2 a.m. Eats: Empire Diner
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Empire Diner | 106 E. Baltimore Ave. • 610-622-1662, empirediner.net.
“Breakfast,” our waitress says, leaning across our table and pouring refills of our coffees. “A lot of folks order breakfast at this hour.”
I scan the Empire Diner’s main dining room. She’s right. At 2:26 a.m., there couldn’t be more than 12 people in the entire place and most of them are eating some sort of breakfast. Steak and eggs, eggs and hash browns, omelets, egg whites, eggs. A nearby table just ordered three different kabobs (“They’ve been a hit tonight,” she says), but otherwise, eggs and morning carbs appear to be part of this late-night diner experience.
After scanning the menu, we order two different pancake meals, a Buffalo chicken pita pizza and jalapeño poppers. Why? Because all of this seems like a healthy and great idea at 2 in the morning.
As we waited for our plates, we find the Empire Diner to be less an after-hours meeting place for hungry, drunk people than an eerily quiet oasis. With its part art-deco/part ray-gun-Gothic-metallic glimmer and desperate television screens playing episodes of Three’s Company, it’s the kind of zone where, in the dead of night, you eat whatever you want and no one in your life has to know.
I advise against this. This is a diner and the portions are generous. Both our coconut pancakes and pancake sundae (a cartoonishly whimsical three-stack topped with vanilla ice cream, strawberries and whipped cream) were heaping in size and flavor. Pizza on pita bread proved to be as suspect an idea as it sounds. And jalapeño poppers are jalapeño poppers across the earth. Just understand diner metrics and servings. A slice of pie might work just as well next time.
