North Star Diner & Shanghai Room

North Star Diner & Shanghai Room is the coolest diner in the city. Their dining room has gold glittery booths and an entire wall dedicated to framed portraits of real astronauts, and while that would make this place enough of a draw, their delicious breakfast food is the best part. We're fans of their perfectly crispy, perfectly salted hash browns, breakfast sandwiches stuffed with eggs, gooey yellow american, and gargantuan sausage patties that jut right out of the biscuit, and the city's best pancakes. And if you're ravenous and/or hungover, we can't recommend the breakfast chimichanga enough—the fried tortilla comes loaded with smoky carnitas and pinto beans, then doused in ranchero salsa and crema.

The Greenwood diner has a lot of characteristics that make it feel like an extension of your home—without the obligation to water your peace lily or procrastinate doing laundry. You can walk in and get a table at pretty much anytime (even on a Sunday morning), the staff is super friendly, and the muted televisions above the counter play everything from scenes of donut production lines to horror movies.

Come back to the neighborhood after work and go to their bar next door (a.k.a. the Shanghai Room). They offer karaoke four days a week, as well as the full diner menu—because pancakes taste just as good after midnight.

Food Rundown

photo credit: Chona Kasinger

The Best Buttermilk Pancakes

Yeah, they are. Fluffy and golden with a slight tang and subtle sweetness, we'd eat these things even without butter and syrup.

photo credit: Chona Kasinger

Hash Browns

Just as crispy and well-salted as the potato gods intended them to be.

photo credit: Chona Kasinger

Breakfast Sandwich

We love a breakfast sandwich that features a six-inch oval sausage patty that's twice as thick as the fried egg. That's what's happening here at North Star, along with melted american cheese on your choice of english muffin or biscuit. You want the biscuit.

photo credit: Chona Kasinger

Breakfast Chimi

This flour tortilla-wrapped-and-fried beast is filled with scrambled eggs, carnitas, pinto beans, cheddar, hash browns, and pico. The butterfinger-like crunch of the shell juxtaposed with tender pork and gooey cheese does it for us to begin with, but then they go and add a spicy ranchero sauce and tangy crema on top which adds heat and cools it all down simultaneously. If you're very hungry or just really really like chimichangas, this is your order.