The Patty Melt Chronicles: Mickey's Diner

I expected great things from Mickey's Diner. Maybe too much so. It's quite possible I psyched myself out. After all, Mickey's Dining car is an institution in St. Paul. I can't even remember how many movies it's been in (ok, maybe not that many, but it sure feels like it). While the atmosphere did not disappoint (and how could it), the patty melt at Mickey's sucks.


The patty itself is no bigger than the beef (?) patties at McDonald's and quite frankly has less taste. The cheese? American. Kraft. Fucking. Singles. The sparsely buttered, crumbly bread is nothing to write home about either, and although the onions are fried, they taste more like burnt plastic than anything else.


I really, really, really wanted to rave about this place. You have no idea how much I looked forward to writing this review. But for right now, I'm sitting at my desk tapping away on my IBM Thinkpad about how much the patty melts at a place I've come to belive is the promised land of late/all-night diners sucks ass. I've been at this for four hours and all I've got are these few paltry paragraphs, that's how much this is bothering me- I can't even bring myself to write it down. I'm having a full-blown crisis of faith here, people! I feel like I'm eight years old again and my dad is telling me not only that pro wrestling is fake but how it is faked. Mickey's Diner was my Hulk Hogan and now I know that Hulkamania is goddamn fraud. It does not, in fact, run wild all over you.

I don't want to talk anymore. I'm not going to bother to write about all the kooky people that were sitting next to me (mostly because I was alone in the restaurant) or how the lighting was good of how my cook seemed more interested in the newspaper than cooking my meal. Friends, I got burned. And what am I left with? Just the unescapable fact that the patty melts at Mickey's suck.

Though it pains me to say so, I'd rather (gulp!) eat a patty melt from Culver's.