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A typical greasy spoon cafe.
A standard setting. The Greasy Spoon is a small, local or roadside eatery (frequently a "truck stop"), with black-and-white checkered tile floors, red leather covering all its booths, and coffee-stained menus galore. Your archetypal American Greasy Spoon features:
- A nondescript name, such as "Joe's" or "Franky's Diner." May occasionally be called "The Greasy Spoon" for self-aware comedic effect.
- Waitress with truly terrifying perms (and possibly worse bleach jobs), but who affably refer to everyone, even total strangers, as "hon," "sweetie," or "dear." Always called Flo. Always.
- A nigh-endless stream of indecipherable "diner speak" between the waiters and the cooks, which could probably be a trope all on its own. Word Salad-esque phrases such as "burn the pig and put it out to pasture!" and "three brown cows for Table 4!" float through the air, confusing all laymen but somehow imbuing ungodly speed to the speakers.
- Food served will either be horrible or improbably delicious. The menu tends towards unpretentious Americana: pancakes, burgers, fries, milkshakes, chicken-fried steak *
A thin cut of beef that has been battered and deep-fried. There is no steak-fried chicken. That would be silly. , biscuits * the fluffy and savory kind that are slathered with butter and sausage gravy, etc., all washed down with vile, well-boiled coffee. The following menu items are especially likely to crop up:
- Mile-high sandwiches that even the biggest Big Eater may have trouble with.
- Breakfast plates that could well last you all day. The bacon is always perfect.
- The "Best Darn X Pie in the Nation." Frequently pumpkin, apple, or cherry; occasionally blueberry.
- A secret or legendary menu item, that stuns the patrons into silence when it is ordered. Sometimes there is a place of honor on the wall for pictures of patrons who have successfully finished the dish.
- Many, many very burly patrons in flannel shirts and mesh-back baseball caps, as the Greasy Spoon is the stereotypical favorite eatery of truckers. Also of leather-clad bikers and redneck shot-kickers. Of course, the trucker thing is really a bit self-fulfilling: most sushi bistros and French provincial restaurants don't have seventy-foot parking spaces, double-sided diesel pumps, or rental showers.
- If the Greasy Spoon is meant to evoke a "50's diner" feel, it may have jukeboxes at the tables.
- These may feature modern music. Do not play that music. You will anger everybody.
There exists a British version of the Greasy Spoon; this features:
- All day breakfast.
- Khaki-drab tea, strong enough (almost) to stand a spoon in, served with pretty much everything as the alternative is usually the tins of room temperature soft drinks that have been there since the 1980s. Drink with a great deal of sugar if at all.
- Charmingly dirty kitchens and tables.
- Filthy toilets, often with metal troughs.
- The designation "cafe", without the accent and pronounced "caff".
- The British version tends to be urban, and feature more builders, refuse collectors and similar labourers than truckers, although there is also the Motorway Services caff.
It is also common to have a ordinary Greasy Spoon in a quite fantastic setting, in a case of Recycled INSPACE. Occasionally, it features as the Inn Between The Worlds.
Relative to the Malt Shop, but lacks any kind of Nostalgia Filter.
Straight Examples
- In the episode "The Graham Canyon" of Rugrats, the Pickles family stops in one of these when their car breaks down.
- There was one of these of the "Truck Stop" variety in an episode of Dexters Laboratory.
- Mel's Diner in the Sit Com Alice.
- Peewee's Big Adventure had one of these by a bunch of statues of dinosaurs.
- Waitress, of course.
- In Heroes, Hiro met Charlie, his doomed love interest, in one of these in Midland, Texas, called the Burnt Toast Diner. There was a later sad example of in-humor: the diner Hiro and Nathan met at was called Fly By Night.
- Roseanne worked at one for a while.
- Bruce Almighty has one which is where Bruce is when he realizes he really does have Godly powers.
- Ben 10 has one with "the best ice cream this side of the Rockies" and a Apron Matron toothless waitress who is pretty awesome.
- Ben 10 Alien Force begins with Max in one in the "Max Out" episode.
- One of these appeared in Superman II.
- Stinky's Diner in the Sam And Max games from Telltale Games. The Lucasarts game Sam and Max Hit the Road had the Snuckey's chain.
- On Just Shoot Me, Maya and Elliot go to a diner that boasts the "world's best blueberry pie". Elliot tries it, and doesn't like it.
- One episode of Danny Phantom had the Main Trio resting/hiding out in one of these when under pursuit by the Guys in White after Danny's Secret Identity was exposed to the public.
- In Lost's flashbacks, Kate's mother is a waitress in such an establishment. In one of the show's "crosses," Sawyer is shown to have eaten there, waited on by Kate's mother.
- There's one in The 4400 wherein the pies cause Mind Link between people who have eaten them.
- Jenny Hayden and Starman stop at one of these, and the Gargle Blaster for Starman is the Dutch Apple Pie.
- Tyler takes Dub-Dub to the The Batter of the Bulge Pancake House on The Middleman and assures her it's not because of the food.
- The reaper meetings on Dead Like Me were held at a Captain Ersatz of Waffle House.
- Dean in Supernatural is very fond of this kind of establishment. Especially if they serve pie.
- A stock setting within many Newspaper Comics, such as Blondie, Bringing up Father, and Wizard of Id.
- American Gods had Mister Wednesday and Shadow meet in such a location. Bikers and smoke abound.
- Garfield's unnamed diner.
- Used in a genuinely creepy way in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.
- The movie Diner starring Mickey Rourke.
- Pumpkin & Honey Bunny rob one in Pulp Fiction.
- The real Erin Brockovich played a waitress in the movie.
- Pineapple Express ends with the heroes shooting the breeze at a diner.
- The cast of Becker regularly met in one.
- In Invader Zim, Dib talks to a hobo at a diner. The hobo then kidnaps one of the customers.
- Sam And Fuzzy had one of these. Its special was called "The Eliminator", and anyone who could successfully finish it got the meal for free.
British Examples
- The street cafe type shows up in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Tottenham Court Road, where the trio go to try to escape the Death Eaters, but two show up because they are able to track anyone who speaks Voldemort's name.
- The '70s sitcom Sykes has the roadside cafe version, where Eric and Hat buy one and try and convert it into something a little posher. It doesn't work as all they do is alienate the truckies. Then they convert it back and rake in the cash but can't keep up the gritty act as part of working there. Then their snobby neighbor Mr. Brown buys it.
- The American version of the Music Video for Radiohead's song "High and Dry" features one of these. (The other, British, version was filmed first, but the band disliked it enough to film the American version.)
- LV's mother in Little Voice frequents one of these for breakfast with her friend.
- The little cafe to which the losing team is sent by Suralan each week in The Apprentice UK.
- Good Omens has the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse meet up in one of these, drawing the attention of the local chapter of the Hell's Angels.
- Withnail And I: Marwood finds himself in a particularly gritty and British one near the start of the film. In the script it is referred to as "Wanker's Cafe".
Examples of Greasy Spoon analogues in fantastic settings
- Attack of the Clones features Obi Wan going to one of these to talk to an informant.
- The Emperors New Groove featured "Mudka's Meat Hut, Home Of The Mound Of Meat." Looking over the menu prompted Yzma to say the quote at the top. Kronk ends up in the kitchen and somehow manages to comprehend the waitress' dinerspeak almost instantly.
- Dot's Diner in Reboot fits this in appearance only. It's not a truck stop, nor is it badly run or dirty. But is definitely styled after a 50's diner. Al's Wait-and-Eat, on the other hand, is a lot closer to this trope.
- "Harga's House of Ribs" in Ankh Morpork goes either here or under British examples; we're not completely sure which.
- Ankh-Morpork is full of those. Harga's House of Ribs is only one of the more well-known ones. (Holy Wood had its fair share of them, too, because actors needed to eat and were not payed well enough to complain.) Of course, in Ankh-Morpork, a "Greasy Spoon" is not only a cheap (often unsanitary) eatery for the working class, but is also the street slang term for a... um, "seamstress".
- Spaceballs had one of these. In space. Don't order the special.
- It can dance.
- And sing. But you're probably not in any position to appreciate the show at that point. What with being dead.
- Space Truckers had a greasy spoon in space that that was in a spinning donut shape to keep gravity going a la 2001 (along with the white colourscheme). This is in keeping with the movies trend of mixing truckers and trucker culture with sci fi.
- The Battlestar GalacticaSpinoff series Caprica had one of these where Joseph Adama and Daniel Graystone met. While it was an inner-city diner instead of countryside, it still had some of the characteristics of a Greasy Spoon. Apparently it served Caprican and Gemonese food.
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