Walk past Morning Glory Diner on a weekend morning and you’ll likely find the line stretching down the block; a scene that has played out in Bella Vista for nearly three decades.
The South Philadelphia institution has held its ground as one of the city’s most beloved brunch destinations, built on scratch-made comfort food, a wildly eclectic interior, and a personality that is entirely its own, writes Meir Rinde for Billy Penn at WHYY.
The wait is part of the deal. So is the noise, the close-together tables, and the sense that everyone around you either is a regular or will be.
The menu does much of the work with fluffy pancakes, oversized biscuits slathered with house-made jam, and challah French toast that earns its reputation, along with frittatas packed with whatever’s fresh.
But Morning Glory has never just been about the food.
From the start, the diner wore its politics on its walls — literally.
Handmade signs crowd every surface. Satirical menu specials wink at the news cycle. Progressive messaging is baked into the atmosphere as deliberately as the biscuits.
The diner’s founder, Samantha “Sam” Mickey, died in 2012, but her imprint never faded. If anything, the years since her passing have deepened Morning Glory’s standing as a Philadelphia institution.
Today, the lines keep coming while Morning Glory has just kept being itself, which turns out to be more than enough.
“People tell me it’s like a haven,” said Cotton James Mcgowan, Mickey’s grandson and a manager at the diner. “For every single person there that doesn’t like what we do, there’s like three more that love it, support it, and tell everybody else about it.”
For the full story on Morning Glory’s history and strong staying power, read Billy Penn at WHYY.
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