The Horseshoe Quest of 2011: The Early Bird Gets the Shoe: Charlie Parker’s Diner

Charlie Parker’s Diner in Springfield has been featured on various TV programs and has become quite famous in several circles. Charlie Parker’s features a 16” pancake (yes, the size of a large pizza) and also creates breakfast horseshoes. They actually have a challenge that if you can eat four 16” pancakes, you get the meal for fee; but only a handful of people have been able to conquer the cakes. The restaurant is situated in an old Quonset hut (kind of like a half-circle aluminum bunker) dating back to World War II era and the inside of the hut is decorated to look like a 1950’s eatery. For this leg of our quest, we woke up early and tried one of their famous breakfast shoes. The breakfast horseshoe is significantly different than a regular shoe since the breakfast one comes with your choice of egg style; then topped with bacon, sausage, or ham; then topped with hash browns; and finally smothered in sausage gravy. The breakfast horseshoe is an acquired taste, but the flavorful combination of all the breakfast foods is hard to resist, even to a newcomer. As for us, we each ordered slightly different variations of the shoes, with each horseshoe tailored to our specific breakfast tastes. The breakfast horseshoe is a very hearty meal, so make sure that you bring your appetite along for this dish.

When breaking down all the components of a breakfast shoe, it becomes a bit difficult to compare them to the other horseshoes we have encountered on our quest. The breakfast shoe is a completely separate entity, but to remain fair and unbiased, it must be graded on the same scale as every other installment on the quest. We find ourselves having a hard time trying to pick out any negative aspect of the breakfast shoe, but at the same time, it is much harder to critique the breakfast foods as most of them tend to have very little variation and generally taste the same from location to location. However, the gravy on this breakfast horseshoe was fantastic and the hash browns were above our expectations. The meat and eggs were good, but nothing too special. The gravy had a nice peppery flavor that balanced perfectly with the hash browns. The hash browns were crisp, but were not overcooked. To top it all off, we had great service and we were in and out of the restaurant in about 35 minutes. We gave the breakfast shoe a final score of 89 due to the overall lack of complexity of the entrée. The meal was great and there are no obvious flaws in the shoe, but we felt like giving this an A would take away from some of the other horseshoes on the journey. We would like to review one more breakfast horesehoe on our Quest, but it will take take a colossal effort to overtake Charlie Parker’s. If you have never been to Charlie’s, what are you waiting for?