For 7 decades and change the Tastee Diner in downtown Silver Spring has been serving up coffee with breakfast, hot and cold sandwiches or burgers for lunch, and blueplate specials at dinner. Of course, you can order any of these menu items at any time. Open 24 hours a day 364 days a year (sans xmas), it is the most famous restaurant in the area. In 1994 it was named a Montgomery County Historic Landmark.

In 1998, the Discovery Channel announced it had selected a site in downtown Silver Spring for the construction of its new World Headquarters. This was a step-up for the growing media company that had been scattered across multiple buildings in Bethesda.

While great news for the Silver Spring community, it was bad news for Tastee as their property at the corner of Georgia and Wayne (map) was on the four-acre site purchased for the project. By June of 2000, as workers began clearing the site for construction, the owner had found a new location on Cameron, just 3 blocks north (map). As the building is one of the few remaining true prefab diners, they had no trouble loading it on a big trailer and hauling it up the street. I wasn’t around at the time but apparently it was quite an event, with police routing traffic while a large crowd of locals and reporters were in attendance.

The Tastee Diner was even immortalized in a Sunday issue of the zany comic strip, Zippy the Pinhead.

So if you’ve just closed the Quarry House or maybe enjoyed a late showing at the AFI, and have a hankerin’ for some eggs and hashbrowns before hitting the sack, stroll up Georgia Ave. past Colesville Rd. to the Tastee Diner.