Tom Sawyer Diner

This is a restaurant you'll probably never visit, and you have no reason to, even if you're desperately hungry at the wee hours of the night in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

And, honestly, I wouldn't write about it here, except that, in all honesty, I feel like things have gotten a bit too serious over at ZagatWho as of late. Gone are the funny pictures, and the witty comparisons of our food to some long-forgotten childhood memories, replaced with-- surprisingly enough-- real writing about restaurants.

So I invite you to slum it with me as I write an entry about a restaurant entirely undeserving of one.

The theming of the Tom Sawyer Diner ends at the name-- there is no other mention of Tom Sawyer, a whitewashed fence, or Mark Twain anywhere in the establishment. It's sort of like the Cheesecake Factory in that way, except they actually serve cheesecake (albeit not in a factory-like environment). This is also where comparisons to the Cheesecake Factory end.

I admire their honesty-- the ubiquitous diner dessert glass case did feature desserts, but the staff had chosen not to remove their tell-tale price tags and wrappings, betraying any notion of a home-cooked pie. Store bought through-and-through.

The food was less than unremarkable-- it was hardly edible (if CitySearch rated in Harrisburg, this place would get a negative score). Virginia mentioned that her tuna melt "smelled like death" and the beef gravy atop Andrew's meatloaf tasted like it was probably distilled from the sweat of the eponymous singer-songwriter. My open-faced turkey sandwich featured turkey meat older than the Berlin Wall, with the consistency of Butterball sandwich meat (pressed turkey product, I suppose). The baked mac and cheese looked like coffee cake and tasted like nothing.

And the service. It started out nicely enough, but quickly took a nosedive. I sort of blame myself for this-- why, Ravi, must you be so picky? After she dropped off our plates, I kept eyeing her suspiciously (not out of lust-- she was, as Virginia pointed out using an Arrested Development reference oft repeated throughout the trip, a bit of a "shemale"). She eventually cut herself on something at the bar, but continued to serve food with an open wound on her hand (occasionally sucking the blood out of the wound because, well, that's the sanitary thing to do, right?). I began to count the health code violations in my head, if only so that I wouldn't have to focus on the taste of the horrible food. Eventually, she got a bandage, but it wasn't big enough to cover the wound in my heart. Or the vomit.

Ravi