Merl-y Gates

Merl's Breakfast Spot

by Trey Popp

Across the top of my laminated menu at Merl's, a 20-seat diner on the corner of 16th and Dickinson, someone had scribbled a sentence in black marker: "Please ask about our fried chicken & waffles." An untold number of thumbs had eroded the ink nearly to illegibility. But there it was, and it was why I had come, so I followed the instructions.

"I heard you serve chicken and waffles. Got any today?" 

Merl eyed me. "Who did you hear it from?"

"I've got a friend who likes stuff like chicken and waffles."

"African-American chicken and waffles?"

“Well that I can’t say.”

"Because if it's not African-American chicken and waffles," she cackled, "it’s not chicken and waffles."

"Then you won't mind if I inspect the kitchen to make sure there's no honkies back there," I replied. Well, not really. I was laughing just like the other half-dozen or so folks in the place. It's a slow lunch hour on weekdays, but since weekends get busy and the chicken is cooked to order, that's when Merl gets to kick back.

Her easy-going manner is infectious. Like most worthwhile diners, there's a reason to come here, and it’s not necessarily the food. For the last year, it’s been a place for neighbors to carry on conversations that have a way of hopping from one table to another until half the room is weighing in. What began as a takeout joint two years ago is now a homespun hub, with a crucifix over the air conditioner and walls painted "the color of heaven," as Merl calls baby blue.

The meat-heavy menu loads the bases with bacon — pork, beef, turkey — and drives them home with the same trifecta in scrapple form. Six and change buys a platter with a meat and two eggs plus grits or home fries. But for my money, the only thing worth considering is the one in black marker. Merl's chicken wings sport a crispy batter that pops with a few drops of Bayou Heat hot sauce, and meat as moist as it gets. The sprinkle of powdered sugar is all her Belgian waffle needs to play sweet foil to the savory fowl.

Nothing else I tried met the same mark. Salmon cakes smacked of the can. A fish hoagie was a study in plainness. The facts that imitation syrup stands in for maple and the "orange juice" is 80 percent sugar water emblemize all that is wrong with the American diet.

But I can't hold any of that against someone with the guts to open a daytime café in an area Merl says some consider "too dangerous" for the dinner hour. As far as I'm concerned, Merl's making more than good chicken and waffles. She's making a better neighborhood.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)

Merl's Breakfast Spot | 1543 Dickinson St., 215-468-0490. Hours: Tue.-Fri., 7:30 a.m.-2 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 8 a.m.-3 p.m.; closed Mon. Breakfast platters, $4.75-$6.50; sandwiches, $1.95-$6.25; chicken and waffles, $6.25-$7.50