YDKJ Diner Challenge! Verona Diner, Verona

by Alice Magdziak • April 26, 2017 • Dinerland, Essex, Food • Comments (0) • 1908

In our search for new diners, we recently came across the Verona Diner right on Bloomfield Avenue in Verona. It looks like a small neighborhood diner from the outside but the interior and the menu are recently updated and very modern. We loved it here! Our challenge for reviewing diners is that they normally have about a 50 page menu and it’s very similar to most other diners. We didn’t have that problem here but we still stuck to the diner classics for consistency in our diner comparisons.

We went to breakfast with our nieces so we got to try more than our usual items. The pancakes were out of sight. But, what diner pancakes aren’t terrific?

The French toast was equally as good but scrambled eggs were pretty plain. Luckily, the bacon was very crispy and to our liking so it made up for the eggs.

Other egg dishes we had were very good so maybe the scrambled eggs were a fluke. The breakfast burrito came with eggs, sausage, jalapenos and cheddar cheese and was terrific. The home fries it came with were nice and creamy, too. This was a very good breakfast.

We also tried the vegetarian Mexican omelet with jalapenos, onions and cheese. It came with chips and salsa which was a nice change of pace over the usual home fries. Their house salsa is quite good but I thought could have been spicier.

For lunch, we tried a few soups first. The clam chowder was good but the chicken noodle soup was outstanding. It had lots of big chicken pieces and plenty of veggies. We thought the little tureens they were served in were cute but the small opening and wider middle made digging the final few spoonfuls of soup out kind of difficult.

We were surprised when our chicken finger appetizer came out with fries and onion rings. It could have been another whole meal. The fingers were just standard strips of chicken breast with a commercially-made breading. The fries had a coating on them which I didn’t care for but the onion rings were very crispy and delicious.

The Cuban panini had an abnormally large amount of ham on it. It made it more of a regular sandwich than a pressed panini. I definitely could have used less ham and more cheese to make the classic pressed and crunchy panini. The waffle fries that came with it were very nice.

The burger also came with those delicious waffle fries and a TON of onions. Does someone really eat that many onions on their burger? Once we removed at least two-thirds of the onions, the burger was juicy and well cooked.

One unusual thing about the Verona Diner is its lack of web presence. They have no website. They aren’t on Facebook. The only way I could find any information about them was through Yelp. I haven’t run into that much anymore. They could really use an outlet to share their menu with people since it’s not the typical diner menu. It’s really interesting and I wish we’d taken more pictures of it. They are also only open until 9pm except Sunday when they close at 3pm. Maybe they are steering themselves away from being a “typical” diner? Regardless, we can recommend the Verona Diner for breakfast and lunch. Just don’t try to prepare for your trip by looking at an online menu.