“Now, honey, you ready for me? What’s your order?”

Thumbing through a dense, faux-leather-backed tome, its gregarious laminated pages teeming with bitmap graphics, When Harry Met Sally movie references, and the palatable fare of those cold, huddled masses that shivered through Ellis Island well over a century ago—matzah ball soup, baked ziti, spinach pie.

Along with The Hero’s Journey, democracy, and a revolutionary screw courtesy of Archimedes, it was the Greeks that gave us the great American diner, and this Brit’s all for it.

New Jersey is a true-blue diner spiritual stomping ground; more than five hundred proudly solicit on lay-bys and street corners. It was by pure happenstance a decade and a half ago that my first diner experience was in The Garden State, where I first observed chocolate chip cookies the size of bear paws, outrageous creamed gâteaux in window-lit tiered rotisseries, and overspilt ceramics of sautéed and sizzling sustenance. I’ve been a steadfast convert to these galvanised chrome and neon-lit churches ever since.

Yet, in a sign of our more moribund age, due to a wretched trinity of plague, perverse gentrification, and palatal puritanism, it only seems inevitable for the great American diner to go the same way as the thermopolium, its Ancient Greco-Roman ancestor, and its long-forgotten delicacy—honey-roasted plumpened rodent.

Regrettably, no rat on tonight’s menu, although I should order lickety-split.

“Honey, do you want more time? I can go and get you your water?”

I swivel to my left and observe an elderly gent eviscerating an omelette whilst his other half bickers at him about having commitment issues.

“I guess I’ll have what he’s having.”

The waitress turns to face the commotion, pen poised on pad.

“So that’s one cheese and mushroom omelette. Did you want any regret on the side with that?”

“Think I’ll pass.”

God, I love this place. No doubt as much as I would have cherished a thirteenth-century English tavern. Many modern diners are twenty-four-hour affairs. I, too, will confess to shuffling myself over their ceramic-tiled floors, quelling pangs of early morning hunger. Yet, much to the detriment of the Hollywood screenwriter—whose portrayal of medieval nightlife as a lusty, orgiastic, sawdust-strewn, wee-hour carousel—the real-life English taverns of yore would usually boot out the last boozer well before dusk.

“Oh, madam—actually—I will have a drink.”

“Sure, sweetie. Drinks menu is to the side of you.”

A quick perusal of tonight’s drinks selection hosts a motley crew of cocktail, carbonated, and caffeinated. I pass on the first—there’s nothing more suspect than a solitary man, careering into middle age, than one found casually supping at a cocktail.

“Just a beer, please.”

They used to say, “American beer is like copulating in a canoe.” Thankfully, the quip is as antiquated as honey-roasted plumpened rodent. From pale ales to pilsners to porters. Blondes to browns to ambers. Varieties as diverse as the lips that sup them. Still, I should honour my Irish forebears.

“A pint of Guinness.”

The Guinness is promptly served cold, wrapped in glass, and nestled within my clutches. The cheese and mushroom omelette is plonked down moments later. It’s a silken, flaxen affair. Magnanimous in size. Omelette is a French loanword. As I cut into its proteinaceous protrusion, I think of another appellation, similar in sound—oubliette. A bastardisation of the French verb oublier, meaning “to forget.”

Every medieval castle worth its salt would have one. A small, windowless, bottlenecked dungeon, where some unlucky soul would be tossed in and, as the name suggests, simply forgotten.

“You want anything more for tonight, sweetie?”

“Just the bill.”

“Coming right up.”

Well, at least there’s no chance of being forgotten around here.