Tommy's Restaurant--Everything to Everyone.

Tommy's Restaurant is one of the few non-chain breakfast joints in Monterey Park. It's located right next to a shopping complex with both an IHOP and a Carrow's nearby. As a supporter of local restaurants, I was glad to see that on a Saturday morning, it was very crowded.
And as a supporter of local restaurants, I just wished Tommy's had proven to be better.



#1 Diner Companion Antoinette and I luckily caught the eye of a waitress when we first walked in, before we could check in with the host. The waitress grabbed us and sat us down at a table that could easily seat 4 or 5. She said if anyone asked to just say we were waiting for more people. She proved very friendly and attentive throughout our meal, but a little spazzy. I think she sat us down there to keep a larger, more difficult to deal with party from being seated in her section.

We both ordered coffee. I found it a bit weak, but Antoinette really liked it. They only had sugar and sweet n low, but they did have real milk available on the table. The servers were very quick and very frequent when it came to refills, which was nice. A few times, I hadn't even taken a sip of my fresh cup when someone came around and poured just an eensy-weensy bit more into the cup.



Looking at the menu, I started to get worried. There was a full "family restaurant" menu AND a full Mexican restaurant menu. There was just too much going on there. There had to be some dilution in the quality of the food. Shortcuts like microwaves, canned goods and decidedly un-fresh ingredients had to come into play.

I gambled that any place that had put that much energy into having a Mexican menu was probably better at that then at regular diner fare. There are a lot of diners that are secretly Mexican restaurants but haven't made the changeover yet. Was this the case at Tommy's?



Antoinette ordered the polish sausage and eggs with a side of home fries. She liked her eggs and the home fries, even though the latter were room temperature by the time she got them. I thought they were a little uneven and some were underdone. The sausage was very good--it had a really robust flavor with some real char on it. She did say that the toast had too much butter on it.



I ordered the Chilaquiles breakfast and it was kind of a mess. The rice was bland--really bland. The beans were okay; I'm just not a fan of refried beans in general. The eggs were oily. The chilaquiles were drenched in a rather boring--I suspect canned--enchilada sauce.

So clearly Mexican was not the way to go with ordering. This was not their secret strong suit. This was more of a case of a place expanding their menu to appeal to the larger neighborhood. I always think of Monterey Park as being predominantly Asian but down near the 60 freeway, it becomes just as much a Latino neighborhood.

Antoinette liked Tommy's Restaurant far more than I did, but she concedes that my breakfast was bad. I'd be willing to give it another shot, but I can't imagine when I would ever go back. If I was ever in the mood for "diner or Mexican" food, I'd go to Bun n' Burger (if they ever get consistent with their hours) which is right in our neighborhood and has much better food of both varieties.

Food: Poor to Okay.
Service: Very Good.
Price: $6-$9 most items.
Pie: Yes.

Tommy's Restaurant
1150 W Riggin Street
Monterey Park, CA 91754



I have never ordered Albondigas because it sounds slightly dirty.
"Check out the albondigas on that one!"

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