I Am the Scallops in This Diner, and Here Are All the Reasons You Shouldn’t Order Me

I cannot emphasize this enough. At a Michelin starred restaurant I am royalty, but at Breakfast All the Time, a diner with 3.5 stars on Yelp and a B+ from the Health Department, I am at the bottom of the totem pole. The Western omelette taunts me, the blueberry waffles laugh at me. I come from a soggy plastic bag that’s been stuffed in the back of the freezer since the freezer was an icebox. You know the old joke about tying a pork chop around the kid’s neck to get the dog to play with him? They made the dog sniff me to induce vomiting after the kid gave it a chocolate bar.

For seventeen miserable bucks plus tax and twenty-percent tip, you will enjoy a plate of unseasoned, simultaneously overcooked and undercooked, white chunks of sea meat artfully plopped on a bed of limp romaine that probably has e. Coli. While the rest of your table is slathering ketchup on their home fries, you’ll be choking down a piece of scallop that’s tougher than a rope and has the aftertaste of a penny. There is no winning when you order me, only losing your brunch. Turn the page and order the damn buttermilk pancakes.

It’s rude to stare. Just get it together and order a sad lobster for all I care. As Gordon Ramsay might say, I am RAW on the inside. And not just from all the therapy to boost my self-esteem. I am quite literally, RAW. Our poor chef tries his best, but a semester of culinary classes at the local community college are no match for my prowess and weird smell if you leave me in boiling water for too long. Breakfast All the Time just isn’t equipped to handle something as difficult and delicate as me. Just ask the lobsters.

It was a cold morning in December of 2011. Olivia Johnson wanted to appear sophisticated to her high school friends she hadn’t seen in years. She turned to the last page of the menu, the page where the misfits of the diner hang out. Crab cakes, Kung Pao chicken, and of course, me.

“I’ll have the scallops,” she said confidently.

She was never the same. Some say she became a vegan and moved to a town in the middle of Montana with more moose than people. Others say you can still hear her screams if you hold a diner scallop to your ear.

Ordering diner scallops isn’t going to erase your problems. I have Vitamin B12, not magical powers. I can’t jumpstart your career, fix the weird noise your car makes when it goes over forty, or unsend the drunk texts you sent Alex on New Year’s Eve. But, I can save you from making the worst culinary decision of your life. For the love of the shrimp god Old Bay, have some self-respect.

Look, I know my worth. I know that if we were at Eleven Madison Park, or some fancy French joint whose name Americans always butcher, this would be a very different conversation. But since I have had the misfortune of ending up at a diner in Mendham Park, New Jersey, I have made it my life’s mission to warn others before it is too late. Close the menu, order the BLT. I am on your team.

Broiled beef liver? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.