The Lamp Post
 Akron, Ohio        Date of Visit  03/16/13        No Known Website

While cruising to our less than favorable breakfast stop at Molly Brown’s we scooted past a full parking lot at a place I hadn’t heard of before…the Lamp Post. The sign outside said they were open 24 hours and it appeared as though they were loaded up for the day so we decided at some point we would have to come back and give it a try.
 

Functional Chili With Loads Of Tomato
 

The building itself is close to disaster. Most of the windows appear broken and taped, the furniture is a bit rickety, it stands to reason when the post-bar crowd stubbles through the door the structure likely suffers.

The service is friendly but calloused and near inept at moments with staff conversations and side work clearly a priority over customers. Most of the diners were familiar with the staff and seemed familiar with the halting service.

The menu features breakfast and lunch standards, a few Mediterranean sounding sandwiches some which I have never heard of before (i.e. Shish Tawoor), and a white board of pie offerings.

We went with breakfast. I did add a couple of chili and was served a relatively standard cup with loads of tomato as the predominant flavor.
 

Steph ordered French toast and got exactly that, nothing more, nothing less. Three slices cut into triangles alongside two cups of syrup were fine. I ordered the chicken fried steak. The plate was in many ways the quintessence of diner fare, two eggs, rye toast, crispy hash browns and a disk of breaded nondescript beef blanketed with a white sausage gravy. Not the best breakfast dish I have had by far…but it was tasty. The steak had been pounded into tender submission, the breading was well seasoned and crisped by the frying, the gravy was just as well seasoned and smooth with the exception of the sausage, perfectly over-easy eggs, a few shakes of hot sauce and you have a satisfying and decadent dish.

As shaky as the place is on many levels, we will return…I want to find out what Tawoor is, they have a Friday fish fry, and we didn’t get pie…they didn’t ask.