Comments (1) BEST PLACE TO KISS MA GRITS - 2007

Mel's Diner

Small-town transplants and big-city East Coasters with a jones for a basic, cheap eatery serving heaping plates of food should hightail it down to Mel's Diner. The old-school establishment, located along an industrial strip of Grand Avenue, serves super-tasty breakfast all day and choice burgers and chicken-fried cuisine in the afternoons.

And a healthy dose of nostalgia, if the '70s and '80s count.

The opening credits and choice inside scenes for Alice — the successful sitcom that ran from 1976 to 1985, chronicling a Hollywood hopeful forced to take a waitress job at a diner after her car breaks down in Phoenix — were filmed inside Mel's.

The spot retains that no-nonsense charm, complete with a Mel Sharples-type character in the form of foul-mouthed Frank, a busboy who will begrudgingly pour you bottomless cups of coffee. Just don't smile too much because he'll wipe that grin right off with a verbal slap across the piehole.