Landmark Diner
265 South Highland Avenue
Ossining, NY 10562 (Map it!)
Attendees: Pat, Jeffrey, Sylvia
What I Had: Breakfast Burrito with onions, sausage, egg and cheese, potatoes, coffee
What It Cost: ~$13
Worth It: Not really
The Rating: 3/5
The Details: Having lived in Ossining for 6.5 of the previous 12 years, I have found plenty of opportunities to chow down at the Landmark Diner, a local institution located across Route 9 from the Arcadian Shopping Center. Landmark carries the reputation of being just a hair better than the other diners in Ossining. My experience with these various diners would support that analysis. But would this breakfast stand up to the “slightly better than a regular diner” reputation Landmark has fostered for itself? Depends on what you expect from a diner breakfast.
The most remarkable thing about this Landmark meal was how little it tasted like anything. There was barely a hint of flavor from anything in the burrito, despite the generous portions of onions and sausage scattered throughout. It was like I was eating flavorless, warm mush. Desperate for some semblance of flavor, I cracked open the small plastic containers of guacamole, salsa, and sour cream that came with my burrito and added dollops of each to my next bite. The guacamole had an unpleasant grainy texture but the flavor was fine. The salsa was excessively watery and not any better than a salsa you can pick up in a grocery store. The sour cream was sour cream. All three had clearly been sitting in the fridge for hours before being plopped on my plate.
From this review, you might believe that I had an unpleasant dining experience. That’s actually not true. There was nothing offensively bad or inedible on my plate (though the simultaneously mushy and yet chewy potatoes came close). Rather, everything just tasted, for lack of a better word, neutral. The food was neutral. And really, Landmark is just a diner. And if a diner’s food is edible, and avoids being offensive to the taste buds and giving you indigestion, what more could you ask for?
The Bottom Line: It’s a diner. That’s all.
Landmark Diner. A place chosen more for convenience then good taste. I suppose that’s all we can except for a diner.
I decided to order the quintessential “big breakfast”. It was just a pile of food. Eggs, French toast, sausage, and bacon. The eggs were flat and flavorless, the French toast was, well, also flavorless. The only thing that had flavor was the bacon. It wasn’t even a good flavor. Coffee service was also lack luster. If you’re a diner, I feel like you should refill the coffee more then once through the meal. Blah. Whatever.
If you’re in Ossining, and you need to find a quick easy breakfast, it’s worth it to go over the Briarcliff and eat at the Patio.
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think diner? For me, I think of all day breakfast, grilled cheese sandwiches, metal exteriors, and lots of booths. Growing up and living in the northeast, diners are all around us, and we each have our own thoughts when it comes to them. It isn’t like the WBC hasn’t visited a diner before in our travels (see Bellas, Horseman, and to some extent, City Limits), but I feel like the Landmark really fits into my definition of a diner more so than the others. The shiny metal, multicolored building, the generic interior with the counter and the booths all around. When pressed, we all have our go-to diners, and the residents of Ossining have the Landmark.
The breakfast menu was varied but familiar. My feeling is they really like flour tortillas, ’cause they had a lot of different variations of a breakfast wrap/burrito available. I stuck by my usual diner breakfast and ordered a spinach and mushroom omelette which came with potatoes and wheat toast (with a little bit of butter), and a cup of coffee.
Our meals were served on plastic plates, not the unusually old looking heavy ceramic plates of yore. It seemed that the cook didn’t believe in salt or any other seasoning, since everything tasted really bland. I don’t usually add salt to my meals, and I didn’t for this, but I was really tempted. I couldn’t tell if the spinach was fresh chopped or of the frozen variety. Besides the lack of salt, everything else was fine. The omelette was more on the well done side (I like mine a little less cooked), and the potatoes were mushy.
The czar says: For a diner, Landmark isn’t bad and there is plenty of easy parking. There are worse ones in the area (and we will let you know once we bite the bullet and visit them for the sake of our readers).