On the bright side, the diner is becoming increasingly popular as a location for film and television shoots.
This is fine, because by 7 p.m. the restaurant is bubbling and bright with chatty diners eating happily.
Every time I left the Little Owl, having watched servers' sunny demeanors become diners' bright smiles, I thought, "What a nice place".
At Maharlika, a number of foreign condiments await use on the table before diners: bright yellow and red bottles of patis, a fish sauce, suka, a coconut-sugarcane vinegar, banana ketchup, a blend of bananas, sugar and vinegar, and Maggi calamansi seasoning, a citrus based liquid.
The lights in the diner are bright, unflatteringly so, but still my mother looks young and beautiful.
And Enriqueta's, a bright orange, family-owned diner, is a festive island on a gritty stretch of the city's Wynwood district.
I was sitting at the counter of a pseudo-diner: a bright, brash box of kitsch Americana located, bizarrely, in the middle of the dismal concrete forecourt of London's Euston station.
The hungry techno-philes of Brooklyn have a new place to converge: a bright and airy, retro diner-inspired restaurant called Juno.
The black-and-white dining room is full of quirky touches: diner-bright lighting, Bollywood musicals projected in a high corner, a taxidermied peacock atop a bodega refrigerator full of craft beers.
With the help of Ab Rogers, the son of the architect Lord Richard Rogers, Blumenthal has given the cafe the feel of a 1950s diner, with a bright red colour scheme, pendant lighting and a ceiling resembling a summer sky.
