In 2009, it became the first diner to win a James Beard Classics award.
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The classically chrome building opened as Joe’s Barnegat Light Diner in May 1959, with original owner Joe Sprague offering free coffee and burgers. While not gourmet per se, some diners are known for their food, such as Mustache Bill’s in Barnegat Light, a well-to-do oceanfront borough on Long Beach Island. It wasn’t just one of the earliest examples of fast food, but also – according to White Mana’s current owner, Mario Costa – of the slider, so named because the cooks would slide the burgers across the large grill. The then-futuristic design was centred around a large grill and circular counter, which meant that the server could cook a burger and hand it to the customer in just three steps. The structure first appeared at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, as part of a demonstration on how fast food could be served. On a busy intersection in Jersey City, in what feels like Sopranos territory, you can see the White Mana Diner, a circular, UFO-like building that was once the future of the diner – and fast food. But, after World War Two, when diners boomed in popularity again, the look was homelier, more suburban: think Formica table tops, leather booths, wood panelling and terrazzo floors. In their first golden age in the 1930s, diners tended to be sleek, reflecting the Modernism of the early 20th Century. Over the years, the designs of the New Jersey-built diners evolved, even if they kept the basic structure of booths around a service counter.
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Although the structures were simple enough to load onto trucks, they were often adorned with fancy signs and shimmering neon to attract drivers passing by. They were made in factories and transported by truck to sites across the US, or shipped further afield.Īt their peak in the 1950s, there were 6,000 New Jersey-built diners across the US (though concentrated in the north-east), a number that is closer to 2,000 today. The early diners were built, usually in chrome, in the Streamline Moderne style, borrowing heavily from railroad carriages. Given the large potential market, it made sense that diners were made here, and it helped that they could be transported easily. And New Jersey saw a big influx of Greek immigrants, many of whom opened diners.” “You had a lot of people travelling through who wanted a quick, cheap place to eat. “It was partly because New Jersey had the best road infrastructure in the country, and a dense, working-class population,” he said. It was about seeing this amazing collection of people: you’d see policemen, businessmen, college students, bikers, just this bizarre cross-section of society.”Īccording to Gabriele, there are lots of reasons why New Jersey became the focal point of the American diner industry. “It wasn’t just about getting something to eat.
“As a teenager, we used to go to the Tick Tock Diner in Clifton, New Jersey, at 01:00,” Gabriele said. Around these parts, they are considered almost like community centres. Many New Jersey diners are still open 24 hours a day, and tend to be family-owned, often by the members of the state’s Greek community. If you’re after chrome decor, comfort food, infinite coffee refills and cheery service, you’ve come to the right part of the US. The relatively small but populous state, which lies south and west of New York City, built the majority of the US’ prefabricated diners in the 20th Century, and there are still more than 500 of them dotted across New Jersey. Sitting in the Summit Diner, a train carriage-inspired diner in the suburban town of Summit, Gabriele explained how New Jersey became the world capital of the diner.
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