I love going out for breakfast. It has a kind of special air to it that none of the other meals can approach. There’s also something exceptionally American about a diner, with its greasy smell, piles of eggs waiting to be cracked and batter dripping from the griddle. Diner food has a unique feel that can’t be found in any other kind of eating establishment. Verdi could no more serve food in the same way as Judy’s Castle than vice versa. Yet they both attract customers.

My favorite diners are the out-of-the-way grease traps – the kind with a bunch of people in camouflage clothing who look like they’ve been there since the turn of the century. The 19th century. The food and the atmosphere at those places have real character.

So I always look forward to a chance to go to a new diner, and especially for breakfast. Con Con’s has been on Russellville Road just down from Western Kentucky University for a few months, but I haven’t had a chance to get there until recently. It’s locally owned, of course, and so I’m sorry to see it just down the street from a Waffle House, which has greater name recognition and a more consistent quality, especially with regard to the hash browns. The location also means that students will probably stop there instead of going on to a local joint.

The breakfast special at Con Con’s includes a choice of bacon, ham, sausage or bologna, as well as eggs, home fries or hash browns. Finally, the dish comes with grits, biscuits and gravy, or toast. There was nothing outstanding about this. At $4.25, it’s a cheap breakfast served quickly. The eggs were done right, and the hash browns were cooked to a nice crispiness. When broken over top of the hash browns, the yolks of the over-easy eggs made a fine mess that tasted all right.

Con Con’s has a wide variety of “biscuit and …” offerings that include bologna, tenderloin, country ham and sausage. The sausage biscuit gravy had some nice chunks of meat in it, but was otherwise unremarkable. Oddest of all was the choice between sausage, and “fresh” sausage, which added 75 cents to the dish. I’ll confess that I have a knack for food, not marketing. But it seems to me that indicating that it costs more to have something fresh in the dish is not exactly the best practice for a restaurant.

I definitely preferred the veggie omelet, which was large and absolutely crammed with vegetables. It had that nice fluffiness that a good omelet should have, and the vegetables inside retained their crispiness. The cheese positively oozed out the sides. The result was a nice balance of textures and flavors. It was definitely the better of the two dishes I had. But it wasn’t remarkable, and nothing here will make Con Con’s stand out from the many excellent diners in town.

It’s not that I’m all that particular about my breakfasts. Really, I’m not. But I do expect there to be some level of food quality if I’m going to pay for it. A diner should be no different. Just because I’m not cooking it myself doesn’t mean that a complete breakfast for $4.25 can’t taste like more than the $2 it cost to produce.

What Con Con’s has going for it is a good location along one of the main thoroughfares into and out of town. A menu of burgers, sandwiches and some meat-and-three offerings means that I’ll probably come back to try some lunch.

— Our anonymous food reviewer gives new restaurants a six-week grace period before reviewing. To comment, contact Managing Editor Mike Alexieff at 783-3235 or via e-mail to malexieff@bgdailynews.com.