Way to Blue (Blue Restaurant, 40-09 30th Avenue)

Since we started this project, we had been reluctant to try the Blue Restaurant (aka Blue Coffee Shop, if you go by its arrow-laden billboard on the corner of 30th Avenue and Steinway). The color blue isn't something we associate with food -- at least food that's not rotting. And most times when we've walked past, it seemed dismal inside, like the proprietors had lost hope in the notion that sprucing things up would make any difference. And we didn't believe for a second the sign in the window that claimed Blue Restaurant had "Largest selection of food in area."

But one morning, we ventured over to the Mini Star on Steinway for breakfast and it was packed. The elderly couple waiting for a table in front of us were looking at each other with dread and resignation. We knew what they were thinking, because we were thinking it too. Sure enough, we found ourselves trailing them over to Blue.

As you'd expect, much of the décor of Blue Restaurant is blue: blue walls, blue seat padding in the booths, blue plastic cups, blue-patterned plates. And it was pretty dismal: like a sad bachelor apartment that had been inhabited by the same lonely guy too long. The paint job was faded, there were splotches of spackle here and there, and the drop-ceiling tiles were still nicotine stained from the time you could smoke in restaurants. The decorations were also slightly off -- prominent were the posters of 1950s icons collaged together clumsily in generic scenes: Elvis, Marilyn, and Bogie carousing at the pool hall, for example. (What gives? Can someone's nostalgia really become so indiscriminate that they're content to lump all their memories together in one incoherent tableau?)

Most bizarre, though, was the flat-screen TV displaying a loop of digital photos of some of Blue Restaurant's offerings, randomly chosen and indifferently styled -- just plates of food photographed in bad, yellowy light: There's a gyro sandwich. There's a cheeseburger. There's some scrambled eggs. And there's a Cobb salad (Cabb Salad on the menu). The photos are weirdly mesmerizing though, and once the entire group had been cycled through, each image would then be tiled across the screen, as if to overwhelm you with their allure through sheer multiplication. You thought that tuna melt looked good? What about 32 tuna melts?

The menu, which was set entirely in Comic Sans, had some quirks; the Wraps sections featured nine options: Blue 1, Blue 2, Blue 3, etc. (Sadly, Blue 7 was not conceived as a tribute to Sonny Rollins.) But as we suspected, it was not the largest selection of food in the area. In fact, it was a lot like the selection available at any diner, but scaled back. Rumor has it that there is a secret "taco menu" available on request, and Blue's takeout menu suggests that the place also masquerades on certain occasions as a restaurant called Taqueria Mango. Why the secrecy? We can't even hazard a guess, nor have we decided if we will need to revisit Blue Restaurant in its Mexican guise.

But no matter how odd Blue Restaurant is -- and it is decidedly odd -- it remains an altogether suitable place to get breakfast. Service was prompt and friendly, and our (blue) coffee cups and (blue) water glasses were kept filled. The broccoli-bacon omelet was overcooked, but that's par for the course at any diner, barring ones that are more "eatery" than "diner." The over-easy eggs were prepared competently, the bacon crisp but not overdone, and the chunky, orangey home fries were adequate, cooked with onions, paprika, and maybe a hint of green pepper.

So there was nothing really to be afraid of, after all, which makes us wonder why Mini Star is always so crowded and Blue is consigned to its spillover. Maybe it really is all about location.

Price: Diner prices. Not as cheap as Mini Star.
Will we go again? It's not that we wouldn't. It's more, Why would we?

Short Ordered (Tastee Corner, 30-20 30th Avenue)

Let's just acknowledge up-front that we hate cute spellings. We hate mad skillz, kountry korners, and anything kwik. Ye olde shoppes somehow fail to impress us as quaint or nostalgic. Grrrls gets a pass, barely, because it can sound onomatopoeically fierce if pronounced gutturally, but that's about it. So the Tastee Corner was handicapped from the get-go, but we do our best to not hold poor nomenclature against food and service.

The Tastee Corner -- it hurts just to type it -- doesn't have to do much more than be serviceable to meet the expectations of its diners, though, and it did just that. It's located just below the 30th Avenue subway stop, so it's a convenient spot both for eaters catching a bite before going into the city, and for those sitting by the window to people-watch. We were there at prime breakfast/brunch time -- noon on a Saturday -- so we weren't surprised by the crowd. But we also know that Astorian diners aren't hoodwinked into patronizing substandard places merely for convenience -- the rapid succession of shoddy restaurants occupying 30th Street and 30th Avenue, just a short block away from the same subway stop, points to this. (The new 7-11 in the spot put an end to the corner's dining mediocrity, ushering in its own particular brand of unwanted crap.)

Don't get us wrong: It's not that Tastee Corner is some sort of quiet treasure, whispered about by possessive locals as the best diner in Astoria. One of us ordered bacon, eggs over easy, and toast; the other got a tuna melt. The only remarkable thing about either was the harried attempt to dress up the tuna melt with a spring of parsley, which looked ridiculous on the barren plate too big for a mere sandwich.



But you don't go to the corner diner for anything other than bacon, eggs, and a tuna melt, so who cares? The service was efficient, our water glasses never went more than half-empty, and the bill was cheap. Combine that with enough staffers to keep morning-commute crowds ankle-deep in coffee without creating a long line, and you've got yourself a corner diner worthy enough of its name, even if it's spelled ridiculously.

Price: Like other diners.
Will we go again? No compelling reason to. But everyone's really friendly there.

The Madness of Monte Cristo (Neptune Diner, 31-05 Astoria Boulevard)

Though one of us is convinced that a Neptune burger once brought on food poisoning, where else were we to go after staying out late at the Beer Garden? (If only Club 23 served food.) We were hungry, but we were particularly bent on having cocktails as well, and the Neptune is one of those diners with a desultory bar and drinks on the menu alongside the Roumanian skirt steak and the spanakopita. Though the menus had lately been updated to incorporate the magic of clip art (the menu is currently aquamarine and has on the cover a cartoon rendering of the eponymous god wielding his trident), the cocktail list was probably last revised when Ladybird Johnson was still living in the White House.


We ordered a Rusty Nail and a Pink Lady, and the seasoned waitress -- as always, punctiliously uniformed in black vest and tie -- did us the favor of not sniggering. Surely we weren't the first to demand kitsch cocktails when already past our limits. She maintained her gracious dignity, even if we hadn't. The drinks themselves were mixed indifferently, and we couldn't tell you if they were even what we requested. It served us right.

We ordered a fried egg sandwich on a roll -- food poisoning be damned! -- and a Monte Cristo, though it wasn't listed anywhere on the menu. But like any diner worthy of the name, the Neptune would make one nonetheless and whimsically invent a price for it when the time for the check came.

The fried egg sandwich was nothing worth mentioning, which is probably how it should be, but the Monte Cristo sandwich demands a moment's contemplation. No one knows where it came from, or why; some view it as a perversion of the croque monsieur, some hold a Disneyland restaurant accountable for its spread nationally. We prefer to regard it as divine inspiration of some improvisational genius whose name has unfairly been lost to us. The Neptune's version was ham, turkey, and swiss cheese on french toast, and was served with maple syrup as a condiment. The Monte Cristo is a study in contradictions: Its sumptuous succor of sweet with savory was almost absurd in the existential sense; it blurred opposites, it made us fear for the distinction between right and wrong, between right and left. That is to say, it was deliciously disordered, and our taste buds responded riotously to the chaos.

Repeat visits have proved that the Neptune makes a mean "dieter's plate," knows how to toast bread, stacks its club sandwiches appropriately high, boasts an intimidatingly silent line of stiff-backed waiters in the main dining room, and cannot poach an egg. We are not entirely sure how the Neptune was voted the "#1 Diner in Queens," as per its perennial blue banner outside, but it is a diner, in Queens, and that is enough.

Price: Comparable to other diners.
Will we go again? It's ubiquitous, so we abstain from judgment.