Looking for the Itis

Spending eight hours in a theatre space on a Saturday with the more or less jeneuse can do strange things to a man- like slowly chip away at his esteem as the odd teenager riddles him with insult after insult about age and hair loss, making him question Antoine de St. Exupery's child praising novella The Little Prince. Why, oh why Antoine, are adults so bad? Last time I checked an adult had no real qualm about getting strung out on cheeseburgers, unlike the vegetarian advocated, healthy eating kids I seem to frequently come in contact with. Oh goodness, what happened to the days of shakes and malts, and melts and shaky malt melts? I'd love to take Sally to the sock hop and local burger joint after, but now she's talkin' about yoga after class and that new vegan cafe that opened uptown. Too bad, because I was really looking forward to make-out point.
Looks like it'll be me alone tonight, and some open-faced paddy melt displaying its edibles (give it whatever meaning you will.)
Luckily, that wasn't the case; luckily, me and the other overworked, underpaid adults/grad/PHD students were itchin' for some "ITIS" inducing re-fried, deep fried anythings - and shaky malt melts too!

Now, every time I drive home from my weekly Chinese class (conveniently placed above a quaint little noodle shop), I pass along multiple strips with myriads of food spots; more than usual, not as many as the literal strip malls of restaurants in Markham, Ontario. Anyway, one place always catches my eye. I don't know if its because of the name, or the strange giant mystery stain that resembles Our Lady of Fatima on its sign.


It's the name. Definitely the name. Wimpy's. Wimpy's Diner. 50's & 60's. Unique Style. Good food. Only good? Ah well, I'm easy. We'll deconstruct this some more later. Quite frankly, I can't believe the place exists. Not with a name like Wimpy's anyway. Why name it Wimpy's? Well, that's a very good question. Historically, the owner wanted to a create a name that would lead people with low esteem into a place where they could blow all their money in attempts to feel not only empowered, but powerful, strolling through Wimpy's like Clint Eastwood strolls through saloons. Really. But, not really. But really, that's the only logical fantasy I could think up. It was clever marketing, what can I say?

Now, I'm not big on diners. They're all pretty predictable as far as I'm concerned; overly priced food, "kinda" diner music (sure, Abba existed in the fifties. Totally. Or at least, diners existed in the seventies. So then, technically speaking, Jay-Z is diner music too.), and an atmosphere ripe with the greasy mist of not only fried food, but the sweaty men who cook it. Strangely enough, those stereotypes we see on television are alive and well in the diner space. All of this in combination with the rather run down, stained looking walls, and old photos and records of celebrities riddled across the room. And we musn't forget the proverbial red booths. It ain't no diner if there ain't no red booths. The same goes for those ridiculously luminescent red and blue neon lights. Which, quite frankly, I enjoy, whether in a diner, or the window of any local adult video store. I swear, sometimes I think that kind of decor is not there for the sake of having a themed eatery, but just as an excuse for looking half-assed.


But I digress. I digress because although most diners may appear that way, Wimpy's is far from the norm. Sure, it has a jukebox, and records all over the walls, and pictures of "the King," whom of which I was so lovingly sat beside. But what really caught me by surprise was that it was clean. So clean in fact that its atmosphere almost feels cold. A little too clean for a diner? Maybe. But I wasn't complaining. It was refreshing. I could breathe. And from there, I could eat!

Wimpy's has a typical dineresque menu: breakfast, lunch, dinner; burgers, fries, shakes; Italian food- wait, what? That's right, amongst the cluttered menu of onions rings and cheese steaks, there is, snuggly tucked away in the deep recesses of its laminated pages, a substantial array of pasta options. Imagine: pasta and coleslaw, together at last. My Louisianen cousin would be in heaven. Was this a joke, I thought? Or a clever ploy to lead people to ordering other things. Perhaps it was a bet, for shits and giggles, and whatever other reason someone decided to put pasta on the menu. To take weekly bets and tally up how many people ordered pasta from a diner called Wimpy's, the winner raking in more winnings than the place sees in profit from the pasta items. Hey, I know, and now you do, that restaurants often place certain items on the menu to lure customers to their more popular/doable dishes. I was willing to bet that if I ordered the pasta, they would have said they ran out, or red lights and sirens would have gone off, and those tacky secret service agents from the 50's would have come out of somewhere and taken me to a holding cell somewhere- or a spaceship. Maybe the same one Elvis flies. But the pasta wasn't the only anomaly on the menu. Things as strange as McCain French Fries were put down (for 2.99 mind you). Why any place would sell a brand name food item? Sure, soft drinks I could understand- you can't make a soft drink from scratch. But french fries? Luckily, my friend opted for the regular fries. Touché Wimpy's- your clever menu strategizing wins again. She did indeed get the regular fries.
But before that, being the nostalgic suckers that we were, we opted for those symbols of all American diners everywhere: the malt (3.49) and milkshake (3.99) with option of egg (.79). (Do raw eggs still give you food poisoning? I've got 20 hours left of the 48 hour food poisoning limit, so I'll keep you posted.) We didn't share straws. Flavours are vast; if you have a malt, you mix it with whatever soft drink they sell. If you have a milkshake, you choose whatever artificial flavour they can dish out- banana, strawberry, chocolate, baby, whatever. I opted for banana. And let me tell you, it did justice. I had no trouble sucking this thing through a straw, and the flecks of yellow were a testament to the egg I demanded they mix into my merangue quality milkshake.

After shooing the waitress away three times we finally decided what to order. It was a toss up for me, my friend was bent on getting a pound of chicken wings. I, like the girl I am, didn't know what dress to wear, nor what item to order: veggie burger combo, or delicious philly cheese steak (in theory)? Now, seeing as to how I would probably never visit Philedelphia, I decided I'd follow through on one of my personal promises to order a philly cheesesteak in either Philedelphia or a quaint little diner.

So, after ordering, and after 20 minutes of waiting, ironically (some karmic consequence, I'm sure, after consistently telling the waitress I wasn't ready to order), the food arrived. Delicious french fries, and- delicious french fries, and . . . moderatly good chicken wings, which should have tasted like barbeque, but were overpowered by the sauce's acidic, vinegar like flavour. And speaking of vinegar, the coleslaw that so lovingly came tucked under a nice slice of pickle, must have went to school with the chicken wings, not getting as good grades in vinegar-ology, tasting rather bland and absent of that rich mayonnaise twang you come to expect. Nothing of the sort there. Not at all. Subpar at best. But it was, in all fairness, only a side dish that came with the main meal: my philly cheese steak . . . homey.


Now I either built up the deliciousness of the philly cheese steak in my head from years of listening to Redman CD skits about philly cheese steaks or Wimpy's philly cheese steak is, like the diner's name, wimpy (how many food reviewers use THAT in their Wimpy reviews? Huh? How many!). A combination of roast beef, sauteed onions and chopped (somewhat bitter) green peppers topped with what was probably mozarella cheese on an awesomely generic hot dog bun, the cheese steak was nothing out of the ordinary. I did finish it though - for 8.49, who wouldn't finish it? And what was I thinking while finishing it? How I wished I had ordered the veggie burger combo, because after eye-balling all the other customers around me who ordered things like french toast, huge hamburgers, melts, and what have you, I was jonesin' for something far more satisfying. To the point, I was still hungry. And that strung out hamburger fix I had attempted to quash - still there. Still inside me right now as I write this very entry, and I'm willing to bet it will still be here when I go back to the theatre tomorrow, unless I'm quick enough to stop off at a McDonalds before hand.
So, will I go back? I'm thinking maybe. I'm thinking of giving Wimpy's a second chance, only because the hamburgers on the menu look so delicious. Then again, my friend summed up the place in one epiphonic moment that only an English graduate student could wax so poetically: "If the food was better, this place would be cool." Truer words, truer words.
One thing's for sure, Wimpy's certainly did live up to its name. The question is, can it redeem itself the second time?

Wimpy's Diner

1470 Weber St E
Kitchener, ON ,
N2A2Y5
(519) 893-1458
 

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