Deluxe Town Diner

The brunch options in the town where I went to college, a few miles west of Boston, left something to be desired. Being the food seeker that I am, at some point I began to research restaurants in neighboring towns. I eventually came across Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown. While its exterior might lead you to assume that it is a run-of-the-mill greasy spoon diner, one look at the menu reveals otherwise. There are the requisite diner staples: burgers, milkshakes, reubens, meatloaf. But it also has some less common and distinctly non-greasy spoon options: a housemade vegan burger, spaghetti with eggplant meatballs, and quinoa. The more diverse offerings extend into breakfast as well, which is served all day. In addition to regular old sour cream flapjacks, you can get blue cornmeal pancakes and Ployes–non-dairy French Acadian buckwheat pancakes.

My all-time favorite breakfast item at Deluxe Town are the sweet potato pecan pancakes. I briefly considered other options when I went for brunch a few weekends ago, but eventually settled on my old standby. It’s available all week as pancakes, and specially for brunch on the weekends, you can get any of their pancake batters made into waffles. I’d only ever gotten the pancakes and our extremely friendly waitress recommended the waffles highly. The menu recommends adding pecans. I went with pecans AND dried cranberries. It was crispy around the edges and moist and tender inside. It had a warm, rich sweet potato flavor, complemented beautifully by the sweet cranberries and nuts. Another reason Deluxe Town is a favorite of mine, real maple syrup is served at no extra cost, unlike at many other restaurants.  

Dave ordered the challah french toast. The thick slices were wonderfully eggy but not soggy.

He also had a side of the diner’s corned beef hash.

For something new, we ordered a cheese blintz filled with farmer’s cheese. The cheese mixture had some bits of orange rind in it. I usually like orange flavor in sweet dishes, but I wasn’t a huge fan of it here. It was nice to try something new, but I think I’ll stay with my tried and true breakfast favorites.

It is a good thing they serve breakfast all week, because if you go on a Saturday or Sunday any time after 9:30am, be prepared to wait. Deluxe Town is popular and they do not take reservations. We arrived around 9:45 on a Saturday and luckily only had to wait around 20 minutes. One last thing to note is the service. It is impeccable. On this visit in particular, we had the kindest and most helpful waitress. It can get quite hectic on a Saturday morning, but she was never too busy to provide a recommendation or refill coffee. Clearly the quality food and friendly service are not a secret, so if you go on a weekend, get there early.