Dave’s Diner

Dave’s Diner is an average diner and you get exactly what you expect from looking at the shop front. Get here in the early morning and you will be eating alongside the building trade customers. Arrive a little later and you are more likely to see student types recovering from the night before.
I have only eaten a veggie breakfast here once and while not particularly impressed, I couldn’t argue with the price or the portion. Perhaps my arteries may have been a bit less positive, but then again it is a fry up café.
If you are wanting a hangover cure, or fuel to carry you through some intense manual labour, then the menu won’t disappoint. If your thing is more chai latte’s and tofu or organic pastrami sandwiches then I reckon it’s worth taking a walk into the North Laine.

Proper greasy spoons are a dying breed. A kind of relentless gentrification is in danger of making every café and pub into the same characterless Costa/​Whethespoons den. Dave’s Diner, as you might have guessed, bucks the trend: an old-​school working class caf, doing the type of fat-​simmered breakfast that turn the usually health-​conscious into slobbering idiots, craving a fat fix. What places like these have that high-​street chains don’t is a sense of culture: cheery cooks that know exactly what their regulars’ want; construction workers who have six sugars in their tea; funny little notes with un-​PC platitudes. It all feels like it’s from a bygone age, and it’s a sad thought to think these places may not exist if we carry on steamrolling all semblance of personality out of our eateries. Enjoy it while you can, preferably with alcohol weeping from every pore and a gnawing hunger.

Dave’s has one saving grace: when you’re so hungover that you’re still physically drunk, there is nowhere better in the world to be. Fried breakfasts, tea/​cold fizzy drinks (careful not to confuse those, it’s quite hard here) and service that is as surly as you feel.
The breakfast is cheaper than your average, and full and filling, but that’s about it really. I never ordered anything else here, primarily because I was never sober enough to read the menu, but it never looked particularly appetising anyway. They do offer a lot of stuff, it can’t be denied, and if your hangover cure involves thumbing a dog-​eared copy of last Wednesday’s Mirror, you’re in luck.
The clientele here seems to be primarily builders and drunk students: not a really a surprise on what is essentially a trading road and student ghetto. There are better places for breakfast, but if you’re at Dave’s, chances are you can’t remember where they are.

It’s not just the photos of bygone Brighton on the walls of Dave’s Diner that will transport you back to the BC (Before Cappuccino) era the entire ambience of the place is redolent of a time when men were men and they didn’t eat Paninis.
This is a great place to fuel up at the start of a busy day. The full English (2 bacon, 2 sausage, fried potatoes, mushrooms, beans, tomatoes and toast) comes in at £5.20 and will set you up for whatever lies in store. A veggie omelette will set you back £4. A mug of old-​fashioned tea is 70p and instant coffee is 80p. The children’s menu (usual suspects) costs £2.20.
The premises are efficiently run by the eponymous Dave and a warm welcome awaits as long as you don’t order a Skinny Cinnamon Dolce Latte, to go, Giovanni.

Always full of hustle and bustle in the mornings as the masses descend to the counter for their much needed caffeine and hearty start to the day. Dave’s Diner has all you need in a early morning café. Tea, coffee and plenty of things swimming in grease. They have a leviathan of a breakfast called ‘Big one’ and seeing a couple of orders go passed, I decided on the more modest fried egg sandwich, which of course is brilliant (can they be badly done?) But they other patrons seem equally has happy as they dive into their hefty plate of meat and carbs. It’s near the Gladstone end of Lewes Road but if you can’t find it, look for the standardised woman hanging out the doorway smoking like a chimney, beautiful.

Dave’s Diner is a proper english café and worth a visit if you have a long day or as Jack said, you have a stonking hangover.
As I discuss it the bacon butties are calling me. With a great selection of food I could eat here for breakfast, lunch and an early evening meal. In the morning is best as it is full of energy from workers and locals needing their daily fuel. The workers are always a good laugh and when you leave you always feel ready for the day ahead.
If full english breakfast weren’t so damn bad for you then I would eat here everyday but for now I will have to settle for once maybe thrice a week.

I don’t exactly know when I first noticed Dave’s Diner on the Lewes Road but I do know that I was hung over and that as soon as I saw it I went straight in.
Dave’s Diner is not your typical Brighton greasy spoon, in that it’s actually a proper old school greasy spoon, with people in there who actually work in jobs that involve manual labour, and ingredients that are swimming in oil and staff who’ve worked there for years, smoking profusely outside. There’s not a whiff of organic produce or fairtrade, ethical food, it’s just good old fatty hangover fare in a good old fashioned greasy spoon.
£5.20 for the ‘Big One’, a beauty of a plate which consists of bacon, sausages, egg, beans, toast and tomatoes. A bit expensive, but if your head feels like someone has wrung your brain dry like a kitchen towel, mopped it up then poured it into a washing machine, well I couldn’t recommend anywhere better (in this part of town anyway)