Silver Diner

The classic American diner is alive and well in the Silver Diner in Merrifield. I recent went out to the Silver Diner at 8150 Porter Road in Merrifield and enjoyed a fine night out. I was certainly amazed at the unique foods that were offered here in such a fun and lively setting.
The Silver Diner was founded in 1989 as a place that was inspired by the old roadside diners that people would often see on the roads in the early days of the highway system. The place was designed to mix the classic style of the diner with the more modern food options that people are looking for.
The restaurant places a strong emphasis on locally sourced foods. The menu also has a number of heart healthy, gluten free and vegan options to go along with its more traditional choices. The entrees here are very unique in that they focus on more ingredients and special flavors when compared with what you might find in a more traditional diner setting.
This place is open for much of the day too. It opens at 6:30am and stays open until midnight or 2am on weekends.
How Is the Design?
The design clearly reflects the attitude and nostalgic feeling of the old diners that the place replicates. The Silver Diner has plenty of light and neon signs all around and some shiny surfaces. The walls have paintings of many old 1950s emblems. Some small jukeboxes can be seen on the tables too.
How Are the People?
The restaurant was very inviting and welcoming. The people there enjoyed bringing me out here to try the different foods that were available. I especially enjoyed how the restaurant had plenty of people who were prompt and knew how to treat the customers right.
Great Foof Choices
I loved how this place has a large variety of foods. The Spinach Feta Lamb Burger was unique for offering spinach and Cholula onions with local mushrooms. The side Greek salad especially adds to the flavor.
The Mediterranean salad with chicken contained a healthy mix of romaine, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes. The Triple Decker Club was served on delicious sourdough bread and featured free range turkey, ham, mozzarella and nitrate-​free bacon. Lettuce and tomato were added to finish up a fine meal.
The desserts were great as well in that they offered some impressive shakes with agave sweetened toppings. The Chunky Monkey Banana milkshake offered a mix of vanilla ice cream, bananas, chocolate chips and Oreo cookies to add a delicious flavor. The Low Fat Blood Orange Creamsicle shake was made with a vanilla ice cream and milk base while the blood orange lime purée added a sweet taste.
Don’t Forget Breakfast
I will certainly need to make a point to come back for breakfast in the future. Fortunately, this place has a variety of omelet and griddle choices. The Quinoa Coconut Pancakes look especially attractive.
I was amazed over the variety of detailed and appealing entrees at the Silver Diner. This appealing place in Merrifield offers not only a classic appearance but also a strong emphasis on local foods make with care.

Silver Diner is re-​creating the diner experience. It still has the diner feel but the food and service is fantastic. Keep up the great work!

Excellent service. Extremely friendly and attentive waiter named Alex. The menu has been updated with local and organic choices, as well as vegetarian/​vegan dishes. Little touches like salt and pepper grinders and organic ketchup show the restaurant’s commitment to a higher level of food.

Saturday 8:00 p.m. — 3 people
1. Ambiance: 80’s theme with red booths and a small jukebox on every table. The colors and settings are vibrant in a silver chrome building. The place has a lot of personalities and the music just puts you in a great mood.
2. Food: I ordered the steak and eggs with two sides. The steak was decent and a little tough. The over hard egg that I had ordered was cooked as I wanted. My sides were decent and the potatoes lacked seasoning.
3. Service: Our server was talkative and made jokes with us. He made us feel very welcoming and continue to refill our drinks when needed. He was nice and attentive.
4. Costs: It costs around $ 17.99 for my meal, but I thought the steak could have been better for that price. The steak was not of high quality, but it was wholesome nevertheless.
5. Overall Experience: The service and ambiance were great. I didn’t pick the best item from the menu and am not a fan of the dish nor its costs. Perhaps I can try their breakfast items when I return. I really enjoyed their theme and music.
Side Notes: n/​a

The feedback is not regarding the food or the ambience however it’s about one small irritating incident that happened. The food is awesome, ambience is very good and in fact initially the service was also top notch. However post we payed the bill, the tip that was given was around 10% (to round off the entire bill) however that was not something which was greatly appreciated by someone who was serving us and he made a ruckus of the thing. The entire good time spent drained out by this immaculate nonsense behavior. One has to understand if the restaurant does not pay well to its staff & they survive on TIPS, then the tip amount should be mentioned in the bill itself.

Excellent customer service, fresh and healthy food — this place is awesome! They offer a wide variety of dishes, most of which are healthy and made with local ingredients. Tonight, I have the lemon chicken with farro and veggies; the chicken was super tender and chewy and the farro and veggies has lots of flavors.

Okay, here’s my confession.
Oldie diner style, in silver chrome building, not my taste. I avoided this place, because quite frankly, its a diner. One day, my friend posted pictures of her food from this place, and i thought, well, it must be good then! I went and saw brussel sprouts as one of their appetizers and I was hooked! I loved there was a good size portion of it, even though it was $ 8.99, with slices of dried apricots and cranberries.
One thing I would say, it is not something you want to eat at your desk at work. Cause my coworker gave me the look of, «What is that smell?» Whoops.
Service — Great, got our food fairly quickly. Kid friendly, my little son came away with a cardboard truck to play with!
Food — Ordered some banana french toast, and it was coyingly sweet. I would definitely try something else.

So I’m currently working in the mosaic area and I had just got off work around 10 so not much was open besides Silver Diner (which I don’t mind).
Got seated quickly which was nice and we had this tall guy as our server.
He got us our drinks and I had said I needed another minute to choose my meal.
About the next 20 seconds later I was ready. Menus closed, open minded and starving. Having worked 14hrs today and only living off an apple wasn’t cutting it.
So a good 5min later server walks by about 2 times. Still nothing.
Next 5 minutes, we see him getting drinks for the tables that came in after us. No problem it’s cool, just patiently waiting.
That’s when we broke out the paper football.
Another 5 min and he’s taking orders and visiting all the other tables that arrived after us.
We had not even ordered. A few minutes later, it’s pretty clear we weren’t served yet. Arms crossed and looking around to just see our server walk right past us again to assist the table next to us.
So 20min later or so we just got too hungry and fed up and walked out. I help manage a restaurant and I would be ashamed.

I love this place because I think they’ve done a great job combining the diner experience with great and healthy food options. They have a long menu with several great options, it took me forever to choose! The ingredients are fresh, and the taste is phenomenal. Can’t wait to go back.

The coffee was bitter, much like when the coffee machines aren’t cleaned regularly or adequately. It’s not often that I don’t ask for a second cup.
The food quality was pretty good, but the food was cold when it got to my table. So cold, that the butter on my pancakes wouldn’t melt.
I enjoy the Silver Diner chain, but I don’t think I’ll be returning to this location.

We were on a week’s adventure in D.C. with our 11 ½ year old grandson and stopped to eat here. It is THE BEST DINER FOOD I HAVE EVER TASTED and the service was nothing but WONDERFUL. I was so positively impressed with the locally sourced food. The salmon was fresh, never frozen, and the best I have tasted in my entire life. I would recommend this Silver Diner very highly and without reservation!

11:15 pm they close at midnight (weekday).
Excellent customer service!
Brownie latte was great
Quinoa pancakes was excellent
Mac&Cheese was fantastic
Regular pancakes was perfect!
I’m glad this diner is in existence !

Silver Diner is a cut above a typical diner. This place is fast, friendly, fairly inexpensive, and it has surprisingly good food.
Unlike most diners, this place doesn’t just reheat frozen products. They serve most of your typical diner fare, but do go out of their way to make the food fresh and with higher quality ingredients. There is usually a rotating seasonal menu, and they make an effort to tell you from where the food is sourced. Unlike other diners, Silver Diner also make an effort to provide a number of healthier menu options, too, including fresh salads. There is a gluten-​free menu as well.
Like most diners, they serve breakfast all day. The atmosphere is a sort of retro-​50s feel, with chrome décor and a mini-​jukebox at each booth. This place always feels clean and you can see the kitchen. The service is fast and very friendly. Even on late Sunday mornings, we haven’t waited more than 10 minutes for a table or booth. On weekends, the restaurant is full of families after sports or church, and there is a pretty extensive kids menu. They also offer shakes, which are absolutely enormous.
If I had to provide one critique, I would say that for a diner, their coffee is only OK. They offer bottomless refills, which is nice, but the coffee isn’t the most rich or flavorful — it’s basically your standard diner coffee.
Some of the menu items that I would recommend are:
–The American Favorite Breakfast (basically a homemade Denny’s Grand Slam)
–Eggs Benedict
–Biscuits
–Triple Decker Club (surprisingly high quality)
–Sliders
But this is a diner, you can pretty much order whatever your favorite standard menu item is, and it’s typically very good. If you are looking for a fast, tasty breakfast or lunch near Mosaic, check out Silver Diner. It really is better than a diner has to be.

Silver Diner has a diverse menu with lots of healthy, flavorful, reasonably priced choices. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are available any time of the day. Their chefs do an excellent job of making healthy meals taste delicious. For brunch today, I had Roasted Veggie Huevos Rancheros. To my surprise, it was just as delicious as the Bison Huevos Rancheros. If you want to pig out on a more traditional burger with fries and a shake, they have that covered as well. There’s something for everyone.
Merrifield is now one of my favorite locations. Clean, well-​run with fast friendly service. My waitress Supriya was flawless – appearing with a warm smile when needed and making adjustments without batting an eye (I asked for feta instead of goat cheese).
My only negative mark with all Silver Diners is the relatively high noise level. It seems one can hear every conversation within 30 feet and their jukebox system constantly plays music that may or may not be to your taste. That’s not enough to remove a star though. Most people probably won’t notice the noise as much as I do.

Recommended.
The American diner experience is an old tradition. And there’s still a few family-​run diners here and there throughout the ‘States. This chain diner does a pretty good job of replicating the 1940’s-1950’s era dining experience. We visited with our kids for breakfast. All entrees were excellent as was the service.

I got sick after eating here, I know this is might be out of the ordinary but it still sucked. If was this place as I ate the same as my girl the rest of the day and eating a burger here was the only difference.
I have eaten here before and not go sick but the food was still mediocre and the gravy was way too salty it ruined my country fried steak also the shake was totally tasteless. How do you mess up a strawberry shake?
It is trying to be an old world diner but it is missing an important something.

I love the Silver Diner and eat there every chance I can get. I wish there was one more conveniently located closer to my home. I love that they use fresh local produce and tell you what farms their produce came from. I love the milkshakes, the salads, the breakfast stuff, the sliders… you name it. I have not had a bad meal here.

Not my favorite Silver Diner.
I generally like Silver Diners because the food tastes fresh and they give decent sized portions and people are all friendly. It was generally the case this time except for the pancakes…
I got the Country Scrambler which comes with a side of silver dollar pancakes… and those pancakes were just NOT good. They were dry and hard. I took a bite and disliked them immediately. My friends got nice fluffy pancakes and I didn’t understand why mine wasn’t as good.
I usually hate asking the waiter to bring out another food but my friends all agreed that the pancakes were just not up to par and Silver Diner has a 110% guarantee so I figured I’d put them to the test. So I asked our waiter for a different set of pancakes. He came and was nice about it and said he would take care of it. After waiting a really long time… (my friends all finished and we were just waiting for the check), finally the pancakes came. I got 3 medium sized pancakes… that were dark brown. What? I don’t understand. I was not pleased… at all. Whatever, I didn’t want to waste food so I just packed them to take home. Then the waiter told me he’d take care of my check… Which was MISLEADING. Because he charged me for my meal but took off the «extra order of pancakes.» I didn’t order an «extra» set of pancakes… I wanted a replacement for the ones they had messed up on my original order (which they messed up again!)
I don’t think this is what 110% guarantee means. Not cool Silver Diner, not cool.

We are staying at the Homewood Suites that practically shares a parking lot with the Silver Diner. We didn’t want dinner but wanted something small to eat so we went to get milkshakes. The milkshakes are about $ 7 a piece but totally worth it! I got the Nutella banana one and it was the best milkshake I’ve ever had. They bring out the regular glass and then a refill one so that you basically get 2 of the glasses of a milkshake so it’s well worth the price. Service was friendly and helpful and I love the concept of a healthier restaurant. We will be going back before we leave in the next few days for breakfast or brunch. Amazing place, would recommend.
UPDATE: I just had brunch here and it was AMAZING. I had the Banana French Toast and it was amazing. I also had a bowl of fruit and it was so fresh and great! Such an amazing restaurant and friendly staff. Wish there was one in Florida. I will definitely be back if I’m ever in the DC area.

Eggs and banana pancakes for breakfast. On a week day! Who is living better than me?
The eggs were cooked exactly as ordered and the pancakes were perfectly yummy. Not a fan of the turkey bacon which was greasier than I expected. Service was not exactly speedy, but it’s morning.
BANANA PANCAKES!