Stox - "That's the weirdest thing I've ever seen you order."

For the finale of the three year anniversary, I invited just about everyone who had ever appeared in a Dinerwood review to come out to breakfast with me. Five people showed up. Apparently, I am not that popular.



I choose Stox in Downey for this celebration because well--basically, the sign is amazing. What font is that? It's kind of classy, kind of sporty, kind of awesome.



The first paragraph of their history page has perhaps my favorite quote from one of these things "Stox quickly became a favorite restaurant stop because of the home-cooked food and pies fabulous." Typo or poetry? You be the judge.



The dining room is adorned with fake plastic plants, neutral colors and ceiling fans, giving it a late 70s/early 80s coffee shop feel. Gigantic booths make it perfect for large parties. They actually have a lounge off the main dining room, so if you want your ham and eggs with a side of Highball or Mojito, you can.

The wait staff was great. We rarely had to wait for refills on any of our drinks. They also asked right away if we wanted to split the check.



Paul ordered the cheese benedict. It did not come out in smiley face form, but pretty close to it. We had only to move the bacon around to form hair and it was set. Paul liked the bacon the best.


#1DC Antoinette ordered the soup and salad. The soup was beef and vegetable and packed pretty dense with carrots, zucchini and other veggies. It was also very peppery.




She also ordered the pumpkin muffin, which was amazing.



Tony and Brian both ordered the avocado omelet. They liked that it was fluffy and layered and well-made, but it could have used more fixin's inside. As it was, the avocado was basically only on top and hardly found inside the omelet. The hash browns were nicely crispy on the top and the bottom and then soft in the middle.



Brian also got a side of french toast. It was alright.



Lidia ordered the Stox Burrito and photo-bombed her own food picture. She thought it was a bit bland. The burrito was also lying in what we thought at first was "salsa-juice" but we concluded was a broth of some kind.



Cammie ordered the corn beef hash with poached eggs. The hash wasn't anything special but the eggs were good.

Now for me, I only had to take a few seconds with the menu. I saw immediately what I wanted: the corn meal mush. I asked the waiter what it was and he replied, "We mix corn meal and water and then freeze it so it holds shape and then we deep fry it. It comes with syrup."

Seriously.

How could I NOT get it!?!

When it came out, #1Diner Companion Antoinette said "That's the weirdest thing I've ever seen you order."

Another waiter came by specifically to watch me eat it. "It doesn't taste like anything. It's GOOD!" he insisted.

And of course my camera ate the picture. This is why this review is not posting until after the 3 year anniversary is over. I had to go back the next week and order it to go.



When I ordered it the week before it actually looked like golden bricks. These were kind of like...slightly rounded at the top golden bricks. The mush bricks aren't crispy. There is a fried "skin" and then they are soft and mushy on the inside. On their own, they were just okay. They tasted like plain polenta...which is what they are.



But dip them in warm syrup--OMG! Sooo good.



Stox gets top marks from me for having an impressive pie menu. A Pie Fabulous menu, even.



I ordered the pineapple cream cheese pie and it was pretty good. I didn't care for the crust though, I found it a bit "dusty." The cream cheese (think the filling in a Danish) and the pineapple were very good. I think I actually felt my gums shrink away from my teeth on account of all the sugar.



Paul ordered a slice of coconut cream pie to go. He compared it favorably to the coconut cream pie at House of Pies.



Cammie ordered the strawberry tart. Lidia photo-bombed.

I really liked Stox. The food was a little weird in both bad (burrito broth) and good (corn meal mush) ways. The service was great. I'd go back there and, in fact, I already have.

Food: Good overall, but a little uneven.
Price: $8-$12
Service: Great.
Pie: "Fabulous"..well it was good.

Stox Restaurant

9518 E. Imperial Highway

Downey, CA

Arthur's - GREATEST FOOD IN TOWN! Well...kind of.

While we were at Ozzie's the other weekend, Tony recommended Arthur's as another great breakfast place. So last weekend when #1Diner Companion Antoinette and I were looking for a place to go to breakfast, I googled it. As it turns out it, Arthur's is only a few miles down the road from Ozzie's.



I was a little hesitant when I saw that they have a drive-through. That's a burger joint thing and I am not in the business of going to burger joints. "If we have to order at a counter, we're walking out," I informed Antoinette. I am snobby about my diner reviewing.



I was relieved when we walked inside. Thankfully, there was no back-lit sign that I had to crane my neck up to read. Chairs lined the counter rather than the counter having a line. Looking at it more closely, I think it had to have been a burger joint at some time in its history: the drive-through first of all, it's very cramped inside, and the kitchen is partially exposed.

A benefit of being in such a small space is that your waitress is never more than ten feet from you. Eating in such close proximity to everyone else also lets you in on their conversations. If it weren't for this, we wouldn't have known that Arthur himself (or Art, as his regulars call him) was there this morning chatting up the diners. He's a sweet looking old man with two hearing aids and flair for jokes. Dirty ones, I assumed, since he'd lean in close to give the punchline.



It's a pretty standard menu that covers the basics. There were two things that really stood out: the price, which I expected it to be a lot cheaper, and the lack of spell check used on the menu. It's like an Easter egg hunt spotting all the typos. "Squueesed."

They also have a fake or rather "exact duplicate" of an Orange Julius on the menu.



The is a weird thing worth noting--in small type at the bottom they tell you that they charge a fee for using your credit card. I had a sense of goodwill toward Arthur's because y'know, old man/dirty jokes, that's pretty cool--but this was borderline.

I'd reserve final judgement for the food. I ordered the french toast breakfast with polish sausage and a side of biscuits and bacon gravy (supposedly a house speciality). Antoinette ordered the turkey salad sandwich on raisin nut bread with a side of fries.

The turkey salad sandwich was exquisite. Quality chunks of white meat that wasn't drowned in mayonnaise. The toasted raisin bread was perfect. The french fries had an excellent crispy to potato flavor ratio.

The french toast and the eggs were nothing to crow about. They were decent--basically what you'd make at home. The polish sausage, however, was delicious. I did have sausage burps for the rest of the day-- but hey if you really like that flavor, it will stay with you.



The biscuits and gravy were very good. The gravy was smooth, not lumpy, and we could taste the bacon grease. That sounds kind of gross, but it really is good! The biscuits are small and dense. They bake them continuously and pop them straight from the oven and into a bucket. The waitresses come by and scoop them out and onto a plate.

Arthur's Restaurant was good. It had a cozy, familial atmosphere that we both really appreciated. The prices and the odd charge card fee practice were given context when Arthur (I can't call him Art, yet) was asked by a patron how business was doing. In that "greatest generation" way he sort of shrugged and talked about not losing money, not making money, only breaking even. Little places like this operate on the razor's edge and need the support of people who appreciate real, classic American food.

If that is not enough to entice you, there's always the prospect that Arthur might tell you a dirty joke or two.

Food: Good.
Price: $6.95-$10.95
Service: Good.
Pie: No pie.

P.S.

After I told Tony that we went to Arthur's for breakfast, he got really mad. "Dude why didn't you call? I live right by there. I would have met you."

"Sorry. Wait...don't live in Orange County?"

"Yeah?"

Apparently, there are TWO Arthur's. Art gets around!

Arthur's GREATEST FOOD IN TOWN

8813 Lakewood Blvd

Downey, CA 90240

562 869-9189

And the other location-

Arthur's Coffee Shop GREATEST BREAKFAST IN TOWN

1281 E La Habra Blvd

La Habra, CA 90631

562 691-7793

Added-
Apparently that wasn't the place Tony was talking about either. There is a THIRD Arthur's and this one is also located in the OC. However, the logo is different and the menu is much fancier. I expect it is not the same restaurant family... or is it? Perhaps there is a story there. Maybe this third restaurant is old Arthur's son's place. He wanted to take the diner dynasty in a new direction but Arthur clung to the old ways, the simpler way of a simpler time. They had a bitter falling out when Art Jr. ran off with the third Mrs. Arthur, a vivacious starlet who Art Sr. hoped would take care of him in his twilight years. The harlot and the ungrateful son had planned on the shock and heartbreak to be enough to kill Art Sr., but they knew nothing of the fire and vigor that rested in the old man's guts. He survived and now battles for the heart and soul of the Arthur's name.

Wow, this makes this so much more than a diner review and more like a Raymond Chandler novel.

Pop's Cafe

Lidia (who you've recently met in the Colonial Kitchen review) and I drove down the seedy streets of Bell Gardens, past the Bicycle Casino and graffiti covered industrial buildings. Soon that environ gave way to the less seedy and just normally depressing streets of Downey. We weren't 100% sure where the restaurant was, but when we saw a sign that said "Rives Sguare." We both were inclined to think that that might be where we would find our destination.

Inside the strip mall that is "Rives Sguare," (yep, that's an old engligh 'g' there and not a 'q.' I have no clue what a SGUARE is.) we found Pop's Cafe.

Our friend Amy (first time Dinerwooder but longtime Yelper) was already waiting for us. We in turn were now waiting for our other friends Andrew and Terri. The two of them are notoriously early for these kinds of things, so I knew right away why they were not there yet. This was Sunday the 14th, Day 1 of Daylight Savings Time. I left Andrew a message saying "Spring forward!"

Pop's Cafe is a decent-sized strip mall diner. There is the standard abundance of cheesy motel art on the walls, with the obligatory lack of a level having been used to hang them. Our waitress was very nice and brought Lidia and I our coffees (which were excellent) right away. Even though we were taking a up a lot of real estate with only three people sipping drinks at a table that could seat six, our waitress never made us feel guilty. The people standing outside waiting, however, did throw some glares our way.

While we waited, we took our time going over the menu. The clear focus at Pop's is the breakfasts. They cover the basics very well and I love that they offer three kinds of breakfast potatoes: Irish, Home Fries, and traditional hash browns. There are some dinner options and sandwiches, but they seem like an afterthought. We did note that all the food coming to the tables around us looked amazing. I had high hopes.


I was really tempted to order the Pop's Country Breakfast, but that price was pretty steep. Although, any place that is going to put a dish in that price bracket must know what they are doing and that must be the best damn breakfast in history. I just couldn't swing that much money.

Giving up on Andrew and Terri, we decided to go ahead and order.

Amy ordered the Belgian Waffle and the Irish potatoes. She was initially a little gun shy about ordering it, hoping that the "fruit topping" listed in the menu wasn't just strawberry compote. The waitress informed her that it was strawberries AND other berries, which sounded intriguing enough for Amy to try it. Unfortunately when it came out, the compote was still a bit frozen. The waitress gladly whisked it away and Amy decided to get one without the topping.

The Irish potatoes were a little bit different from what you usually get. Normally the potatoes and the onions and peppers are fried up all together and all the flavors mix which usually means, everything tastes like onions. These were clearly cooked separate and the potatoes are plated first and then the onions and peppers plopped on top.

Amy's new waffle looked like this and was satisfactory.

Lidia ordered the french toast with a side of eggs and bacon. At Pop's they give you the option of grilled or fried French toast. Lidia, sadly, went with grilled. I would have liked to have seen the fried version. The french toast consisted of thick slices of bread and a lot of powdered sugar and tasted good, but were not anything special. The bacon and eggs were pretty basic. The bacon was very crispy and it was cool that they give four decent sized slices of it. We had expected the standard two slices.

I asked my waitress which she would order giving the choice between "corned beef and eggs or the polish sausage and eggs." Without hesitation she said to get the polish sausage. I suspect that the corned beef at Pop's is probably going to be the canned variety, but I didn't see it firsthand.

The Polish Sausage and eggs were very good. My eggs were good--I ordered them over medium so I could sop up some yolk with the biscuit. I'm big into sopping right now. The polish sausage, very oddly, was 1 1/2 sausages. Somewhere in the back there was a lonely half of a sausage that had just been split in two, like a lover in Plato's, "The Origin of Love."

The home fries were the highlight for me. I have never seen them made this way at a restaurant. The potatoes were sliced, not shredded or cube or diced. Each piece was a golden brown on each side and were heavenly.

The biscuits were interesting. The had almost a steamed quality to them. They weren't crusty or dense, but had more to them than do dinner rolls. I liked them.

Of course just as our food Arrived, Andrew and Terri finally showed up, diminishing the wrinkled noses and ruffled feathers of the now several parties waiting outside.

They didn't take too long with the menu. Terri ordered the french toast also, sadly, not the fried version. Andrew was the big spender at the table.

He ordered the Pop's Country Breakfast.

He enjoyed it. The gravy wasn't too heavy and the biscuit and sausage sandwich that was smothered underneath it was good. Unfortunately, a few of his home fries were undercooked.

It took us a long time to actually pay our bill, which only became a problem when we started to feel extremely guilty about taking up the table space. Our waitress just never made it back over to us after she cleared our plates and dropped off the check. We were pleased that they actually took Amy's waffle off the bill entirely. The refill waitress coming by with more delicious coffee helped ease our wait.

The bathroom (there was only one as the men's room was out of order) was a little dark and kind of sketch with both the toilet paper dispenser and the paper towel dispenser being busted. I have seen worse, though.

So three negatives: frozen compote, underdone home fries, and less than stellar bathroom. Overall though, good food and nice service. There is also a disturbing lack of pie on the menu, but I will still recommend Pop's Cafe for providing a pleasant experience.

Food: Good.

Service: Good.

Price: $6.50-$650. (maybe it's a typo)

Pie: No pie!

Pop's Cafe
7840 Florence Ave.
Downey, CA 90240
(562) 927-0096