Long Island American Diner at the Long Island bar and night club on Market Street opened in mid May, as the name suggests they are selling ‘American Diner’ food. On their Facebook page they ask  “Want a taste of the American life? Why not come down to Long Island’s American Diner” and then give a flavour of their menu emploring you to
“Come along and try our delicious American food from corn dogs, burgers, steaks, ribs, hot dogs and milkshakes and plenty more!”

There are two floors in Long Island an upstairs and a downstairs, the upper floor has retained it’s use as a night club served by an entrance just 15 or so feet up the hill, while the ‘Diner’ is based in the lower bar of the building and is open in the day serving food until late evening. We headed over with somewhat open minds to see what they had on offer and sample some of their food.

  Goose Island 312 to drink

Well the experience got off to a good start when we found that they sell Goose Island 312 beer at the Diner. This now means that we have found 6 places in the city that serve our favourite Craft Beer tipple from my adopted US home town of Chicago. For the record those places are Hopology, Watson Fothergills, Bunkers Hill, The Bell and sometimes the Lincolnshire Poacher. That is just about enough for a new Goose Island 312 pub crawl post!  Finding the 312 was a total bonus as were not expecting much beer joy here and had almost resigned ourselves to getting a couple of diet cokes.

Finding that 312 did mean that we were distracted from the Food Menu for a while, but that was fine the place wasn’t that busy so we were oit in any kind of rush to order and they seemed quite relaxed about it. The menu had a few American Diner classics on it as one my expect based on the theme. What we want to know though was is it just a theme?

One unexpected classic dish on offer was the Fried Chicken & White Gravy. I have had this in the states a few times and had variations of it, where they often call it ‘Country Fried Steak’ this is a Southern Classic and usually is made from a chicken cutlet that has been coated with seasoned flour and pan-fried in Chicken fat. It is a bit like a wiener snitzel or if you have had Chicken Milanese? well its like that without the tomato sauce. It comes with a thick white gravy, which for us Brits is more like a creamy white sauce. It’s pretty nice often I have had a sausage gravy which is a thick white sauce with crumbed sausage meat. Trust me this is all good, and the best part is that you often have this for breakfast or brunch. It is real comfort food.

Burger Options

In the end though we were just feeling hungry and not particularly adventurous so we started to check out the Burger section of the menu.

H.Bogart Burger

I opted for the H. Bogart Burger mainly because it was topped with a Fried Egg, but the other toppings of Smoked Bacon, Chorizo, and Black Pudding also whet my appetite as I really like all four of those toppings a lot and I was really curious to see if they all would work in combination. I kind of knew that they would as I often stick them all into an omelette back at home.

Bogart Burger Profile

I cut through my Burger so that it was easier to get hold of to eat, and also to release that yummy egg yolk. Looking at the ‘Bogart Burger Profile’ you can see that you get a pretty decent layer of black pudding sandwiched in between the fried egg and the chorizo. The lettuce element of the sandwich was positioned quite perfectly in a structural sense to stop too much juice seeping into the lower bun slice thus preventing bun sogginess. Having said that the egg yolk seepage into the top bun on the first bite or slice is an epic fail, but one that my chin and I were happy enough to take a chance upon and to be honest it was kind of self inflicted.

The verdict on the burger was that it is a fair effort. I like the combination of toppings, I like the softness of the brioche type bun, but it doesn’t need to have a funny name. I cant find any link between Bogart and this Burger, but what’s in a name anyway. I suppose it is slightly better than Burger 4 or Burger D. I would eat this combination again, but not sure if I would have another burger at Long Island, instead I might try something in the non-burger sections of the menu.

F. Sinatra Burger

My accomplice on this occasion chose the F. Sinatra Burger which was to come with toppings of ‘our bourbon BBQ sauce’, Jack Cheese and Smoked Bacon. It was declared to be quite decent. Not as good as some other well known burger joints in the city, but a fair effort and they said that they would eat one again. The good thing is that these are fair sized but not ridiculously sized burgers, so you can eat one and still be able to move.

I know that it is not a ‘real’ American Diner but I thought that they had themed the place out quite well and its a good place to bring your family in here early on in the day. I don’t know what it would be like later in the evening when the drinkers arrive or of it stays just as a diner downstairs. It might not be quite the same experience. Would I come back? well yes, possibly to try out their mac and cheese, a hot dog, or maybe that Country Fried Chicken dish I was talking about.

The Long Island American Diner is located at 26 – 28 Market Street just a short walk down from the Royal Centre Tram stop or a short walk up from the Old Market Square Tram Stop. You can follow them on Twitter and on Facebook to get up to date event information.

PS on Burger Naming (just for fun) – Too much Google Alert 

Back on the naming of burgers front, while I was looking to see if there ‘really’ was a Dean Martin,  Frank Sinatra, or H. Bogart recipe for a burger or even a list of their favourite toppings, I came across several stories about original recipes. In 1966, Dean Martin contributed a burger recipe to The Celebrity Cookbook, which was a collection of recipes by celebrities put together by Dinah Shore. Then apparently sometime in 2010 the Sinatra version appeared to go viral across the web, although the story is supposed to be a hoax it made me laugh at the reality of what they would really have wanted from a burger. Not sure that you could include Frank’s recipe on a Family Friendly Diner Menu.