As I work my way through my list of Dartmouth restaurants to eat at since moving to this side of…read morethe harbour, it was inevitable that I would eat at Pleasant Street Diner. To my never-ending shame, I never made it to PSD's famed spiritual and familial predecessor, John's Lunch, so this was as close as I was going to get.
The room is ringed by booths on the windowed exterior walls, tables fill the middle, and an old-school counter is at the back - complete with cushioned, rotating stools. PSD opens surprisingly late for a diner at 11am, and isn't open on Sundays, but it was unsurprisingly bustling when my friends and I showed up for lunch on a Saturday.
Given their operating hours, their breakfast options are limited to omelettes and some breakfast sandwiches, so I opted for a different diner classic instead - their club sandwich. I figured I'd be back for dinner another time to have their fish, so a club seemed like the perfect lunch meal.
Despite the crowd, our food came out impressively quick and my plate was piled high with wedges of the triple-decker sandwich and fries. The bread was well-toasted and held up against its layers of thick slices of roasted turkey breast, crisp bacon, and mayo-slathered tomato and lettuce. It was a solid rendition of a diner classic!
The fries were of the from-frozen variety, but were decently crispy and very, very plentiful.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention their coleslaw. Normally this is just a forgettable two ounce cup scooped out of a Sysco bucket, but PSD goes all-in with a heap of lightly tart, shredded cabbage that covered the better part of a side plate. It reminded me of some of the Quebec-based rotisserie chicken chains that are all (oddly) about their coleslaw.
My next time there saw me coming back for dinner with my wife in tow. We arrived around 6:30 on a Saturday, and while the place was full, there was only one other group ahead of us and we got a table after a short wait.
I knew I *had* to get some fish, but I decided to splurge and go all-in on the seafood platter. They're a well-oiled machine at PSD, because despite the crowd (and perpetual takeout orders), we had our food in very good time.
The menu isn't very descriptive, but given the other seafood options, I was right in my suspicions that the seafood platter would have haddock, clams, shrimp and scallops. With my past experience, I knew there'd be a good pile of coleslaw as well, and because of that heap of seafood and coleslaw, the fries had to come on their own plate, so really, this should be called the seafood platters - plural!
I went after the clams and scallops first, as I felt like they have the shortest shelf life. The random twists and swirls of clam meat were tender and lightly sweet, without a hint of rubberineaa, and a good and crisp batter. I never really get why scallops get a light breading since they're never crisp and it adds limited flavour, but they were also cooked to perfection.
My shrimp were pleasantly firm, with an amount of breading somewhere in between the dusting on the scallops and the heavier layer on the clams.
My piece of haddock was a decent size, but the batter was pushing the border of being too thick and almost tough, with a mushy fish-batter interface. I'm not sure if this is from twice-frozen fish or par cooking, but it was a less than stellar showing for a place as well-known for its fish as they are.
Tartar sauce is left at the tables and it's Kraft packets for takeout, so presumably it is at the tables as well.
Once again, the fries were wildly plentiful and perfectly adequate, and I ended up taking most of them and some of the seafood home with me. The seafood platter may be the most expensive dish on the menu, but it can also feed two people!
Pleasant Street Diner is carrying the torch of a family of restauranteurs, and while there's room for tweaks to become truly legendary (house-made tartar and hand-cut fries, please!), they're still checking a lot of the right boxes and people are definitely voting with their dollars and appetites.
