The Worcester Lunch Car Company monopolized the New England market with its colorful diners. Although Worcester sent a smattering of diners as far as Florida and Michigan, the cars were most popular in their home territory. From 1906 to 1961, the company built six hundred fifty-one diners, with as few as ten or as many as seventy seats. Known for their small size, solid construction, and old-fashioned styling, the cars featured oak and mahogany woodwork, intricate ceramic tile patterns, and a backbar of stainless steel. Their distinctive porcelain enamel exteriors with names emblazoned on them proudly proclaimed their presence along the roadside. Day and night, these diners fed generations of New England's working class; today, fewer than one hundred lunch cars still operate.

The Worcester Lunch Car Company monopolized the New England market with its colorful diners. Although Worcester sent a smattering of diners as far as Florida and Michigan, the cars were most popular in their home territory. From 1906 to 1961, the company built six hundred fifty-one diners, with as few as ten or as many as seventy seats. Known for their small size, solid construction, and old-fashioned styling, the cars featured oak and mahogany woodwork, intricate ceramic tile patterns, and a backbar of stainless steel. Their distinctive porcelain enamel exteriors with names emblazoned on them proudly proclaimed their presence along the roadside. Day and night, these diners fed generations of New England's working class; today, fewer than one hundred lunch cars still operate.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was birthplace to the burgeoning "night lunch wagon" manufacturing industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These horse-drawn food carts eventually evolved into classic American diners. For many years, diner builders like the Worcester Lunch Car Company and J.B. Judkins Company operated in the Bay State, while few new diners opened for business after 1960. This left the state with a high concentration of some of the best-preserved diners built during the early to mid-twentieth century, including the Capitol Diner in Lynn, the Route 66 Diner in Springfield and Buddy's Diner in Somerville. Eatery historian Larry Cultrera discusses this appetizing history and the not-be-missed items on unforgettable diner menus.

Diner food is a characteristic and comforting American cuisine. Urban presents some of the best diner recipes from New England, home of the diner concept. He includes profiles of some of the region's finest diners, and other interesting tidbits.

In the land of mountains, milk and maple syrup, community is culture. Hear the stories of diner owners and their regulars. Whether driving through college towns, along rural country roads or down bustling city streets, the historic diners you'll find are integral to the communities they serve. Over time, Vermont diners have remained gathering places for regulars, locals and travelers alike. So much more than just eateries, places like the Birdseye, Chelsea Royal and the Country Girl Diner are where strangers become friends, where generations learn to understand one another and where simpler times are celebrated. Author Erin McCormick reveals how Vermont's diner culture came to be.

From the time the first handful of night lunch wagons served up their simple fare on the streets of the North Shore in 1890, residents from every social and economic standing have frequented these familiar beacons of hospitality and their descendants, the diners. Over the course of the sixty years that followed, the area's manufacturing, transportation, and recreation centers provided the hungry clientele who helped spur the metamorphosis of the humble lunch wagon into the sleek, efficient, and friendly eatery known as the diner. Diners of the North Shore is a fascinating collection of many previously unpublished images from the golden age of the diner. Bearing names such as Hesperus in Gloucester, Lafayette in Salem, and Suntaug in Peabody, these eat-on-the-run oases provided their customers with not only a square meal but also an atmosphere as welcoming as one's kitchen. From the primitive Night Owl lunch wagon to the art deco-inspired Sterling Streamliner, Diners of the North Shore showcases each diner's unique character, along with the colorful personalities who ran them.

Revised and updated edition of the best-selling first edition (978-0-8117-2878-2).