Restaurant of the Week: Brandon’s Diner

This week’s restaurant: Brandon’s Diner, 8689 Base Line Road (at Carnelian), Rancho Cucamonga; also 870 E. Foothill (at Campus), Upland, and 10271 Magnolia, Riverside.

Brandon’s is a hugely popular breakfast spot, and maybe lunch and dinner spot too. For whatever reason I’d never been there. An online review at the Dinerwood site (an LA guy, he’s also reviewed BC Cafe) caught my eye a while back, so last Saturday, a friend and I went in for breakfast to the Rancho location in the Sunrize Center. Even at 10:30 there were five small groups waiting for a booth, but the wait wasn’t long.

Inside, Brandon’s is surprisingly old-school: tile floor, booths, a long counter with swivel seats and signs with regular daily specials. The kitchen is in the back, not behind the counter. They have the full complement of breakfast items as well as sandwiches, Mexican food and dinner plates, plus beer and wine.

I had the half French toast combo with two eggs and two sausages ($7.45); my friend had Polish sausage, two eggs, home fries and two French toast halves ($7.95).

The French toast was very good, thick and dusted with powdered sugar. They also have a French toast variety with the name Cinnamon Revolution, which seems to promise a spice insurrection in your mouth. (“Vive le Cinnamon Revolution!”)

The sausage links were plump, some of the best I’ve had. However, my over-medium eggs arrived over-easy.

My friend’s Polish sausage, split and grilled, was tasty, and the scrambled eggs very nice when flavored with the two (!) kinds of salsa brought to the table. However, she described her watery coffee as perhaps the worst she’s ever tasted. “This is like gas station coffee,” she said, before quickly deciding that even gas station joe is better.

So Brandon’s isn’t perfect. That said, we enjoyed our meal and the atmosphere, and also the people-watching.

The clientele was diverse — whites, blacks, Latinos — and included a Goth couple, the woman in white gloves, the man in Kiss-style platform boots, striped pants and a belt buckle that read “666.” Goths tend not to smile so it was hard to tell if they were enjoying themselves. They certainly livened the place up for everyone else.

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Restaurant of the Week: Richie’s Diner

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Richie’s Diner, 8039 Monet Ave. (at Victoria Gardens Lane), Victoria Gardens, Rancho Cucamonga

I’m familiar with the Richie’s in Victorville, an occasional lunch stop when I lived and worked there in the mid-1990s. That one, if memory serves, had a virtually all-white interior and was fairly utilitarian. The food was OK but nothing exciting. The VG one is more a modern take on a diner, outfitted in browns and gray, with comfortable booths and classier touches. It’s a little disconcerting to see a wall niche with bottles of wine not far from a lineup of classic bottled sodas and emblems of old-school gas station pumps, but it mostly works.

I ordered the California tuna melt ($8.95) on sourdough with slaw as my side and a Pepsi with vanilla flavoring ($2.19), which came in a metal cup. A tuna melt is my baseline sandwich. This one really was a melt — sometimes the cheese isn’t melted at all — and was one of the better examples I’ve had. It came with avocado, probably a treat for most people, but to be honest, I’ve never really liked avocado. The slaw was good too.

All in all, Richie’s beat expectations.

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Restaurant of the Week: Corky’s Kitchen

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Corky’s Kitchen and Bakery, 6403 Haven (at I-210), Rancho Cucamonga

The interior (cheerful, bright, with an inviting bakery case and country clutter-type decor) and the menu (pancakes, sandwiches, salads, homey dinner entrees, pies, muffins) remind me of Polly’s Bakery Cafe, a SoCal chain I like. Corky’s is ambitious: It’s open an astonishing 24 hours a day. At least until it sinks in with the owners that no one in Rancho Cucamonga is up past 8:45 p.m.

At any rate, I ordered my baseline sandwich, a tuna melt on sourdough, which proved better than average. The sandwich came with a dinner salad that showed some effort. As Corky’s had a half-dozen pies on hand, I tried a slice of Dutch apple. It was practically a meal in itself, bursting with tart apples. Corky’s is pretty far out of my way, and yet I can see myself going back on a long lunch hour sometime. Unless the mood strikes me at 3 a.m.

UPDATE: Corky’s, I’ve since learned, was opened by Mike and Jennifer Towles after closing their Tole House Cafe in the same shopping center. It’s named for Mike’s late grandmother.

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