As noted the other day, chef Craig Shelton, formerly of the Ryland Inn, has landed as "guest chef" at the Skylark Diner in Edison. He has introduced an upscale but modestly priced lunch and dinner menu that supplements, rather than supplants, traditional burgers and salads and the always-available breakfast menu.

That reminds me of a Steven Wright joke, he being the deadpan, postmodern Henny Youngman, master of the one liner. (Wright plays the Wellmont in Montclair next Friday, Oct. 30). Wright says, "I passed a restaurant. It had a sign in the window, said 'Breakfast Any Time.' So I went in and ordered French Toast in the Renaissance." Maybe you have to hear him tell it. Anyway, on to Shelton's menu, which I recently sampled...

They are the stuff that food legends are made of. The culinary rocket fuel of our busy roadways. The classic Jersey diner. More necessary than ever. 

Sometimes I just like to stare at the evidence...

If on the inside it looks like a diner, serves like a diner, charges like a diner and satisfies like a diner, but occupies just part of a plain brick building on a street corner in Cape May, it is a diner, and a darn good one at that.

Today we move indoors again, from the shelter of the black steel Pulaski Skyway to the, well, um, men's room of the Skyway Diner.