Breakfast In Columbus

3133 North High St (Clintonville); Phone 265-9012
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After closing up last year, Nancy’s has re-opened.   This little, and I do mean little, diner has had extremely loyal fans for many years, and it has often been voted as one of the best breakfasts in Columbus.  If you like small, neighborhood greasy spoon joints, then this one may delight you.

I was not fond of Nancy’s in it’s previous life.  I never understood exactly why it got so many rave reviews (much like Jack & Benny’s a few blocks to the south on High Street).   I felt it was a duty to go back since they re-opened, though, and I’m glad I did go back.  In my opinion, the food was better and the place was cleaner than in years past. I also like the fact that they have now have a menu you can look at, instead of just having one menu painted on the wall.

The usual small diner midwest breakfast food: bacon, eggs, potatoes, biscuits and gravy, french toast, pancakes.  I had the Western Omelet this time, and my buddy had bacon, eggs, and potatoes.   The potatoes were tasty redskins, seasoned nicely, a tiny bit on the greasy side, but pretty good.  My omelet was cooked skillfully, with plenty of diced ham and green pepper, and it tasted quite good.   The eggs and bacon plate wasn’t fancy, the food was cooked properly and tasted fresh and was inviting and satisfying.

The toast was ordinary food-service-grade white, wheat, and rye.  I did like the fact that the default serving style was dry, with butter on the side.

The coffee was decent diner coffee, but apparently this isn’t the place to linger over coffee while talking with friends.  The diner’s motto “Eat it and beat it” is everywhere – on the walls, on the menu, and on the workers’ shirts.  I get the impression that they mean it.  There aren’t a lot of seats here, and I think  they need the empty spaces as soon as they can get ‘em.

For the two of us, the total was $16.  Not bad value.

46 E Columbus St, Pickerington, 43147

Phone: 837-9364

Formerly M’Lee’s Diner

Cozy neighborhood diner with 10 tables and a very dirty carpet.  Popular local hangout with the usual Midwest breakfast items and average diner coffee. The coffee is listed with two prices:  “single refill cup” for 94 cents, and “multiple refills” for $1.39.

I had “Mom’s Special” omelette, with fresh mushrooms, onions, tomato, green pepper, and the homefries in the omelet  – I chose the sausage as the meat in the dish.  It was good.  I liked the freshness of the vegetables, and there were plenty of fillings in the omelet.  Very nice.  There was pasteurized-process cheese foodlike product, both American and Swiss, even though the menu did not mention cheese.

My total was $7.79, a very nice value.  The store accepts only cash, though – so you won’t be able to use credit cards here.

2563 N High St, 43202

Phone: 263-0242

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Web Site: http://www.jackandbennys.com

I guess the most notable thing about Jack and Benny’s is how much people rave about it, and the big crowds, even though there’s really nothing special going on here.

Jack and Benny’s does a whopping business;  on weekends there are often people lined up outside the door. I’m not sure why.  Jack and Benny’s isn’t bad; it’s all right.  But the number of people who give this place raving, 5-star reviews is puzzling to me. (So was the same phenomenon with regard to Nancy’s before it closed.)  “Best Breakfast” four or five years in a row???  Come on!  It’s OK, but it’s absolutely NOT the best breakfast. Then again, those “Best Breakfast” awards are from the same audience that votes for Bob Evans as best breakfast.   It’s about average for a diner, in some ways maybe slightly better than average, in some ways maybe slightly below average. Maybe it’s fashionable – people praise it because other people praise it?  Is it the only not-terrible diner that’s well-known among OSU fans?   Well, there’s Tommy’s, which is better and is also popular with OSU fans, but that’s further away from campus. (I think a lot of the people who say how wonderful this place is just don’t have much experience with eating breakfast out.  A lot of them write that Jack and Benny’s is small – it’s really not small at all compared to other diners in town.)

At first it looks like the breakfast menu is huge, but then you may notice that every tiny variation gets its own menu name and listing.   So it’s really mostly traditional local breakfast food with a lot of Latin-American variation added.

Coffee is decent diner coffee.

Today I had Huevos Rancheros.  It was OK, with fresh vegetable ingredients.  There was plenty of it.

My total was $9.  Average value.

2160 West Case Road, Columbus, OH 43235

7:00 AM – 3:00 PM Monday – Saturday
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Website: http://www.osuairport.org/Services/Barnstormer/

The coolest thing about this tiny restaurant is that it’s at Don Scott Field, where you might not think of looking for breakfast.  It’s a cozy little spot for flyers.

There’s small menu with the just the basics of local breakfast items: eggs, bacon, sausage, gravy, potatoes, pancakes, toast and juice.  You can see the menu at the link above.

On my visit this week the coffee was a little worse than normal diner coffee.  The pancake was OK; it reminded me a lot of Ethiopian flat bread ( though I am absolutely certain that wasn’t the intention ). My sausage and potatoes were very, very greasy.  The potatoes looked repulsive, but they didn’t taste as bad as they looked.  If you have a problem with grease, or if you’re about to take a flight on a small plane, don’t order these things here.

$10.68 for my breakfast here was too much.  Not a good value.

4 South High St., Canal Winchester, 43110

Phone: 837-9206
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It looks like a classic, small-town diner.  It’s been there a long time, though not with the same owners.  I’ve seen other people eating there every time I’ve been there over the years. It was quite busy this Saturday morning.  Must be because there’s not a lot of choice in Canal Winchester.

The coffee tasted like hot water.  If it weren’t for the fact I could see it was black, I would have thought it was plain water.  By the time I got to the bottom of the cup — the server never refilled it the whole time I was there – I was aware of thinking about places to go get a cup of coffee after breakfast.

They’ve got the standard eggs, bacon, gravy, pancakes, etc., etc.  blah, blah, blah.

I had the menu item they call the Turntable: 2 pancakes, 2 eggs, home fries and for meat I chose corned beef hash. The waitress said she was bringing “syrup and butter,”  but I don’t believe it was butter – yuck.  The pancakes tasted OK.  But what is it with tough pancakes?  Are you supposed to need a knife to eat pancakes?  The home fries looked good, with a beautiful crispy crust, but they were bland and didn’t taste like much of anything. The corned been hash was lousy. Really, the hash I had a couple of weeks ago, that I compared to canned dog food, was better than this.

My total was $10 — this is not a good value.

After breakfast I did go across the street to Harvest Moon and got a good cup of coffee.  They also had some good-looking breakfast sandwiches; next time I eat breakfast in this neighborhood I’ll get one.

193 Thurman Ave,  43206

Phone: 443-8900

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If you like genuine old diners, you just might love this one. With old-fashioned wood paneling, it’s the kind of genuine neighborhood diner that won’t be around forever, even though it seems like it already has been. The German Village Coffee Shop is a Columbus institution, a landmark with a large and extremely loyal following.  It’s always busy.  If it’s a Sunday, expect a line and a wait.

It’s homey and friendly, and I’ve always had good service here.

The coffee is better than average for diner coffee.

A nice selection of expected Ohio-style breakfast food: egg, bacon, omelets, pancakes and so on.  Nothing unusual, or innovative, but good, solid, tried-and-true Midwestern fare prepared with skill and care.  It’s like they actually want the person who is eating the food to enjoy it. The food is better than most diners. Portions are plentiful.

My friend and I both had the Western omelet today.  We added a side of hash browns, since the potatoes aren’t included. The omelets were plenty plump with lots of filling.

The hash browns came with American cheese and grilled onions, and they were delicious.

For two people, the total was $19.75.  This is a good value.

3590 Trabue Rd,  43204

Phone: 488-6359
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The sign says “Mel’s Kitchen and Eclectic Flair,” but the limited breakfast menu of normally expected Midwest food isn’t eclectic and I didn’t see any flair.  The coffee mugs are eclectic, being a random assortment of souvenir mugs from various places.

The service was good, and the friendly, neighborhood-diner atmosphere was nice.  There were plenty of people enjoying themselves there this Saturday morning.

The food wasn’t very good, though.  I didn’t know a pork chop could be so thin, and mine was terribly dried out and it did not taste good. The potatoes were bland.

The coffee is OK.

It’s cheap enough; $8 total for my breakfast, but if the food isn’t better than what I had, it’s not such a great value.

3444 S High St, 43207

Phone: 497-0577
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Standard Ohio breakfast food. Local radio playing over the speaker system. I’d have to say the place is just a little run down.

Coffee is OK.  I’m not crazy about the plastic mug (turns out it matched the plastic dishes), but it didn’t affect the taste, which was all right; they did keep it filled with hot coffee the whole time I was there, and I do like that.

I had Garden Omelet, which tasted OK even though the mushrooms were canned.  I couldn’t quite tell if the diced green peppers were frozen – I suspected they might be, but I guess since I couldn’t tell for sure that means they weren’t too bad.  I had a side order of bacon, which was good.

The hash browns were terrific; really delicious!

I think there was real butter on the toast.

Considering I had a side order and a small orange juice with my breakfast, I guess $11.59 was about average, maybe just slightly on the high side.  I’d say it’s an average value.

983 E 5th Ave, 43201

Phone: 291-6555

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A working-man’s diner in an industrial area, Shades is very inexepensive… that is to say, very cheap. Food is not great, ordinary diner food.

This week I had the Western Omelet. It smelled very good when I cut it open. The ham was sliced for sandwiches, then used in the omelet, the ham pieces were too large and I had to cut them. There was the usual cheesoid-material. The taste was OK.

The potatoes seemed to be previously baked potato, used for the breakfast potatoes.  They were not very good, and had little bits of hard, black, burned something in them.

Cheap toast, with ersatz “butter.”   The jelly tasted OK, but I’m not crazy about the jelly being in a pot that’s left on the table all day (all week?) for everybody to dip into.  The ketchup is served the same way.  I’m kind of uncomfortable with that.

Average diner coffee.

Value: At $6.99 for the total, it’s pretty cheap. It’s not fancy or gourmet, or exciting, but for what it is – a working person’s diner – yeah, it’s not a bad value for that.

2924 E Main St

Bexley, 43209

Phone: 231-1702
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The Grill & Skillet has been there a long time and it seems to be fairly popular with a bunch of local regulars. The food isn’t very good, but it’s not the worst. Some reviewers have complained that it’s dirty; I haven’t found it to be all that dirty, not so much that I would remark on it (although I did notice on the way out that the floor was dirty today).  I would have to agree that it’s not spectacularly clean.

Coffee is average diner coffee.

This morning I had the veggie omelet, with brocoli, onions, tomato and green pepper.  The eggs were good, but it was a little light on the vegetables.  There was plenty of food-service-grade American processed cheese-like product, maybe a little too much, unless you like that stuff (and some people do). I asked the server if she recommended the toast or the biscuit, and she said toast, so I went with that.  I don’t know what kind of oil they drench the toast with, but it has no resemblance to butter in flavor, appearance, or viscosity; it was terrible.  The hash browns weren’t bad, though.

I wouldn’t consider it a great place for breakfast; though as I wrote above, it does have its regulars. It’s fairly cheap food at fairly cheap prices.  My total today was $8.50. They don’t take credit cards, so bring cash.