Kitsilino Neighbourhoods Dirty Johnny 2002-11-16

Denny’s – West Broadway

“Good morning and welcome to Denny’s!” Next stop: culinary purgatory. That’s right, folks, in the absence of my regular crew (the mutinous swine!), at the urging of C.R. Brown, MD and against my better judgement, I took one on the chin (and in the colon) this week as I ventured into the haven of retirees and trailer park trash across the country. My pancreas squealed out in horror as the over-enthusiastic hostess tipped it and the rest of my cholesterol-saturated organs off as to our whereabouts. Too late, boys, you’re in for a workout today.

We were led to one of the ubiquitous mauve booths and seated at a sticky table encrusted with various vividly coloured pop-up book-style menu dioramas. Can you imagine the shame and indignation of toiling away in art school for four years and ending up as the graphic designer for Denny’s? Or worse yet, the food cosmetician? No music could be heard above the din of crashing dishes save the song of ignorance abound emanating from the teeming masses of hillbillies in mesh hats and sketched-out ravers, dehydrated and coming down from an MDMA-fuelled orgy the night before.

Shortly after settling in, Lucia, our exuberant waitress of the weak, arrived beseeching us for drink orders. Proudly adorning her soiled apron was a name pin, announcing that she had been serving at this particular Denny’s since 1992. Dear God, I’d rather slave away on a Louisiana chain-gang in a West Nile Virus-laden swamp wearing nothing but tube socks and cooking oil for ten years than put in that kind of time whoring myself to the demands of drunken, over-sexed hoochies straight out of Ladies Night at “Daddy-o’s”. Poor woman, perhaps I should have gone easier on her but I was in no mood for pity this fine morning. I assailed her with a battery of obnoxious questions regarding the menu (sheerly for the benefit of the reader, of course) “So what’s a grit?” “Can I order from the senior’s menu?” “What’s ‘Canadian cheese’? Is that, like, Bryan Adams?”

We placed our orders, allowing Lucia a little down time to recover from the unmitigated attack and us to marinate in the country-fried atmosphere of an American institution. The standard Denny’s menu is replete with rather pedantic breakfast cuisine, despite a renowned international ad campaign touting it as one of the nation’s breakfast innovators. Shiny, laminated posters throughout the venue introduced the “New, Fabulous French Toast” for $7.99. New? Someone get the word to the director of marketing over at Denny’s that French Toast has been on breakfast menus since 1724. Hell, I’m sure a good portion of the clientele could corroborate as they were probably there to witness its advent!

The vaunted “$2.99 Grand Slam” evidently only exists in the States as we Canucks are looking at a whopping $5.59 for the flagship of the Denny’s breakfast fleet which consists of hotcakes, eggs, bacon and sausages. The rest is pretty routine; corned beef hash, Belgian waffles, hotcakes (add carageenan-thickened “cherry topping” for 89 cents!), customary ham & cheese omelette, steak and eggs, yada, yada, yada. I invariably eat the same thing every time I’m brainwashed into going to Denny’s…the Moons Over My Hammy. It’s just such a deliciously clever pun, I can’t resist. Quite frankly, the only reason I order it is so I can say Moons Over My Hammy repeatedly until someone smacks me upside the head with a bottle of ketchup.

For the uninitiated, the Moons Over My Hammy is a ham and scrambled egg sandwich with Swiss and ‘Canadian’ cheese on grilled sourdough. It’s not a breakfast for those genetically predisposed to heart disease and word has it that Pillsbury dough-boy Steven Seagal ate several per day while ‘training’ for his latest box-office train-wreck, Half Past Dead. I had my fiendish heart set on lodging a complaint if the M.O.M. didn’t arrive with the seven slices of ham exhibited in the menu’s picture but was forced to abandon the plan when it appeared and surpassed my most gluttonous designs with ELEVEN layers of salt-infused meatiness! Eggs spilled out of the bread like so much flab from Oprah’s spandex while rivulets of grease sprang forth and splashed gently below as I hoisted this behemoth to my gaping maw. Thankfully, Denny’s reputation precedes it and I had the foresight to come clad in beltless, loose-fitting, expandable pants.

Trixie couldn’t resist the calling of the All-American Slam, which is basically your requisite traditional breakfast…Denny’s style! While the bacon was wispy thin and mostly fat, she was overjoyed with the three “cooked to perfection” eggs, the nearly gristle-free sausages and the shredded, salty hash browns. I have to hand it to them, nothing says All-American like artherosclerosis on a plate.

The illustrious Dr. Brown anted up to the $7.99 Meat Lovers Skillet which would be fittingly named if the word “meat” was replaced with the word “nitrate”. The esteemed Denny’s “chefs” fry up ham, bacon, little sausage balls, cheese and eggs over crispy ‘taters in a scalding-hot porcelain skillet and provide a shovel to aid in ease of transition from one pig to the next. I’ve had this bad-boy before and I have to admit, if you’re looking to build up your fat reserves for that long trip across the Kalahari desert, it really hits the spot. Our resident surgeon abandoned all medical precision and vacuumed it up ravenously. Diagnosis? The Doctor is in…hog by-product heaven!

So it comes down to this, if you like middle-aged asian servers, tawdry décor, lecherous riff-raff, and barrels of grease then come and get your snack on at your local Denny’s restaurant. Unfortunately, Dirty Johnny sailed away from this encounter longing for a safe port, a 19-year old small-nosed sorority girl and a Costco-sized bottle of Pepto Bismol. Aye, aye and goodbye, Denny’s.