Following the advice of folks in this discussion, we headed back to Norwood today for breakfast at the Town Square Diner (164 Nahatan St., a block or so east of Washington Street).

Whoa: The last time I was in a Mug 'N Muffin, I could still watch Bobby Orr advertising BayBanks on the TV I'd picked up at Lechmere. But time moves more slowly in Norwood Center, apparently - they still have a Mug 'N Muffin (at 716 Washington St.).

Walk in and it's exactly as you remember them - a smallish, darkish place with wooden-beam ceilings (in this case, faux beams, in the sense that you can see how they aren't actually holding up the ceiling). In other words, sort of like you'd expect your grandma's kitchen to be if she lived in Vermont, right down to the decorations on the walls:

As for the food, it's basic breakfast fare, done right - assuming you like everything doused in butter, and who doesn't? Also inexpensive, even if you don't get there in time for the early-morning specials.

Oh yeah, and they serve their hot drinks in mugs:

UPDATE: We try the Town Square Diner.

I've long wanted to try that tiny breakfast joint next to the Village Bookshop on South Street (one guess from the photo what its street number is) - if for no other reason than I could say I've eaten in every single one of Roslindale's breakfast places (yeah, all five of them, not including the McDonald's on American Legion or the Burger King on Washington). But it was always closed. Finally, sometime over the past, oh, two or three months, it re-opened under new ownership.

Derna's is about about as no frills an eatery as you'll find anywhere. No fancy disco brunch here - not even any whole-wheat toast here. The food is basically exactly what you'd make at home if you weren't too tired (while I was there, a woman sidled up to the counter and when the owner asked if she wanted coffee, she sighed: "Yes, PLEASE!"). You get white toast and you like it (well, or French); you get your choice of eggs and breakfast meats and that's about it. Oh, and home fries. This is not food that will make you ooh and ah, but again, if you've had a long night, well, it's food.

You sit on stools around a U-shaped counter straight out of the 1960s (right down to the boomerangs imprinted on the Formica) - there are no tables. The short-order cook is also the short-order server and short-order cashier, but he cooks things up quickly. Plus, regulars know they can refill their coffee themselves at the Bunn-o-matic - and go behind the counter for an old Herald to read (while I was there, everybody who came in was by themselves, myself included).

It's open every day at 5 a.m. So next time you head over to the Blue Star and it's full and you're just looking for the basics, walk over to Derna's.

Turned off by the Rosebud's policy of no crosswords on weekends, new-to-Davis Mike Mennonno wanders into the Blue Shirt Cafe, where he reports that overhearing an amazingly stupid debate (over cows and chickens in some third-world hellhole) failed to make up for the absolutely horrible food.

From Cambridge to Framingham, from sashimi to Ethiopian food, local bloggers have been eating up a storm: