Edition: U.S. / Global

COUNTY LINES; Comfort Food

Published: March 4, 2001

LIKE a dream come true, a friend agreed to accompany me to the Mont Olympos Diner in Yonkers last weekend, that fake stone castle perched on a rocky promontory above Central Avenue that simultaneously beckons and repels.

She is a diner aficionado, scouring Westchester for the perfect pancake, the bottomless cup of coffee that is always piping hot. We had been meeting with some frequency at the Thruway Diner in New Rochelle, but it was a pale imitator compared with Mont Olympos, she promised.

This is ''the one you cannot pass up,'' she told me, her voice rapt. ''It looks just like the Parthenon. If you ignore the Toyota dealership and Circuit City, you'd swear you were in ancient Athens.''

This comment loses something in the telling because it is that rare combination of childlike delight and unvarnished condescension. My friend, a gifted cook and a foodie who lives for the next meal, was not slumming, clearing her palate from the finer things in life.

In her view -- and she is not alone -- what diners offer are the finer things in life, or at least one subset: Napoleons and seven-layer cakes so enormous they threaten to teeter and fall, breakfast in all its permutations 24 hours a day, grilled cheese and hot roast beef sandwiches that can't be duplicated at home, wedges of iceberg lettuce with blue-cheese dressing too thick to pour.

To the uninitiated, all diner food looks the same. A pancake is a pancake is a pancake, and all that. But connoisseurs can tell the difference between adequate and special. Does the syrup come in those single-serving foil packets or in carafes? How often does the busboy come around, the orange-rimmed pot of decaf in one hand, the brown-rimmed high-octane in the other? Does the fruit cocktail come from a can? Is the pie filling gelatinous and the glaze on the doughnuts flaking like dry skin?

Subtle distinctions aside, a diner delivers certainty. The pastries and pies are always in their glass showcases. The halved cantaloupes and grapefruit, in plastic wrap, sit on a bed of crushed ice. The individual cereal boxes and packets of hot chocolate mix are behind the counter. The huge menus are laminated, pages and pages long, with everything from blintzes to nachos, Belgian waffles to liver and onions, and every variety of fish, broiled and fried.

As predictable as the food is the cast of characters: packs of teenagers after Saturday night dates, families with squalling babies and toddlers playing in the aisles, the tattoo-and-motorcycle set, elderly people dressed up for the occasion who carefully count out coins when it is time to pay, a loner or two at the counter left in peace.

Many of these folks would feel unwelcome in a ''real'' restaurant. Ed Levine, author of ''New York Eats More,'' calls diners uniquely egalitarian places, where ''class distinctions are left at the door.'' Michael Stern, who runs the Web site www.roadfood.com, also notes that ''nobody is treated specially,'' turned away by a haughty maître d' or seated ''in Siberia.'' For those who live on the cutting edge of the cutting edge, this can be ''a relief,'' he said.

The waitresses, too, are a predictable crew, ''either high school girls or tough old gals who look like their feet hurt,'' in the words of William Grimes, chief food critic for The New York Times. It is the tough old gals, with hard lives etched into their faces (think of Helen Hunt in ''As Good as It Gets'') who make the bleak surroundings feel like home.

They are not actors earning rent money until their star is born. This is their real job and they do it with quiet professionalism, not calling attention to themselves with saccharine introductions or descriptions of the menu entries, ingredient by ingredient. If you want to know their name or what the specials are, they figure you'll ask. If you don't speak, they won't either. But, like a good bartender, they seem ready to listen to your tale of woe, if you choose to share it.

The décor, too, has a comforting sameness, if you leave aside the retro-ironic diners that are not diners at all. Formica booths and tables. Cracking leatherette seats repaired with tape. Picture windows overlooking the parking lot. Catering-hall chandeliers. Gum ball machines near the cash register. Dusty plastic plants.

The plants at Mont Olympos are (mostly) real. Pancakes for two are $9.09. Coffee is unlimited, makeup optional and eavesdropping free.

Drawing (Nancy Doniger)