Black Diamond Bakery & Deli: Hearty meals served with a mountain view

The black diamond-shaped sign with the word "bakery" has been a beacon for generations willing to make the drive to the former coal-mining town of Black Diamond for fat loaves of bread straight from the old- fashioned brick oven. Ever since the bakery opened in 1902, supplying a town of hungry miners and their families, bread has been baked that way.

There have been six owners since then. The original bakery remains the anchor for a business that has expanded to include dining space and a small deli.

First came breakfast and lunch in the late 1980s. Then two years ago, Black Diamond Bakery & Deli's current owner, Moon Bang, added dinner.

The menu: This is the place of home, not haute, cuisine. Breakfast includes chicken-fried steak ($10.75), an Italian scramble ($10.20) and the "Coal Miner Breakfast" (pancakes, eggs and choice of bacon, ham or sausage for $10.20). Sandwiches, soups and salads are featured at lunch. For dinner, consider the halibut in white wine topped with Dijon-mustard cream sauce ($17) or top sirloin with garlic-shallot demi glaze ($16). There's also a kids and seniors menu.

What to write home about: The bread, mentioned above (the bakery now turns out 500 loaves a day), and the biscuits. If the biscuits were as good back in 1902 as they are now, the first theft in this city was probably one miner snatching a biscuit off another's plate. The biscuits are fluffy and wonderful, and there's never enough.

The setting: How can you beat a window view of the mountains and fir-covered foothills from a homey room with oak tables and chairs and a waitress who supplies ample coffee and encourages you to linger and think of the lemon pie in the case with the 6-inch-high meringue?

Summing up: Our order of thick, meaty bacon and eggs (which came with a huge portion of hash browns) and a Denver omelet (with locally smoked ham and green peppers) and coffee came to $26.34, without tip.

We ate and ate and there was still plenty of food.

"This is a logger's breakfast," my friend told the waitress.

She smiled and refilled the coffee.

Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522 or nbartley@seattletimes.com