Orem's Diner

167 Danbury Rd., Wilton, CT - (203) 762-7370

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Posted By Michael Stern on June 10, 2003 7:15 PM

It’s hard to imagine traveling up the commercial bonanza that is Route 7 through Fairfield County today that it used to be a farmland road. When Orem's Diner opened in 1921, a drive in the country was a rare treat for city dwellers, who came this way past dairy cattle and chicken farms. Everything else has changed, and Orem's itself has just moved to spacious new quarters, but the good old diner still does what it has been doing now for four score years – serving inexpensive meals to travelers and serving as an informal meeting hall for local citizens.

The new facility is all chrome and faux marble. Enter and feast your eyes upon the bakery case with cakes galore and cookies the size of dinner plates. There is a counter up and to the left, booths on both sides, and a take-out station straight ahead. (There is no longer a smoking section anywhere.) Judging by the way people used to crowd into the old Orem's, and the way the new place was packed on opening day, you can expect a crowd of customers just about any time after sunup.

Breakfast is served diner-fast and is diner-good: crusty hash browns to accompany eggs, big hot muffins, bowls of warm oatmeal, and plenty of refills for your coffee cup. For lunch and dinner, there are always a couple of excellent soups, some of the specialties being split pea with luscious croutons, lentil, chicken-noodle, and clam chowder. Like so many modern diners, the menu is vast and far-reaching, from a whole page of Italian specialties to Greek gyros and chicken souvlaki on pita bread with a killer garlic cream condiment to corned beef with cabbage, classic blue-plate meat loaf, and sandwiches of all kinds. We are particularly fond of the open-face hot sandwiches – beef or turkey – which consist of tasty meat atop soft white bread sided by great handsome drifts of delicious mashed potatoes running rivulets of gravy.

For dessert: cheesecake, Boston cream pie, or balmy rice pudding.

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Posted By Bob Walker on January 16, 2011 9:56 AM

Can't add anything to Michael Stern's excellent review from five-plus years ago. Orem's is still THE place to go in the Wilton/Norwalk area for great Roadfood. The new quarters still dazzle in comparison to the old, which I frequented often as a Wilton resident for 25 years. Orem's IS Wilton and Wilton IS Orem's. Still a great place to eat.

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