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Review: Coney Island Diner

Discussion in 'Area Restaurants, Dining and Food' started by Twriter, Sep 9, 2009.

  1. Twriter

    Twriter Get a Mac!

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    We tried out the new Coney Island Diner last night. We've been looking for a "real" New York diner. Amphora in McLean is good, but too far away. Amphora in Herndon gets me sick every time I eat there, and Amvrosia near Home Depot is inconsistent.

    The Coney Island Diner looks promising. It doesn't have a huge multi-page menu like New York diners usually have but it does offer a solid five pages of options from breakfast (any time) to sandwiches and dinner entrees. As you'd expect from the name, they do offer hot dogs, seven different ways. My youngest enjoyed a Nathan's Special (Mac & Cheese with 2 dogs, fries, and cole slaw).

    They have a variety of melts, salads, burgers, seafood, pasta, beef, and chicken dishes. Something for everyone. I had a Captain Bligh (roast beef, melted cheese, on an english muffin). I'm looking forward to returning and trying out more items.

    They only have a few desserts (don't expect a huge display case of cakes and pastries like you find in New York diners), but that's all right with me because I rarely eat desserts out anyway.

    The food was good, the service was good, and the prices are appropriate. This is definitely on my list of good family places to frequent.

    They are located on Route 7, between Claiborne Parkway and Ashburn Village Boulevard, in the office block next to the huge church. They're so new that their sign isn't up yet, you can't see them from Route 7.

    Coney Island Diner
    44121 Harry Byrd Highway, Suite 100
    Ashburn, VA 20147
    703-729-4144
     
  2. Villager

    Villager Ashburn Village Resident

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    I didn't know it was even coming! I'll have to check it out. Thanks!
     
  3. LSeidmeyer

    LSeidmeyer New Member

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    My mom and I went there for breakfast this morning to check it out. It was yummo! I would highly recommend it.
     
  4. redon1

    redon1 aka Aphioni

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    niiice! I will check this out in 15 lbs... lol
     
  5. Villager

    Villager Ashburn Village Resident

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    Every time I watch "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" on the Food Network I wish we had a diner near us. I hope this one is good and lasts! We'll definitely check it out soon.
     
  6. KTdid

    KTdid Well-Known Member

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    And they're open daily, from 0730 - 2200hrs.
     
  7. Charlotte

    Charlotte New Member

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    And it's close by! This could be VERY dangerous!
     
  8. Villager

    Villager Ashburn Village Resident

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    We ate at Coney Island Diner tonight and enjoyed it. The place is co-owned by the former owner of Linda's Cafe on Church St. and the owner of Mezza Grill (some combination of those two). I only saw two TVs but the waitress said that they will be having the NFL Sunday Ticket and soon will have their liquor license. Right now they offer regular drinks and beer and wine.

    We ordered the child's pancakes and egg, the patty melt, and the roast beef open face sandwich, all of which were good, as were the chocolate cake and carrot cake. They serve breakfast all day and in addition to a variety of breakfast items they have a good selection of salads, hot dogs (naturally), burgers, pastas, sandwiches, and standards like open face turkey, roast beef, and chicken fried steak. From what I recall, some items on the menu were around $4, some as high as $13, but most things were somewhere around $9.

    We'll definitely be returning!
     
  9. decalr

    decalr Member

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    We will try this Diner. We are big fans of both the Silver Diner and Amphora in Herndon.
     
  10. jw25413

    jw25413 New Member

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    We tried the so call Diner on Sunday, nice people but the food was not up to par, no way is this diner food
     
  11. Villager

    Villager Ashburn Village Resident

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    What do you consider diner food? I'm not being disagreeable, I'm just curious. To me it's homestyle food that's good, but not fancy. What did you order? I wouldn't describe the place as the best diner food I've ever eaten but it was good.
     
  12. jw25413

    jw25413 New Member

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    we had the ruben and corn beef now at a real diner you would get a alot of slices of meat on the sandwich but 2 slices you got to be kidding me and we had to send the corn beef back 3 times, which we never have done at any restaurant before this was a bit too much, grant you they just open but " where's the meat" you shoul get what you pay for . I have to admit they did give us a 10% discount for all the trouble we had with the corn beef any other restaurant whould of taken the whole amount off.
     
  13. Villager

    Villager Ashburn Village Resident

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    Huh. I had the open faced roast beef and it had a lot of meat on it. Hopefully they'll work that stuff out soon. They hardly have an ideal location so they better do everything right!
     
  14. lisas

    lisas New Member

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    This is very close to where I work. I went with co-workers yesterday for lunch, and it was not bad. The sandwiches were good, but the milkshakes were too runny. We will definitely be back for future lunches.
     
  15. your_baby_momma

    your_baby_momma New Member

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    We visited the other day and I have mixed feelings.
    If you like hot dogs, they have a great hot dog menu. The servings for those suckers are quite large and you get fries with them.
    The kids got kids meals which were fine.
    I should have known better but got the mini crabcake salad. Trust me, I wasn't expecting much in the way of the crabcakes but I was really kind of shocked! They were the diameter and width of a half dollar at most (if I'm remembering what a half dollar looks like correctly lol). It came with 4, they were tasty but so so small. It wouldn't have been a big deal but the amount of salad they gave didn't even compensate. At a diner you get large portions and I figured that since the crabcakes were going to be small, the salad would probably be big. Nope.
    I really left there hungry!
    On the flip side, they gave us 10% off the bill for the food coming out slowly. I had no idea it had come out slowly but that was fine!!
    I think bottom line is that this place is pretty much an office building food place. Not that they can't up their caliber and serving size because of that, but I think that's what you need to expect walking in.
    I'd love to see a display case with cake and pie slices! They have a small refrigerator for that but there are other things in there too and you don't get that diner feeling.
     
  16. sharse

    sharse TeamDonzi rocks!!

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    I have to ask:

    As a girl who grew up on the west coast and didn't know what a "diner" was until her mid 20's when friends took her, at 3:00am, to a diner in Philly to introduce her to SCRAPPLE, do some of you actually expect the food at a diner to be "good"? The word "good" has a variety of definitions, I suppose, but to me, "diner" tells me "greasy" and the opposite end of the spectrum from "healthy".

    I guess what I'm asking is this: Is a diner a guilty pleasure? Or does one actually expect to get good food there?
     
  17. Villager

    Villager Ashburn Village Resident

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    I expect food at a diner to be good, plentiful, and cheap but not healthy.
     
  18. Pirate

    Pirate Overland Park Denizen

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    We had breakfast there last Sunday. No more IHOP for me!
     
  19. jw25413

    jw25413 New Member

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    So we went back today and had the breakfast which was very good, so this looks like our Sunday morning gig from now on
     
  20. broadcheese

    broadcheese New Member

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    I recommend stay away until the tighten things up.

    Problems:
    Even from 50 feee away there are problem: Instead of a small discrete tasteful sign on the building or even stenciled in the window, there are lots of paper signs stuck in the ground (like those new home signs that pollute the area). There is also some poor schmuck standing on the street in hot dog costume. And then the building itself looks like a big doctors office complex. It appears that they didn't contemplate a restaurant there until it was too late.

    The entrance is through a little ante room that gives you the option of going in to the main building where you might have your finances analyzed or that body hair removed from one of the other servies in the building, but if you turn right, you enter Coney Island diner, which has no sense of NY but feels very southwestern with the odd earthtone decor. Adding to odd ambience is a Sirius pop radio channel which occasionally plays loud rap or other music that isn't especially pleasant during a peaceful weekend morning breakfast.

    There was precisely one other couple in there. and they already have their food. WEll, the cook will be able to devote himself 100% -- let's see what happens:

    cheasapeake benedict: crab cakes are very small, and a little soggy. Like they were refrigerated and then re heated on the grill. The poached eggs were fine, but the English muffins were a joke.

    The cook had only our 2 orders to worry about and he didn't appear to have bothered to toast the english muffins properly. A common mistake in breakfast kitchens is to run the muffins through the toaster with the same speed setting as for bread toast. As anyone who has tried that knows, muffins take much longer to toast and so ideally you will dial down the speed of the toaster to give the muffins a chance to actually be toasted. Worst case, if you forget, you just run them through a second time, and they will usually be ok after a second pass. but this guy just saw that the muffins were still totally untoasted, just shrugged his shoulders and plopped the crab cakes and the egg on the raw muffins and sends the food out anyway. Totally unacceptable. The hollandaise sauce was the sorriest looking mess I've ever seen: it was a separated congealed oily mess. Again there are things a good (even a medicore) cook can do to avoid sending out food like that -- but he has to care to even consider whether to redo the sauce, or fix it with some cream or something. But this guy didn't care -- disgusting hollandaise sauce goes out the kitchen.

    Another dish had bacon that had been cooked what seemed like hours before, and then it was just reheated again making it totally overcooked and dry and brittle. It would have made good bacon bits for that green bean casserole, but it wasn't good for breakfast.

    The incompetent marketing, the acoustically annoying atmosphere, and especially the lack of care about basic food quality, make it impossible for me to come back any time soon.
     

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