Omelet

Eggs are scrambled for an omelet, but unlike scrambled eggs, they stay still in the pan as they cook. Unless it is a plain omelet, ingredients are added while the eggs set, then the eggs are folded over into a half moon shape that holds the ingredients. Cheese, bacon, and chopped vegetables all are familiar candidates for inclusion. Many omelets are elegant affairs, but this dish also is an opportunity to cook balls-out. In St. Louis at the Goody-Goody Diner, the Wilbur is a good example. A gloss on the city’s notorious everything-goes dish known as a slinger, a Wilbur is eggs folded over peppers, onions and tomatoes as well as home-fried potatoes, then blanketed with massive amounts of meaty chili and shredded cheese. A King of the Road omelet at Frank’s Diner in Spokane, Washington, has usual components – a few kinds of cheese, ham, and vegetables – but it is made with six eggs. The greatest clean-the-kitchen omelet was made at Pittsburgh’s Jo-Jo’s, an open-only-at-night diner that catered to truckers in Pennsylvania’s produce district. (It’s now defunct.) The Jo-Jo special contained peppers, onions, mushrooms, provolone and American cheese, bacon and/or sausage and/or ham, plus a tremendous spatula-load of superb hot fried potatoes.