Queen's Diner, Glasgow

We’re deep in Twin Peaks season. By this we mean a) it’s a bit chilly outside, b) there are leaves on the ground and mist in the air, and c) there’s a general sense of foreboding, such is life in this, the cool and vibey year of Two Thousand and Twenty Five. Auspicious timing then for Queen’s Diner, a brand new spot in the former Grain and Grind in Battlefield, and an on-trend update of your classic American diner.

Inside the white and red corner unit is a mini-warren of booths, benches and counter seating that feel a bit like the result of a particularly experimental Sims speed build. There are some very nice interior touches, mostly in one particularly pleasing shade of deep red, with brilliant tabletops and checkerboard cushions in the booths that are either inspired by or directly taken from the old Glasgow Subway carriages. It’s extremely bright – enormous windows and our old friend fluted glass playing an absolute blinder at flooding the room with natural light – and the whole look feels extremely… thought-out. The vibe is of a cafe, a very nice cafe, which yearns to one day be a brand. They’ve got the logo (a slightly incongruous line drawing of a beaver, in a bow tie, holding a sandwich). They have the colour scheme. And they have their name on everything. Branded shirts? That’s just uniform, fair play. Branded mugs? You do see it from time to time. Branded plates? Now we’re intrigued.

Over to the menu, where the ‘diner 2.0’ vibe continues. There’s a hefty range of breakfast and brunch options, big sandwiches, and assorted diner classics. Sometimes they’re fairly straight-up, but others – such as the Sausage Bagel (£11) – have a little hometown twist to them. It’s a riff on your classic sausage-egg-and-cheese, with a sausagemeat patty, a fried egg, some ooey gooey American cheese, a pleasantly sweet Bloody Mary ketchup, and then a tattie scone thrown in for good measure. It’s a lot to stuff inside a seed-loaded bagel, but it does all work together in one big salty, fatty melange. Unfortunately, the individual elements do keep trying to throw themselves out of the bagel, which if anything is too robust. We’ve all felt the pain of a big sandwich falling apart under the weight of its fillings – you squeeze it all together and it just collapses – but it’s rare to feel your breakfast trying to fight back. Still, it’s very tasty, and it’s enormous; throw in the two hash browns on the side and you’ve got a recipe for a lovely afternoon nap.

On the sweet side, the Queen’s Diner waffles (from £6.50) seem to be a hit both on socials and on various Sunday morning tables around us. Happy to report, they’re very good waffles – crunchy on the outside, soft and fluffy in the middle, with a little bit of heft to them that keeps them from crumbling at the first sign of trouble. Pour as much maple syrup on as you like, these lads aren’t going anywhere. We opt to follow our sausage bagel with *just* a massive, dinner plate-filling waffle rather than the favoured option of topping that waffle with fried chicken – very demure of us, we’re sure you’ll agree.

Queen’s Diner plays its ‘US diner’ role very well – the staff are lovely; the vibe is nice; the coffee is solid, but ‘£4.50 for bottomless filter’ or £3-odd for a flat white feels more like a challenge than a friendly offer. Still, it also feels like the sheer amount of ambition and red paint that’s gone into this will see them iron out any and all flaws in the coming months. In any case, this situation doesn't call for Dale Cooper-style overthinking – Queen's Diner do big breakfasts on very comfy chairs, and the line drawings of a well-dressed beaver are a bit of a red herring. Mystery solved.

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50 Battlefield Rd, Glasgow, G42 9QF
Mon-Fri 7.30am-6pm, Sat 8am-6pm, Sun 9am-5.30pm; kitchen open 9am-4pm daily
instagram.com/queensdinerglasgow