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Home-style cooking: Diners draw crowds with affordable prices, exceptional food

By: Anne Braly
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Some say that if you've never been to Randy's Restaurant, a 200-seat diner in Trenton, Ga., you've never had a really good piece of fried chicken.

"It's as good as my grandmother's," said Deborah Tinker, director of the Dade County Chamber of Commerce and a frequent customer. "And they have a really good variety of vegetables every day."

Now in its 23rd year, Randy's is packed by noon, then clears out briefly before the dinnertime crowd starts arriving at 3 p.m.

"We come by whenever we're over this way," said Melburn Shields of Ringgold, Ga., who stopped in for a recent late lunch.

What is it about country cooking that he likes so much? "I reckon it's because I was raised on it," he said.

His brother, David Shields, said Randy's food reminds him of his momma's cooking. The fried chicken, he added, is among the best he's ever tasted.

For decades, diners with country cooking took a back seat to foods of a trendier nature. Lately, though, diners have regained ground.

New York-based food historian Francine Segan believes the popularity of country diners is twofold. First, she said, with the economy, people are looking for good, homemade food that doesn't carry a steep price.

Randy's all-you-can-eat food bar is priced at $8.95 to $11.95, depending on the time of day and day of the week. The fried chicken is on the food bar every day. On Friday nights, steak and seafood are added to the mix.

"Just about everything we serve is made from scratch," said Janice Howard, who owns the restaurant with her husband, Randy.

Additionally, Ms. Segan said, diners give restaurant owners the opportunity to add ethnic flavors to their menu.

"Diners offer something for everybody, from Italian to hamburgers, just a little bit of everything," she said.

"At many diners, you can find things like hamburgers right alongside moussaka. It's a wonderful format, a great canvas for traditional foods while offering a lovely chance for a little of the cook's personality to come through."

At Blue Plate Diner in Chattanooga, traditional meatloaf appears alongside trendy fish tacos on the menu.

At Randy's, pizza, lasagna and strombolli, all made with homemade bread, are on the menu alongside meatloaf and catfish, as well as Randy's signature 48-ounce burger. That's 3 pounds of meat. If you eat it all, your mug gets posted alongside others on the wall.

Diners are an invention of the early 1900s. According to www.americandinermuseum.org, they started as horse-drawn wagons, then moved on to railroad dining cars that had been retired and replaced by newer models. Eventually, they evolved into prefabricated buildings. Their heyday came in the 1950s, Ms. Segan said.

In later years, they opened in any simple roadside building and became "community gathering places where people from all walks of life and origin shared a home-cooked meal in a small and comforting atmosphere," according to the Web site. They were also a place where diners were guaranteed a home-style meal at affordable cost.

That's what people find at country diners today.

Susie's, on the town square in LaFayette, Ga., is another popular diner. It's rare when a seat can be found during the lunch rush. While they wait on tables to empty, customers can plan what they'll order by watching plates of the daily meat-and-three specials flying past.

"The casseroles are superb -- good enough to make Granny proud," said Tina Harvey Crawford, who's particularly partial to the diner's desserts.

"Being a true Southern girl, I've eaten many pieces of peanut butter pie, and Susie's is among the best in my book. It melts in your mouth," she said. "It really does."

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