North Star Diner

Flavor: Updated American diner with vegetarian options
Ambiance: Casual dining in a cavernous space

Don’t go looking for a portable metal building when you head to North Star Diner: The restaurant resides in a Weaverville strip mall. The echoing space, still exhibiting remnants of its retail past, conspires with the location to evoke a mall food court. Fortunately, the food delivers what one expects from a contemporary diner rather than a mall feed trough.

Diners are known for serving a wide range of basics, and the North Star doesn’t disappoint on that score. The menu features 60-plus items, encompassing all meals, and breakfast is served all day. A wide range of salads and plethora of sandwiches provide ample light-dining choices. Those in the mood for heavier fare select from a shorter, but nicely varied, list of entrée plates featuring comfort foods, as well as less common diner fare like lime-marinated wild salmon and honey-mustard pork loin. Other offerings include pastas and stir-fries, which seem unlikely to emerge from a traditional diner’s kitchen.

Yet, the expansive menu comes up short in some areas. For instance, the appetizer menu—concise at just five options—relies heavily on cheese. I love cheese, so I’m not complaining. But I don’t always want cheese.

Nearly half of the North Star’s menu items should entice vegetarians, assuming they’re of the ovo- or lacto- sects. Far fewer items pass muster with the truly devout. Impressively, even among the “meat”-and-two menu offerings, there are two vegetarian entrees: garlic-potato cakes and tofu-rice casserole. The oft-overlooked non-meat eater need not resort to building a meal of sides at North Star, although that’s an option too. Salads, long the refuge for the veg-centric, come in nine permutations, two-thirds of which are meat free, and feature seven add-ons for many variations. The falafel salad sounds particularly good; I’m eyeballing it for my next visit. Fully half of the sandwich menu is veggie-friendly; some, like the hot artichoke sandwich and BBQ tempeh Reuben, even tickle this meat-sandwich devotee’s fancy.

In addition to offering a wide range of foods, a diner should prepare them well. The North Star Diner generally meets that mark but falls short on occasion. An example of the latter is the black-bean omelet. It was overcooked and seemingly assembled off the heat on a cold plate, resulting in a tepid dish that never radiated enough heat to even begin melting the cheese. Lunch and dinner items fared better, but overcooking and under-seasoning were still too common.

The North Star’s most consistent issues concern the proper care and preparation of vegetables. Of those vegetable items we sampled, the best were the spinach-and-artichoke dip and the sautéed green beans. Flavor-wise, the dip was good; it was loaded with artichokes and spinach. It’s downfall, however, was the preparation. The stringy spinach was so clumpy that most of it came along in a gloopy mess with the first swoop of a tortilla chip. I shouldn’t have to resort to cutting a dip with a knife before I eat it—this defies the essence of a dip. The green beans were another near-success. Sautéed with garlic, their flavor was excellent. Like many of the vegetables at North Star, however, they were overcooked.

Among the less successful vegetables were the following: roasted beets and apples—sweet and redolent of the earthy beet, yet overcooked and lacking the counterbalancing tart flavor apples should contribute; lima beans—much too sweet and overcooked (even my companion, one far more appreciative of traditional Southern preparations than myself, wouldn’t eat them); and an apple, walnut and feta-cheese salad—the lettuce was left in too-big pieces and the apples apparently weren’t acidulated, so they browned on the plate.

Starches had their own problems. The macaroni and cheese tasted good, but the noodles were so severely overcooked they became a pile of cheesy mush. The home fries lacked seasoning, and benefited greatly from the nearby bottle of Heinz. The house-baked bread was spongy and bland, and seemed stale from being sliced too far ahead of time. On the plus side, I really liked the steamy-hot, fresh and tasty biscuit served with breakfast.

Meat dishes were generally better. The meatloaf was decent, but would be better accentuated by a tangier sauce. The sweet-tomato gravy that accompanied it would be more at home on a Sicilian pasta dish. The chicken pot pie was very good, featuring a good dose of pepper and nicely cooked vegetables. The “scratch-made crust” was buttery and tasty, although it needed to be browned more. The single best thing I ate at the North Star was the tuna melt. Served grilled on rye with Provolone cheese, it was excellent.

Less successful meat preparations were the three-meat chili and the chicken that my companion ordered on her salad. The biggest problem with the three-meat chili is calling it chili. Overly sweet, lacking any discernable pepper flavor other than that of green bell, and relying too much on tomatoes, chili it’s not. The chicken was just downright weird. It reminded both of us, in taste and texture, of food-service purveyor’s agglomerated “chicken” products.

Desserts were somewhat disappointing. A bread pudding was tasty, but severely over-baked. The vanilla sauce drizzled over it was quite good. A chocolate bundt cake fared little better. The frosting and dusting of espresso powder were appealing, but the cake lacked chocolate flavor, reminding us of faux-chocolate vegan baked goods. In North Star’s defense, I did not see the menu descriptions for the desserts, so if it was, in fact, vegan “chocolate” cake, then they did quite well.

The North Star offers a small selection of bottled beers, and Green Man ales on tap. A short wine list rounds out the spirits for those who like to imbibe with their meals.

All in all, the North Star Diner provides a wide range of options at fair prices. Little really stands out, although that tuna melt was darn tasty! A little more attention to detail on the diner’s part, and some time spent sussing out the good stuff on the customer’s part, and a satisfactory meal can be had. The North Star should serve its community well.

[Mark Williams is a cook, home gardener and regular patron of the Asheville food scene.]