Friday Food: The Airline Diner

After finishing my (sadly short) list of stand-alone diners left in Manhattan, I knew I wanted to continue my search into the outer boroughs. Last Sunday I went to the Airline Diner in Queens, which was established in 1952 as the Airline but is now part of the Jackson Hole franchise. It's located on Astoria Blvd, close to LaGuardia (hence the airline theme) and accessible by taking the N/R or the M60 bus (I took the bus).

Thankfully they've kept the exterior pretty much intact, and the interior is classic diner décor through and through — shiny vinyl chairs, amoeba-patterned tabletops, jukeboxes, vintage signs — if you think a classic diner should have something, chances are the Airline does. I'm not sure how much of the interior is "original" but none of it feels forced or out of place and it all looked pretty authentic.

The building itself looks as if it has been added onto at some point, and is twice as big as I expected it to be. There is an additional seating area in the back that you access by walking behind the counter, so although there were a lot of people waiting we were seated fairly quickly. I had cinnamon raisin bread french toast, which was as delicious as it sounds, and their diner coffee was strong and the refills plentiful.

I really appreciate that, although they clearly rebranded the diner as the Jackson Hole, they did so in a way that remained faithful to the original signage. So many places would have just slapped a terrible modern logo onto the amazing neon signs or, worse yet, replaced them all together.

You might recognize the Airline from Goodfellas, a movie I definitely should see and I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I haven't yet. The only bad part about going in the morning is that we didn't get to see all of the beautiful neon lit up — I guess I'll just have to go back at nighttime and try one of their "famous" burgers.

I'm very excited about continuing my diner adventures and exploring new-to-me parts of this wonderful city. I'm going to try to go to one new diner each weekend whenever I can — I have no idea where the next one will be but that's all part of the adventure.