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Comfort Food And Much More At The New Wild West Diner Story by Chris Felker • Photos by Abner Pedraza
With the opening of the Wild West Diner this summer, New York City’s loss became Palm Beach County’s gain. Steven Good, who owns and runs the new restaurant with the help of his daughter, Alyssa, moved here in 2007 after many years operating a string of classic Big Apple diners. When he opened his last one up there, though — the Rockaway Sunset Diner in Queens — in late August 2001, things didn’t go so well. Good had made big plans for a grand opening on the second weekend of September, but fate ruined them. Toward the rear of his newest eatery, the 50-yearold restaurateur has a wall full of framed photographs taken that week. They show only tragedy, not a party. “My diner overlooked the World Trade Center, and my grand opening weekend was supposed to be that weekend after 9/11. We watched it happening right outside our window,” Good said. “Where the diner was, Rockaway, Queens, was a very municipalemployee-oriented neighborhood, so there were a lot of cops and firemen who, you know, didn’t make it. That was a rough day, and it really affected my life a lot.” Good then threw himself into the businesses that he ran with his younger brother, Kenny, only to burn out a few years later after too many long
French toast combo with eggs, bacon, sausage and home fries.
workweeks. He explored other opportunities after moving to a 5-acre spread in Loxahatchee, where he lives with his zookeeper wife, four horses and several chickens and pigs, and eventually ended up gravitating back toward the restaurant business. Good has brought the best of what he had at his New York diners with him — a menu so long it defies quick decisions and so broad that it spans a wide variety of cuisines. The Wild West Diner’s bill of fare is huge at almost 10 pages. “I actually trimmed the menu down by about 25 percent. After I opened for breakfast, we tried to prep out everything for dinner, and I couldn’t fit it all in the kitchen,” he said. “So, I ended up reprinting the dinner pages and took off about 30 percent of it.” Start with the breakfast lineup, offered all day, and if you don’t have something in mind, you could be reading all day. Eight varieties of eggs Benedict and nine specialty omelets (in addition to buildyour-own) are offered, along with Southern and Southwestern American specialties on top of old standbys. One popular choice, Good said, is the breakfast combo. We chose French toast, served with eggs any style, home fries, hash browns or grits and bacon plus sausage. Everything was tasty and piping hot,
Sizzling fajita with chargrilled chicken and all the fixings.
The ultimate comfort food: meat loaf and mashed potatoes with broccoli.
(Left) Steak and grilled jumbo shrimp with baked sweet potato and grilled zucchini.
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November 2014 |wellington the magazine| 10th Anniversary