Eggs Over Easy

…my fever intensifies. I have had a large breakfast. My server reminds me it is free pie Wednesday. I can’t see straight. I order the cherry. “Would you like that in a box?” she asks. I can’t think. I manage to squeak out, “No – for here.” It had started so well. If only I had known.

I find a place I like to go to for breakfast. I am walking on Kennedy near Dale Mabery, on one of those busy stretches that could be in any big city: gas stations, fast food, cheap mattresses, big drug stores, billboards, vitamins, Fedex. In a puddle one good reach from the curb is a one dollar bill. I pick it up and turn the corner, fanning the bill back and forth so it will dry out a bit. There is an orange sign in the sky that says Village Inn and PANCAKE HOUSE. The black typeface suggests that this is a traditional place, with bad coffee, sturdy colonial-style chairs, mature wait staff and someone who really knows how to cook eggs. “Whoa,” I think, “time to celebrate.”

It turns out the Village Inn sign that attracts me is actually the really old sign, which has supposedly been replaced across the 200 or so Village Inns. The first Village Inn Pancake House opened in Denver, Colorado in 1958 as an all-day breakfast palace. This one opened in 1962. At the end of the 1980s the signs changed Pancake House to Restaurant (in the endemic unattractive type face called Brush Script; particularly hideous when used in all upper case), to indicate that lunch and supper items were now on the menu. In 2010 the brand got a major overhaul to drag it into the 21st century and now the signs use a cold-hearted miserly mostly sans-serif typeface (the g has an ear on its bowl). A yellow rising sun / plate along the bottom contains a jaunty lower case vi in it. The new typeface retains the diamond dot on the i and the crinked ascenders on the ll in Village (but not on the I in Inn) but to me it shouts no coffee refills and I would never have been lured in by it unless I really had to use the loo. If you are the kind of person who does not notice an upside down 8 or E on commercial signage, I envy you. I am cursed: I notice them a mile away.

So the old sign beckons me and my dollar bill inside. No colonial chairs; some of them are in retro / moderne aluminum. The booths are gigantic (no fat shaming here when there’s a big breakfast to be had) with racks of Smuckers jam (including Concord Grape) and enough table space to spread out the newspaper. The servers are indeed all older women, professionals in uniforms and sturdy shoes. The front counter cash handlers are all men wired with ear/mic combos; everyone is very nice and genuine. This is on a weekday. When I go back on a Saturday to get some answers about the sign there are younger women in black doing front duty.

My server is Susan. She’s about 45 and looks like she knows how to handle things. She hefts a giant tray with the diameter of a hula hoop on her shoulder and is working as fast as she can. When she brings the pot of coffee and bowl of creamers she rushes off without leaving a cup. I wait for ten seconds and then start looking around to see if there’s a china station where I can go get my own cup. I’m not very good at waiting. I catch sight of Susan and she is up by the front and a manager is talking to her. She has my coffee cup in her hand so I calm down and look around. Folks come and go. The place is busy but doesn’t feel crowded. Susan brings me the cup.

The coffee is not that great but it’s hot and there’s plenty of it. For $2.29 they bring you a never ending stainless steel pot of it and a bowl of those teeny tiny Gen Pak creamers.

In the early 1970s a certain group of miscreants from Ridgemont High School in Ottawa would hang out many afternoons at the Hum family’s Marco Polo Restaurant on Bank Street. The cream came in little green pottery handleless jugs. I miss those. Some places, possibly Murray’s in the Lord Elgin Hotel (at that time a twin of the Lord Nelson in Halifax) used tiny glass milk bottles with tiny cardboard lids. I miss those too.

At Village Inn the first big deal is the all-day breakfast. The menu is big, sort of like at Denny’s or Smitty’s, with many choices. I have the VIB breakfast both times I’ve been there, which you build by making a choice in each of four columns and for which you pay $7.99. Susan comes for my order and says, “that food is going to be here quicker than your coffee.” She is true to her word.

I have eggs over easy, bacon, country potatoes and multigrain pancakes. The eggs are perfect. The pancakes come with a knob of pale whipped butter the size of a kiwi. I enjoy this and I enjoy the syrup, which is not real maple syrup but that fake syrup. I am able to enjoy this because I know very well there will be no real maple syrup here and I do not expect it. Also, my first addictive food behaviour began when I was about seven. I waited until my mother was in the bathroom or downstairs doing the laundry, and then I dragged a kitchen chair over to the baking cupboard and did shots of corn syrup straight from the bottle. So there is the nostalgia factor.

When Susan drops by for the obligatory check-in, she comes at the traditional moment, when my mouth is full. But Susan does not say what every other server says: how is everything? Susan says, and says easy-like, as if she is asking a teenage son, “Is it good?” I nod. I like this. One: how is everything? asks for an answer expressed in a sentence, or at least a real word, and so requires the diner to be rude and speak with their mouth open plus feels slapdash and without any feeling, like a bus driver expecting me to fork over a ticket or cash. Is it good? is a yes or no question, and does not require deep analysis of the food, and can be answered nicely without words. And is homey.

White Chocolate Cherry Dream

The second big deal is the assertion by Village Inn that they have the best pie in America, plus that they give away free slices on Wednesdays. I finally have it the day I sit down with Michael DeNunzio, the manager at this location. He offers pie and I look at the picture of one of the featured pies, the White Chocolate Cherry Dream. Sold.

While I wait I hear him talking to some front counter staff about a menu item. “I thought I screwed up,” he says about something, and I realize he is decent and natural with the staff too.

DeNunzio eats his lunch while we meet. I eat that pie. The best-selling pies are Apple ($2.79) and French Silk ($3.59).

I ask how it is that everybody seems so nice and genuine. Is it nature or nurture? “Well,” he says, “that’s learned behaviour. There are skill sets I can teach but that’s not one of them.” People working here must be happy enough: Margie has been here 41 years. Carol for 30 years. Others are at the quarter-century.

The sign that I like so much: Dow Sherwood, the original owner of this Village Inn, fought to have the old sign grandfathered. He liked it. His grandchildren are still involved in the business. He’s been dead since 1987 and people still talk about him. A photo of Dow and his wife Mary hangs in the lobby. I don’t know if all Village Inns feel the way this one does. It’s a chain restaurant that feels like a family run joint. The 240 seating capacity doesn’t show. It feels smaller and much more individual. Another happy place.

A few days later I am driving back to Tampa from St. Petersburg. It is one o’clock and I have not eaten. One of the new VI signs appears in the sky. I pull in.

The same and not the same. I see that if I spend 50 cents more than the cost of the VIB I can get the Classic Breakfast: same eggs and potatoes, but three more strips of bacon and one more pancake. Deal of the century, I think. It’s delicious. I cannot get to the third pancake. Christ, I think, why did I do that? I feel feverish. And then my server reminds me it is free pie Wednesday…