Eden, the Chestnut Street eatery where Dunmire first worked in his teens.
He'd reduce the stock for four hours or more.
So, no, he's not turning out your usual diner fare; none of that yellow, bagged gravy-glop here. And no mushy frozen fries (they're hand cut), or store-bought flatbread for the Mediterranean special tonight. Dunmire patted a mound of sticky dough rising in a bowl like a baby's tummy. Later, it would be flattened and grilled, topped with the plum tomatoes roasting in the oven, some grilled onion, and curried lamb tenderloin.
