Dinah's Box and Bucket

For those of you in the know, the hip, Atwater Village, Silverlake, Echo Park crowd, Dinah’s Family Restaurant is your secret code that says, “Yeah, I’m lo-fi and ironic.” At the beginning of Little Miss Sunshine, a bucket of Dinah’s fried chicken sits on the table. Since Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, two of the grooviest people I know were the directors, it makes perfect sense. I’m not hip, cool, or groovy. I’m like Fred MacMurray on My Three Sons. But I do like Dinah’s. It like the typography, and the early American décor circa 1958. And I like the fried chicken. I don’t have too many vices, but eating fried chicken is one of them. If I knew I wouldn’t drop dead, I’d eat fried chicken every day. If it comes in a very cool bucket with funky letterforms, flowers, and polka dots, all the better.