Critic's Review
Not sure what I wanted for lunch, I decided to do a late breakfast. I'd visited the other location in Hollywood and they've made some unwelcomed changes, so I wondered what they've done with this one.
They have an outside patio here that generated no interest in July on a 90+ degree day. I doubt you could even get a server to serve you if you wanted to sit outside.
This location is more lively with a bunch of young people running the place; I sat at a booth and someone came right over. It's your typical diner inside; a long narrow room with booths throughout. No bad tables in a good diner.
At the Hollywood location, they didn't give me a coffee pot, but they still do here. Same diner coffee, but at least I didn't have to wait for refills or deal with the dreaded "top off".
There's a malt shop style counter here; cute perhaps, but it didn't look very comfortable. I don't like to have to balance when I'm eating.
The food came out quickly. One broken yolk, At least they weren't burned. Once big negative is that they no longer have home fries; they've gone exclusively to hash browns. they probably cost less.
They weren't very good hash browns; when ihop, Denny's and Waffle house have better potatoes than you, you need to re-think your offerings. Skinny sausages but they were fine. the bread was the big surprise; this had to be the worst rye bread I've ever had.
It's like they left the sugar out or something. The bread had no taste, and I mean zero taste. Even loading it up with butter didn't help. Kind of weird.
Conclusion
I don't know if this place is under new management or if they just hired a "consultant", but it's not nearly as good as it used to be. I prefer home fries, and their has browns aren't even good. They don't take care when making the eggs, and they need a new bread vendor. Still the only place to get a late breakfast in the area.
Review 12/19/11
The moonlight diner has 2 locations; one in Hollywood and this one. Its stainless steel exterior make it look like a diner, and the inside is no different. Its a narrow place, with a counter and one row of booths on once side, and 2 rows of booths on the other. They also have an outdoor patio with a few tables for alfresco dining.
I'd been here once before and got some pretty good food with some shoddy service; they gave me iced tea without lemon, but I had a pretty good skirt steak and eggs. I mistakenly ordered an iced tea not realizing I was having breakfast.
This time I ordered coffee. The roll up they give you has a fork and a knife, so I had no spoon for the coffee. I used my knife and wiped it rather than trying to flag down the server. I ordered 2 over easy with sausage links and rye toast. It came out literally 2 minutes later.
They have their grill too hot in this place; eggs shouldn't be flash cooked so they brown on the outside. My feeling is that this would have been a great breakfast at 8am when the sausages were fresh. These were dried out and the potatoes were luke warm; this stuff had been sitting around all day. The rye bread was thick cut and was better than the usual stuff; everything here was good; it's just too bad it wasn't all freshly made.
Getting a coffee refill was a chore, and my server never did figure out that I didn't have a spoon. I understand service issues when it's packed and crazy; but not when it's empty at 3pm.