Marie’s Family Diner

It’s clean small and quaint. The ambience is nice. Every waitress has been nice,& super fast. It doesn’t seem that the cook has a lot of room for preparation so the menu is pretty small however the food is good. You can get anything from oatmeal to steak and eggs bagels, breakfast sandwiches and omelettes. And lunch is homemade soup, burgers, hot or cold sandwiches… They’re real good at substituting items on the menu with no extra charge. They are only open for breakfast and lunch and that is a downfall. There’s not a lot of restaurants in Alden that serve dinner. Only downfall to the whole place is they only except cash they do not have a debit or credit card machine. They do have an ATM on site but who wants to pay a charge on top of the TIP???
Haven’t been there in a while however big shout out to the waitress who was fighting stage four cancer and on her feet working all day and not sitting home collecting disability.

We stopped for a late breakfast on a Wednesday morning. One other couple held a table in the window and a casually dressed woman perched on a stool at the counter and yapped at the waitress. Coffee and menus were quickly served. Husband ordered a cheeseburger omelet — unseasoned hamburger and cheddar with a few chunks of tomato, onion, and banana peppers inside scorched eggs. I had eggs Benedict made with eggs over hard, not poached. I can’t eat runny eggs, so poached is out. I don’t know how the cook did it, but one egg was almost hard — enough that I could eat it — and the other was over easy with liquid yolk gushing enthusiastically all over my plate. It wasn’t even a little coagulated; it was like fluorescent yellow finger paint. The only saving grace was the Hollandaise, which was rich and lemony and very good. The muffin was lightly toasted and the ham was tender. Although the menu says it comes with home fries or hashbrowns, mine arrived with neither. The waitress caught the error and had the cook fix a plate of homefries. It took him almost 15 minutes and not only did they come out bereft of browning, they were actually al dente.
I love little joints like this, but I can’t recommend this one. They’ve either got to replace the cook or close.