We’ve come back to the very first stop on our breakfast tour: The Pottsville Diner. After being closed for over a year, new ownership decided to reopen just in time for the Holiday season.
After our crew of Bryan, Matt, Mike and Tonto entered the building, we noticed an immediate difference: it was a lot cleaner! There is no longer grease stuck to the walls! It was as if we stepped into a black hole and ended up at another diner miles away. Anyway, we sat in one of our favorite booths and took a peak at the menu. It is very similar to the Manheim Diner, which isn’t shocking considering they have the same owners.
Bryan ordered the “Homemade Biscuits with Sausage Gravy” meal along with a side of homefries. Matt, after a couple of tries, went with “The Tide Breakfast,” which is a three-egg meal (scrambled for Matt), homefries, toast with jelly, and your choice of bacon, ham, sausage links, scrapple or pork roll. Can you guess what meat Matt chose? That’s right! He is our sausage connoisseur after all! Mike ended up ordering the “Eggs Benedict” with homefries. The Mighty Tonto went with the “Side Show Bob” omelette, a Manheim Diner staple. This omelette consists of bacon, ham, sausage and cheddar cheese.
Establishment: 4/5 – The first time we came to this establishment our crew gave it a 2/5 in this category. The new owners did a great job at remodeling and disinfecting the entire restaurant. At the old place, we felt like we needed to be inoculated with some sort of vaccine before entering. The walls are now clean and painted (albeit an ugly shade of blue) and the old, damaged booths have been replaced with shiny new red ones. The diner counter was also shortened in order to fit more tables. Even the roof was repainted and the famous sign has been replaced.
Service: 5/5 – Okay, so it wasn’t as fast as the 4-minute wait we had at the old place, but 15-minutes to receive our food is not bad at all! Our waitress was very nice and she refilled our coffees frequently – which is all we can ask for!
Appearance: 5/5 – Our food looked delicious! It didn’t look as greasy and oily as our meals did at the old diner. Everything came out hot.
Taste: 4/5 – Everything was pretty good – we actually enjoyed our meals more here than at the Manheim. We took a point off because the homefries seemed too perfectly cut, which leads us to believe they were of the frozen variety. The sausage links were also the frozen Brown-n-Serve ones, which isn’t very original. Everything else tasted excellent – no complaints!
Price: 2/5 – We’re giving them the same score that we gave the Manheim Diner. Almost $4 for a side of bacon? We much prefer the old Pottsville Diner’s prices over these. Our bill totaled just under $45 for the four of us.
So, how did the new Pottsville Diner compare to other establishments in our area? It depends on how you look at it. Our crew prefers the restaurants that provide cheap, homecooked meals. The Pottsville Diner, similar to the Manheim, provides you with simple “diner food”. We would rather head to Deb’s in Friedensburg or Lewie’s in Frackville before we’d come back here, but that doesn’t mean we won’t! The Pottsville Diner is convenient for a lot of people in this area and if you want a quick bite to eat and aren’t overly frugal, you won’t go wrong in coming here.
Have a breakfast spot for us to visit? Email us your comments or suggestions at schuylkillbreakfast@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter: @SkookBreakfast.
Breakfast in the Skook 