this is not going to help the lines
1 Like
taking reservations for christmas
love Nancy and have no feelings one way or the other about Phil.
i donât want to get into the whole diner cosplay thing theyâre doing here. i feel ill equipped, emotionally, to speak about this place, objectively. itâd just be a bunch of angry rhetoric.
i will defer to a guy whoâs extremely humble and kind. heâs genuine and has been quietly promoting actual diner + long-standing establishments for a couple years now. he has a very mature take on this place
he was also running diner meet ups for a while, like when raising caneâs was taking over the Normâs space and was threatening to close it down. really good dude, recommend following him if you love Los Angeles
20 Likes
great link - thanks for bringing that here!
4 Likes
Seems like his view is that they should use cheap ingredients to keep prices down.
What are some of his favorite ârealâ diners? He mentioned one place in Chinatown.
@robert i canât get the link to work but if you search 1000 old school la eateries you should be able to find a map he created, itâs also in the dinertheory ig linktree
3 Likes
The one in Chinatown pretty sure itâs Nickâs Cafe.
This comment in his substack reminds me very much on authenticity discussion of dishes which will be always a long discussion nobody can agree on a âfinalâ verdict
âBut Phil really insists that this is a neighborhood diner. He doesnât want you to pretend, he wants you to believe the illusion. In that very specific way, the Tesla Diner might be more authentic than Max & Helenâs.â
5 Likes
personally, i donât feel like thatâs the takeaway? he doesnât mention ingredient costs and, also, stresses how much care there is put into the sourcing and food itself at Max & Helenâs.
iâm happy to pull a bunch of his better vids, if youâre sincerely interested, but his general thing is highlighting community spots that have been around for decades and 1) are on the verge of closing 2) are closing 3) or have closed.
full disclosure: i have absolutely no relationship with this man, have tried messaging him a few times, and heâs never once replied haha
5 Likes
He mentioned costs of several items, including $26 for the patty melt without fries, and mentioned that bacon and eggs are cheaper there than at Nickâs Cafe.
He likes ârealâ diners and thinks they should be cheap, which is impossible without using cheap ingredients.
1 Like
a real diner should be a comfortable place for as wide a cross-section of its neighborhood as possible, and for the vast majority of neighborhoods, price is a significant component of that.
thereâs nothing wrong with âcheapâ ingredients - they are not a moral judgment on the people that eat them or use them.
2 Likes
You generally canât make food as good as good as Nancy Silvertonâs buying whateverâs cheapest from Sysco.
The âneighborhoodâ this diner is in is Hancock Park/Larchmont so yeah the prices and quality is whatâs expected tbh
3 Likes
ehhh. there was a period were the night-shift cook at my local IHOP was 10000% on his game and making pattymelts that stacked up against chris kronnerâs patty melts using sysco commodity ingredient
7 Likes
As far as prices, the soup and the pancake were pretty competitive with other diners - I believe both items were priced exactly the same as S&P, though of course the patty melt was quite pricy. And to my great annoyance, fries are not included, priced separately at $8.
Hungry Haroldâs uses store bought Texas Toast, Kraft singles, some plain old ground beef, and thinly sliced onions caramelized just to the point where theyâre almost but not quite crispy, bleeding their essence into the melt. Hungry Haroldâs is the patty melt I will always remember, that Iâll always be impressed by; not just because itâs cheap, but because it does so much with so little. Silverton does a fairly good job, but she starts with everything she could ever need, which makes the final product somewhat less impressive as an achievement even if it is technically âbetterâ than Hungry Haroldâs from a chefâs-eye view.
Max & Helenâs wants to be the future of the diner. If this venture is successful, the Rosenthals have indicated they might like to take it nationwide as a major chain. I donât mind if this is one path diners might take in the coming years. I just donât know if I want this to be the only future for the diner. A chain kind of inherently lacks a community-centric character that seems important to what a diner is.
Whatever critique I may have though, I think Max & Helenâs give us some reason to be hopeful for the future of American diners. Would I suggest that you eat at an old classic over a new, celebrity-backed diner-concept? Absolutely, but even I recognize that the future is pretty dim if we reject everything new that could be said for the diner and rely on the old-timers to stay around indefinitely. Because they wonât. They canât.
his substack article seems pretty fair to me and he makes a lot of concessions in the price department (brings up a places the prices are comparable to, pressures on prices, having to raise prices for quality, etc.).
i think itâs alright to have a platonic ideal of an establishment and to make a case for it. itâs not like heâs not saying thereâs no space for phil and nancyâs approach. weâre more open to having an image of a âperfectâ classic steakhouse like Peter Lugerâs, but get shy when cost (say, affordability) is considered integral to that ideal. some might prefer if all places aimed for the best quality and taste, but i think something a bit more mundane and normal can âperfectâ in its own way.
8 Likes
I dunno, I can see a small town where the local Dennyâs or Carrows would be a community anchor or meeting pointâŚ
4 Likes
donât doubt it. im guessing heâs more talking about community-centric character backed by a sense of locality, but idk. think âinherentlyâ is the key word here. homespun probably feels more community centric by nature (?), though you can make an anchor out of a Waffle House if you want or need to. individual lines can only tell us so much, and writing about this stuff at large inevitably gets a bit hand wavy and imprecise, haha.
3 Likes
Yes, he brings up the cost of items on the menu. Mentioning that a patty melt costs $26, in a review, is worthwhile. He never says, or implies, anything about sourcing, or that they should be using cheap-ass Sysco ingredients. He also explicitly states how all diners, in general, are overpriced now.
The $$$ price point is not the takeaway. Shifting gears into my own opinions:
I think weâre seeing this from orthogonal angles. Youâre right, thereâs no question that the food is superb and the ingredients they use match that. People love it, and I am genuinely glad that they love it.
The thing isâM&H is trying to, quite literally, emulate spots that have existed and still exist, having somehow survived the COVID shutdown. Raeâs & Pannâs from the â50s, Dupars from the â30s, Eat at Joes & Gardena Bowl Coffee Shop from the â60s, etc. etc.
It is 2025 and this is the place setting for a table at M&H. It is a simulated experience of âdays gone by,â down to grabbing shitty 1/8-ply napkins out of a dispenser.
Phil appears in several interviews talking about reviving diner culture and local community hangouts.
Weâre not bereft of that. Itâs everywhere.
You can walk into diners anywhere, sit at the counter, have a meal for about $11 and talk to all the old timers, who all know each other, and are known by the staff. You could stand in line for 2hrs for M&H and never see anyone around you again.
I genuinely pray this doesnât become the model. A simulacrum of all the things we already have. Please support your local diners.
[Sorry to rant. Just how I feel about this place. Iâm sure the quality of breakfast is fantastic for most people.]
10 Likes
Anywhere? Where in Larchmont Village is such a place?
3 Likes
âIt is 2025 and this is the place setting for a table at M&H. It is a simulated experience of âdays gone by,â down to grabbing shitty 1/8-ply napkins out of a dispenser.â
I donât understand why people feel nostalgia for this. To me itâs like: remember the good old days of bad food and oily fingers with the napkins falling apart? Yeah, I remember! Maybe others had some memorable social interactions at these places?
FWIW it seems to me that The Pantry is a very classic LA diner with a long line comprising a diverse cross section of the LA community. Nobody here sings its praises.