If your grandmother offered you a homemade cupcake, could you turn it down? Heck, no. This dynamic goes a long way toward explaining why Flynn's Cafe opens its doors before sunrise each morning, in spite of its tweener-industrial location and stubborn adherence to a 1950s minimalist aesthetic.
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Flynn's Cafe 3923 Airport Way S., 624-6069. SODO/GEORGETOWN. Open 5:15 a.m.–2:15 p.m. Mon.–Fri.
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Flynn's is not listed in the phone book, nor does it have paper menus. Whatever its gloriously affable 66-year-old matriarch, Barb, is in the mood to cook each morning, she writes in marker on a dry-erase board near the diner's unisex commode, which features a lone, cramped crapper. That's not to say that Barb is rigid: When we expressed our desire to have our patty melt's patties constructed with yellow cheese instead of Swiss—not to mention rye rather than sourdough bread (just to mix things up a bit)—Barb let it be known that a given dish's composition is unconditionally malleable.
Barb's bread and butter is a steady, early-morning stream of blue-collar workers intent on filling their tummies with something substantial before the daily grind. While Flynn's delicious pancakes will doubtless turn the trick here, the go-to item on the white board, per Barb, is the sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich. We're not talking Mickey D's hockey pucks on crumbling biscuits here, either—we're referring to a hulking sandwich on a hamburger bun. If anything can bridge the long, sweaty gap between shift's start and lunch, it's this puppy.
The lunch hours are a lonelier proposition, although the lunch menu doesn't miss a beat. That patty melt? Divine—although not quite up to Andy's Diner standards (Andy's Diner being the possessor of the world's greatest patty-melt recipe). Sitting in the restaurant alone, staring past the crescent breakfast counter into a sunny abyss, a wayward soul can achieve a sense of hash-house tranquility that's increasingly tough to find amidst Seattle's meteoric pursuit of Big City status. There's no shortchanging the "KIXI factor" that contributes to this pleasant, nostalgic vibe: The dial of Flynn's radio does not waver from 880 AM, home to easy listening from the 1950s through the '80s (but mostly just the '50s). There's something about the heart-wrenching oeuvre of Gordon Lightfoot or Satchmo's rendition of "Hello, Dolly!" that tends to put a person in a ponderous mood.
One last thing about Flynn's: Those sweet concoctions encased in clear plastic in the center of the room? They're homemade, and Barb will try to entice you to order, say, a caramel-frosted cupcake or sweet roll even after she's stuffed your belly with her heavenly home fries. Don't attempt to say no. You wouldn't do that to Grandma, and you really shouldn't do that to Barb.
mseely@seattleweekly.com
