Behind the cash register at Jim's Restaurant is a small wooden carving, the sort of thing kids make in shop class, spelling out "Elena" in block letters. Elena is Elena Knapp, the current owner of a diner that has been owned by four Jims and one Kitty in its half-century run near the intersection of Blossom and Winton roads. Knapp bought the restaurant from the last of the Jims almost 10 years ago, after working for him as a waitress. Why not change the name? "I thought about it when I bought the place," Elena says, "but I asked customers and regulars, and then decided if it ain't broke, why fix it?" So the name stuck.

Other things have stuck as well. Jim's, which opens at 5:00 a.m., has an army of regulars, many of whom have brought in their own cups to mark the diner as "their" place. More than 200 coffee mugs in a rainbow of colors and more styles than you'd believe possible (one is shaped like Wile E. Coyote's head) hang above the counter. Knapp tells me that the mugs are hung according to what time of day a regular routinely arrives at the restaurant. The "five thirties" hang closest to the flat-top grill, and those who arrive later are closer to the front window. There is even a section, right up against the window, for the 20 or so deceased regulars who probably still turn up in spirit for their morning coffee out of habit. Jim's is definitely the sort of place that you might want to continue haunting in your next life.

Part of the reason people keep coming back to Jim's is the service, and the sense of being at home. Others come because it's one of the area's undisputed bargains: there are few restaurants where you can get a substantial breakfast for under five bucks. But cheapness is not enough to keep the breakfast and lunch crowd coming back year after year. First, you have to have good coffee - it has to be strong and hot. At Jim's it is both. After drinking coffee at scores of restaurants both good and not so good that serve what I think of as brown-crayon java, Jims' was a pleasant surprise - dark-roasted, almost bitter, perfect black, even better with just a bit of sugar.

Second, a successful diner must serve good eggs. Knapp's cooks, who often sing quietly at the grill (recently one of the cooks was doing a riff on "I Just Called to Say I Love You"), turn out great eggs. Two eggs over easy with a side of sausage or bacon are a good choice; but put those fried eggs atop thick Texas toast with slices of fried hamsteak and then smother them with homemade hollandaise and you have something extraordinary, a workingman's egg's benedict that will be enough to sustain you for the rest of the morning, and the rest of the day, if necessary.

Third, and perhaps most important, a good diner lives and dies on the strength of its potatoes. You can get home fries anywhere, and the ones at Jim's are solid. The potatoes have a nice crust on at least one side of each cube, and they are seasoned nicely. Good, but nothing to write home about. The hash browns, though, are wonderful. Since hash browns were appropriated by fast-food chains years ago, it's been hard to find good ones in any respectable diner - they were relegated to the same category of processed food as their tater tot cousins. Jim's could lead a hash-brown renaissance: finely shredded, fried golden brown on both the top and the bottom, nearly creamy inside, and judiciously salted, these were the best hash browns I've had in a long, long time.

Knapp's diner turns out great breakfast fare, but her cooks put out a mean lunch as well. One afternoon, nursing an insane craving for a patty melt, I stopped in for lunch near the end of the restaurant's "day." At the tail end of the lunch rush things slow down at Jim's and the regulars linger to chat with each other and the staff. At 2 p.m. the diner was still reasonably busy, the booths emptying out, waitresses bustling about filling ketchup bottles, sugars, and salt and pepper shakers. A small knot of regulars clustered at one end of the counter, intent on the day's crossword puzzle. After working steadily on the puzzle for almost a half hour, the group finally hit a clue they couldn't answer, and called for "The Book." An obliging waitress wandered over to the milk cooler and pulled down a largish dictionary, covered in grey paper and held closed with a rubber band. When they were done with it, the dictionary went back on top of the cooler.

For me, the really thorny question is whether to have the diner's patty melt or its turkey reuben, both models of their kind. Unlike lesser diners, Jim's makes its own patties and cuts its turkey from the bone rather than some pre-shaped, packaged "breast." The results speak for themselves: a moist, beefy, truly medium-rare burger that plays well with lightly fried onions and Swiss cheese; buttery, rich turkey redolent of Thanksgiving, falling from my overstuffed sandwich in tasty shreds to mix with sauerkraut and dollops of Thousand Island dressing on my plate.

Elena Knapp is a hands-on kind of restaurant owner. On one of my visits, she was on the floor waiting tables, and she routinely gets up at 2:30 in the morning to come in and bake the sweet breads and pies that she serves at both of her restaurants (Jim's has a second location on East Main Street). Once I found out that Knapp had homemade lemon-cream pie on the menu, it was all I could do not to skip straight to dessert. Knapp's crusts are light and flaky - she may be using lard in them, and God bless her for doing so if that's the case - and the lemon filling has just the right sweet-tart bite to it to cut through the toothachingly sweet cream on top. I initially ordered a piece to share, but once I tasted it, I got a piece of my own and seriously considered buying the rest of the pie to take home with me.

To find Jim's Restaurant in City Newspaper's online Restaurant Guide - including a map, user reviews, and more - click here.

Jim's Restaurant

233 N Winton Road, Rochester

(585) 288-0520

Mon-Fri 5 a.m.-3 p.m., Sat 5 a.m.-2 p.m., Sun 6 a.m.-1 p.m.