Anchorage's best diner hash browns bingo

Notes on: breakfast restaurants with no wait, wild berry lamb, crispy parm potatoes, Instant Pot polenta, kitchen thermometers, Wild Scoops' latest pie and sake I can't get off my mind.

Scene at a recent family breakfast at Harley’s Old Thyme Cafe. (Julia O’Malley)

I wish for you a Sunday morning where everyone in your house rolls out of bed, hair unbrushed, pulls on clothes, piles into the car and heads out for breakfast. I want you to go to an unfancy neighborhood place that doesn’t make you wait, a place named for someone in the possessive — Heidi’s, Sami’s, Judy’s, Jackie’s, Leroy’s, Kriner’s, Gwennie’s, Barbie’s. It will smell like drip coffee and Log Cabin syrup when you slide into a booth there. I want you to get hash browns.

Is there a more perfect breakfast food than the diner hash brown? Crispy, salty, subtly earthy, served with a fried egg, over medium. Break that half-done golden yolk, mop it up with a bite of ‘browns. Dial the whole meal up by slowing it down. Bring a print paper. Pass the sections around. Do the Wordle. Say yes when the server asks to warm up your mug.

My family likes to go to Harley’s Old Thyme Cafe over on Old Seward. Harley’s is my favo…