DINING REVIEW: Old-fashioned goodness

Since 1972, Sandy’s Restaurant has been the place on the edge of Colorado Springs, where two lonely prairie highways meet, and ranchers sip coffee and talk cattle after a trip into town.

A lot has changed over the decades. Sandy’s is now surrounded by defense contractors and an Air Force base instead of wind-tusseled grass. Its lonely bend in the road has been renamed Space Village Avenue. But some things are the same.

Last week at lunch, two men in white straw cowboy hats talked for over an hour in the sunny parking lot while leaning over the bed of a pickup. One still had his spurs on and a saddled buckskin horse waiting patiently in his trailer. When I asked what was good, both said the cheeseburger.

Inside, I grabbed a booth next to more guys in boots and worn jeans (as well as several in Air Force dress), and surveyed the classic country diner. Sandy’s has a long counter at the back, booths lining the wood-paneled walls, which are decorated with parts of old wagons and, yes, a portrait of John Wayne, and three long tables in the middle, labeled the “Liar’s Table,” “Wannabee’s Table” and the “Trucker’s Table,” where various cabals of regulars slurp coffee and digest the world’s problems.

“So what?” a friend I dragged along said. “I’ve been to rancher hangouts before. They never care if the food is any good.”

I figured he was probably right. Then I tried the chicken noodle soup.

The soup came as a first course for the bacon guacamole burger ($7), which shows up occasionally as a special. I wasn’t expecting much more from either than food service prefab stuff, but the soup was really, truly homemade — big chunks of moist chicken in a bright, flavorful (and not too salty) broth, flecks of fresh parsley, vibrant slices of carrot and celery, and — get this — thick, tender handmade noodles. Who makes their own noodles for a dish that comes free with a hamburger?

I was in love. And the burger that followed — a juicy, hand-formed quarter-pound patty topped with guacamole that started with ripe avocados and finely diced tomatoes, not a bag of bright green citric acid-stabilized goo — cemented the relationship.

Closer inspection of the menu showed lots of other examples of things that no one makes anymore — things that, like the neighborhood around Sandy’s, have been paved over by the modern era. But not here. The bread is homemade. The biscuits are homemade. The onion rings are homemade. The green chili is homemade. Even the corned beef hash — which I think of as the scariest mass-produced muck you can legally buy — is homemade. And it’s wonderful.

Rich strands of corned beef are fried with cooked potatoes, onion and a little Cajun spice until they form a delicate and complex conglomerate that is a lovely escort for eggs. It’s all done by hand.

“It’s a pain, but that is just how we’ve always done it,” says Connie Crippen, who  bought the place in 2001 and has worked on and off here since she was 13.

Not that Sandy’s doesn’t give a nod to the mass-produced diner milieux. The Hunter’s Sandwich, roast beef and grilled tomatoes and onions grilled between slices of homemade bread, gets a welcome dose of gooey American cheese slices — the perfect cheese for a hot, melty sandwich.

And not that everything homemade at Sandy’s is stupendous. The from-scratch biscuits and gravy had a sauce too thick with flour and what tasted like white pepper, and too thin with sausage.

But in general, the foods that diners find here — the great eggs and home fries, the generous six-egg omelets, the burgers and excellent onion rings — are done the old-fashioned way, which, when it comes to diners, is another way of saying the right way.

SANDY'S RESTAURANT
Four out of five stars
(Breakfast of champions)
Address: 6940 Space Village Ave.
Hours: 5:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; 5:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturdays; 6 a.m.-1 p.m. Sundays
Entrees: $3-$7
Vegetarian: Sides
Alcohol: No
Credit Cards: No