Smith Street Diner, Greensboro NC

Huge homemade biscuits, breakfast all day, and classic diner food served “8 days a week”. That’s what you’ll find at Smith Street Diner in Greensboro, NC

Last month I went to North Carolina to visit Kara and do a Greensboro food tour. Kara and I have been friends since college, and we have always been good at plans on the fly. Well, now that we have “real lives” and responsibilities, nothing is quite as on the fly anymore. But when we can pull it off, we do it right. Kara is a huge proponent of my blog, and we’ve been discussing this tour for a couple of years. Our schedules finally worked out this summer for a quick trip while I was in Maryland visiting family. Kara sent me lots of restaurant options, but I just put her charge. She knows the area, and she knows what I like.

Kara’s goal was to fit as many restaurants as possible into a 48-hour trip, and we certainly did that. The final meal of our tour was breakfast on Wednesday morning. My original plan was to stay in Greensboro until after lunch, but then I would hit bad traffic in Richmond, Northern Virginia AND Maryland. Instead, we took the kids to Smith Street Diner for breakfast before I headed home.

Smith Street Diner is in North Greensboro, about 2 blocks from Crafted, where we ate the previous evening. It has a great corner location, and I love the big mural on the side wall.

Smith Street Diner looks tiny from the outside, but looks can be deceiving. The main diner space has a counter along the left wall, and the kitchen is at the far back end. There are only 3 tables in the main space, but through a doorway to the right is a larger dining space with seating for about 50.

Smith Street Diner is open for breakfast and lunch on Sunday & Monday, and for breakfast, lunch and dinner Tuesday – Saturday. The Smith Street Diner menu is surprisingly large, and the breakfast menu is available all day, every day. The lunch/dinner menu is simple, including hot sandwiches, cold sandwiches, diner sandwich favorites, burgers, fish & chips, gumbo, homemade soup, and daily specials.

Spencer got apple juice, because both the lemonade and orange juice have pulp. He’s a kid after my own heart! When I was a kid, my mom had to strain the pulp out of orange juice or I wouldn’t drink it. I still don’t like pulp, and always buy the pulp free OJ at the grocery store. Liam got hot chocolate

Liam had one egg scrambled with bacon, and Spencer had one pancake with bacon.

The pancake, while thin, is massive! Spencer had originally asked for 2 pancakes, and Kara told him that one was plenty. Spencer had no chance of finishing even the one. He gave good effort though.

Kara and I both got the breakfast combo. The combos come with choice of grits or home fries, and choice of toast or biscuit. We both got the 2-egg combo with bacon. I love carbs, and they all sounded good, but double carbs was too much. The biscuits are homemade, and that’s all I needed to know to make a decision.

Diner food usually comes out quickly, which is the case at Smith Street Diner. But my food was lukewarm, and that was surprising and disappointing. On the flip side, both the eggs and bacon were perfectly cooked. The biscuits are massive! This photo doesn’t really do it justice, but they are about as big as your hand and about 3″ tall. The biscuit is delicious, with a very flaky crust and a nice, dense inside. I didn’t want to give myself a food coma, so I only ate some of the biscuit, and took the rest home. The next morning I toasted the rest for breakfast, and topped it with butter. I really think the biscuit is better toasted. The top gets even more gorgeous golden brown, and the butter absolutely melts into the biscuit.

The orange juice is fresh-squeezed on site, hence all the pulp. When I was in Pittsburgh earlier this summer, we saw the manager at Pizzaiolo Primo squeeze fresh orange juice by hand . At Smith Street Diner they use a machine, because of the higher volume.

Will I go back to Smith Street Diner? Definitely. The food was delicious, even though it wasn’t hot enough. I want to give them another chance on the temperature, and I would like to try the lunch/dinner menu items.

For reviews of more restaurants in Greensboro, click on the photos below!