I dropped a good friend off at SeaTac Airport last weekend, as a favor and as an excuse to stop for breakfast at the Poodle Dog Restaurant on the way home. I hadn’t eaten there in four years and wanted to see if anything had changed. The answer is “no.” The Poodle Dog remains a prototypical diner of the American west. It sits on the southwest corner of 54th Avenue and SR (Highway) 99 in Fife,flanked by cheap, strip-mall office space and nail salons.

The crab and havarti omelette special on the white board aside, the cuisine is exactly what you’d expect…affordable, American, heart-clogging, road-side comfort food. And if you’re not in the mood for a full meal, ask if they have any of their fresh-baked, homemade apple cobbler. The service is efficient, unobtrusive, and may even be provided by someone who will call you “honey.”

There are better places to eat, but the Poodle Dog offers more than, as the sign says, “Good Food.” It is one island in a slowly sinking archipelago. Our own version of Route 66, the Highway 99 is dotted with relics like the Poodle Dog and the Java Jive. Around Olympia, we know the old highway as Capitol Boulevard, Capitol Way, 4th Avenue, Pacific Avenue, and Martin Way. While the Java Jive has seen better days, The Poodle Dog still thrives…for now…but only a stone’s throw from a Taco Bell, Taco Time, Wendy’s, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Denny’s, and Mitzel's American Kitchen. The near-by exit off I-5 probably saved the Poodle Dog but may eventually be its ruin. So go there now, before economic efficiency or the brothers McMenamin destroy yet another oasis in our ever-expanding desert of inauthenticity. Or is it a flood? Well, you know what I mean.