For dessert, there’s an Ovaltine pie with fluffy malted whipped cream. Credit: NATHAN WATKINS

For dessert, there’s an Ovaltine pie with fluffy malted whipped cream.

For dessert at Champagne Diner, there’s an Ovaltine pie with fluffy malted whipped cream. NATHAN WATKINS

I love diners.

There are few things dearer to me in this world than lingering over a late-night plate of greasy-crisp hash browns and a cup of coffee in the liminal haze after a concert, huddled in a booth with people I love because none of us want to go home yet. Diners function as a gathering space and offer a heady blend of nostalgia and consistency that’s only become more appealing in an increasingly unstable climate, as we all wake up to a daily deluge of fresh horrors on our fresh-horrors devices.

But what place does the humble diner have in a Seattle chockablock with aPodments and “mixed-use developments”? In August, the reliable downtown relic Ludi’s, a Filipino diner known for its brilliant purple ube pancakes and “combo silog” (a hangover-slaying meal of garlic rice, eggs, pork chop, lumpia, and longaniza), was unexpectedly ousted from its location after 30 years of business due to rising rent costs and losing its lease. (The family who owns it is searching for a new location, but so far has had no luck nailing one down.) And the 24-hour greasy-spoon legend Beth’s Cafe faces an uncertain future, as it was recently put up for sale.

Julianne Bell is a staff culture writer for The Stranger, an Aries, and a proud AMC A-List member. She lives in Seattle with a tabby cat named Rhubarb and can usually be found knitting in a cafe somewhere.