Stop #17: Southwest Diner

Tony's Review: Was pretty excited to give Southwest Diner a try, a new southwestern inspired breakfast spot seems like it would be a shoe-in for Bold Flavor City, USA right? WRONG! But before we get to crazy let's backtrack here, we had the pleasure of being joined by our buds Andy, Pooky and my girlfriend Lyndsay for extra friendship time. Southwest Diner was packed on a Saturday afternoon but it seemed like they had the right number of staff and some kick ass coffee which helped things out.

Now Southwest Diner doesn't offer a true traditional slinger but that's cool, they have home fries, two cheeseburger patties, two eggs, green or red chile and some green onions. So all four of us ordered a slinger (stupid Lyndsay had a spicy egg scramble, more of that later) with a mixture of green and red chile choices. As soon as we get our slingers the excitement level took a severe blow once we saw our plates, no strong presence of cheese and the lack of chili was a bit shocking even to a mature eater like myself. Instead I saw egg mountain with a moat of watery green chile and little bits of unappealing home fries. Right away you noticed the lack of seasoning across the board, the potatoes weren't crispy and had no flavor, the burger which had a lot of potential was wasted by the lack of seasoning and the green chile which may have been good to compliment a breakfast burrito didn't even begin to do the slinger justice.

I was seriously bummed about the slinger and was ready to write this plate off but then I tried my girlfriend's spicy egg scramble and was blown away by how good it was! And her potatoes were from a different batch and were cooked and seasoned perfectly. Just when I was down in the dumps after eating a shitty slinger I am lifted from the ashes by a spicy phoenix. I will return to Southwest Diner but I will not be ordering the slinger anytime soon.

Tim's Review: Unfortunately, the slinger tour seems to be a on a bit of a losing streak. From what I hear, this place has only been open for a few weeks, but come on!!! This slinger just isn't ready. I always get excited about new places to eat and I really wanted to like this place. When I get excited, I just set myself up for a bigger let down.

The red and green chili sounded like a great idea, but since I'm no fun and fear change, I asked for the red. I suspect it really didn't matter what chili I ordered though, because the red sucked and I was not jealous of anyone at the table with green. The main problem, as Tony said, is that this thing had no flavor. ZERO. I wound't even say the flavor was bad, but completely non-existent. And a dozen shakes of salt, pepper, and hot sauce couldn't save it. The other problem with mine is that nothing was cooked right. My burger was burnt and crispy. The hash browns were replaced by breakfast potatoes, also burnt. And my eggs were not cooked enough. Runny yolk = mmmmmm.  But when the white part is runny, that's kinda gross (I only learned a few weeks ago from a motivational speaker at work that the white part is called albumin. I was not motivated by this guy, at all).

I finally have a picture of something that isn't covered in chili. I always mean to get a photo of the outside of the building and I always forget. I did manage to snap this picture of a picture in the bathroom. Is that John Wayne showing off his sidepipe? I admire his confidence.

So as you can tell, I was totally disappointed, but I'm actually looking forward to going back and trying anything else.  Anything that isn't a slinger. I saw some breakfast burritos and pancakes at the surrounding tables that looked great. Plus they have malts and shakes!! I'll try not to get too excited about it though.