A Real Diner, Seasonal and Local

WHEN the readers of Edible Jersey magazine gave the owners of a South Jersey diner a Local Hero Award, I added the restaurant to my list of places to try. But when friends came back from a visit there, excited about the everyday use of local products, I called for reservations.

Of course they don’t take reservations at Vincentown Diner: It’s a real diner. In typical diner fashion, they seat you fast, serve you faster and get you out the door — a little too full, chilled by the blasting air-conditioning and slightly dizzy from the experience. But it’s the updated attitude on the plates that makes it a destination.

The meat in those juicy half-pound charbroiled burgers is grass-fed and local, from Simply Grazin in Skillman. There is also a grass-fed lamb burger, with a mixed marriage of Greek (tzatziki sauce) and Italian-Latin (basil-tomato salsa). The eggs in the mile-high Key lime pie (with a crisp graham-cracker crust) are organic. The slim and elegant slices of sweet grilled zucchini and the steamed green beans are local. And the coffee is roasted at Small World Coffee in Princeton.

The prices for such feasting are a bargain. Burgers, with a generous serving of smoking-hot thick steak fries, are $12 to $13. Chicken Palermo, at $15, is another good deal, especially when you consider that it is served with sautéed spinach and a choice of soup or salad. It is made with conventionally raised birds but stuffed with cheese from Cherry Grove Farm, in Lawrenceville, as well as prosciutto. Even the simple marinated and grilled chicken breast with its tetrazzini pasta cake (think kugel), sautéed spinach and soup or salad is delicious, and at $14, it’s an affordable luxury.

Jimmy Melissaratos, who shares ownership of the diner — and his name — with his cousin, said in a phone conversation after my visits that the diner began a switch to local and seasonal foods about six years ago because it made sense and because he wanted to support the local economy.

“Burlington County, it’s a farming area,” he said. “We’re historically a diner and it’s not elitist. If I can get my people to go for this stuff — working-class people in a rural community — and if we can do it, it means everybody can do it.”

Not everything on the menu is local; it is limited by cost, supply and diner preferences. A producer once called Mr. Melissaratos to say there would be a two-week delay on a beef delivery because he couldn’t get the cattle on the truck.

“Sometimes, the food runs away,” he said. “It’s not coming out of a box from Iowa.”

Quiz the waiter before ordering, since the best bets seem to be the marquee local foods. Three starters we chose at random were less successful. Coconut shrimp rivaled coconut macaroons for sweetness. Onion rings looked and tasted factory-made. Asian dumplings were standard.

Know, too, that local can go only so far. Dry meatloaf, as in the case of the stuffed version here, wrapped around sautéed spinach, roasted peppers and provolone, is still dry meatloaf, even when it is made with grass-fed beef and served with mashed potatoes and fresh Jersey green beans. Homemade soups — a local corn chowder one night, and a sweet potato on another — were too thick and lacked flavor. And the wines — only from New Jersey — didn’t marry well with our food. We left the wine and drank water.

Sweet endings at Vincentown Diner transcend traditional offerings. Beyond the Key lime pie, there was a banana cream variety so fresh that the bananas were still the same off-white hue as the rest of the filling; a Jersey blueberry bread pudding that, true to its name, was more pudding than cake, and a blueberry pie that, despite its two-crust construction, was overfilled with berries, throwing the ratio off. But the best dessert of all was the blueberry milkshake. Lurid lavender and lavishly portioned, it was Jersey at its best.

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Vincentown Diner

2357 Route 206

Vincentown

(609) 267-3033

vincentowndiner.com

WORTH IT

THE SPACE Sprawling, traditional 220-seat diner. Complete wheelchair access.

THE CROWD Casual; servers are efficient.

THE BAR Full range of cocktails. List of six local wines on the menu, by the bottle ($16 to $20) and by the glass ($5 to $6), with no outside wines allowed. Nine kinds of beer, $3.50 to $4 a bottle.

THE BILL Entrees and sandwiches, $9 to $21; breakfast all day, $6.50 to $9.50. All major credit cards accepted.

WHAT WE LIKE El Greco lamb burger, Tex-Mex burger and Farmhouse burger; grilled chicken with pasta cake, chicken Palermo with prosciutto and Jersey cheese, Jersey green beans, Jersey zucchini, Key lime pie, banana cream pie, blueberry bread pudding, blueberry milkshake.

IF YOU GO Open Sunday through Thursday, 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 6:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m.

RATINGS Don’t Miss, Worth It, O.K., Don’t Bother.