Greasy-spoon breakfast spots in Madison
Small restaurants that focus on breakfast and lunch for working-class clock punchers, impoverished students, and itinerant laborers are a staple of American life—or used to be. The Pine Cone Restaurant on U.S Highway 51 north of Madison is typical of hundreds of roadside joints across Wisconsin, but it’s more difficult to find a proper greasy spoon inside Madison’s city limits. The A.V. Club started to feel nervous about local and national trends toward breakfast at Subway and now Taco Bell, but then remembered that there are still a handful of old-school breakfast joints that don’t serve fast food and aren’t an overpriced hassle. Here are a few of them.
Mickies Dairy Bar
The best time for a breakfast at the eternally fixed-in-1978 Mickies Dairy Bar is any day but Saturday or Sunday. On weekends, the lines of hungover college students often extend down the street. But on a weekday, tucking into a cheese omelet with sausage links, toast, and a cup of Joe feels like a moment out of time, with few clues that this isn’t an era of feathered hair and bell bottoms.
The Curve
The entire student body of the University Of Wisconsin-Madison seems to be aware of this breakfast bonanza, so the place is also mobbed on weekends. Eat some corned beef hash with a breakfast steak and a tall glass of orange juice; slowly ponder the swirling roil of alcohol-damaged students; and then contemplate a monastic life of vegan food, water, and daily meditation.
Willalby’s Cafe
Those blue-collar blue bloods on the East Side all know a secret: Every now and then, it’s important to find a way to avoid work on a drizzly morning, and instead grab a newspaper and park it at Willalby’s. There, a tattooed server or gruff nice guy will prepare a smokin’ breakfast with the best ingredients the restaurant can afford, lovingly distributed to an amiable collection of elderly people and young slackers. The menu offers the usual combination of scrambles, omelets, and standards like “two eggs and bacon with hash browns,” optionally slathered in hot sauce. Definitely get a chipped cup full of coffee and a water, and then lovingly read every single section of the paper down to the Ann Landers column while listening to community radio and watching the stream of humanity flow by outside the water-streaked windows. The dream of the ’90s is alive at Willalby’s.
Hubbard Avenue Diner And Bakery
Though not quite as grittily real as the rest, all of the classic greasy-spoon elements are here at Hubbard Avenue Diner And Bakery—and, more important, the bakers here make really good pie. There’s a counter where solo diners can relax with a local publication and a plate of pancakes backed by syrup, butter, and perhaps a poached egg with two slices of crispy bacon on the side. A giant slice of the terrifically tart cherry pie in a sugar-dusted crust with a cup of somewhat strong coffee will set the situation straight: A body sometimes needs to sit up at the counter, drink half a gallon of coffee, inhale a big breakfast, and reset for the day’s upcoming events. That’s why greasy spoons are a salve for the soul of the American worker. May they never die.
