Greetings from the Laurel Tastee Diner!

Over Christmas, I decided my girlfriend, Anna, needed a true American Diner experience. She’s from Manitoba and has been putting up with me geeking out over diners and all the stuff you see here on my blog for the past two years. Sure, up in Halifax, we’ve hit up most of the good greasy spoons and funky local places the city has to offer, but in my mind a storefront diner and a factory built diner are two different animals.

If you’re a long time reader, you’ll probably guess I like the Laurel Tastee- I’ve had enough posts on the place and researched its history enough. Part of that’s just that it’s close, but it’s got a really fantastic atmosphere to it. The perfect blend of seed and great food, preservation and funk. It’s a diner and makes no apologies. It’s the real deal.

So while she was stateside, we drove over to Laurel for breakfast. Chocolate chip pancakes for her. Cream chipped beef for me. Overheard conversations about bounty hunting and recruiting on campus. Had a nice little chat on the way out with (the owner? manager?) about his days as a trucker. He’d never been to Halifax, but had made some runs up Rt. 1 in Maine back in the day picking up sardines. You can see him sitting at a stool in the background of one of the shots.