Ocala Downtown Diner

We were in town for an event and visited here for a late breakfast. This was the quintessential small town diner with delicious food, friendly staff and excellent prices. The biscuits and gravy was outstanding and the pancakes were generous in portion and perfectly cooked. Don't forget to try the spuds! We are so glad we came across this place and if we find ourselves in Ocala again, we will be back!

We were there at the busiest time, I’m sure—Sunday brunch!! We were at a mountain bike race event at the park nearby and looking for something quick! This was beyond our wildest dreams because two are gluten free and one dairy free—they met all expectations! I had French Toast with cinnamon apples—Awesome!! We also had omelets and gluten free toast/with eggs (I think)! Coffee and iced tea with lemonade—perfect! Nice people on top of all that!

We visited Ocala Downtown Diner on a weekend, late summer 2023. This is an eatery that is open for breakfast and lunch. They are open everyday and close at 3pm most days except Sunday, where they close at 2pm. They were pretty busy when n we visited, but not overly busy. There were tables available. We were promptly seated with menus. There were two menus. One for traditional folks. One for vegan followers. I didn't look close at it, but the vegan menu looked to have a fairly good amount of choices. So I'm guessing that this might be a good place for these folks to get a meal. The traditional menu wasn't huge, but adequate. We ordered our meals, which came out fairly quickly. I will say that everything we had was quite good. I asked the folks at the next table, and they said their meals were also good. They looked good, that's why I asked. The diner seemed reasonable clean, but they do allow dogs. There was a customer who brought in a well behaved dog, while we were there. He was very respectful as well and posed no issues that I could see. Some folks may not care for animals while eating. But it wasn't an issue for us. Especially when the customer(who was nice) and his dog were respectful to others. They had individual male/female restrooms, which also seemed clean. All in all, the Downtown Diner, is smaller and a little tight. But not to the point of folks feeling uncomfortable. It does make it easy to speak with the tables next to you :)

I used to be a strict vegan, now I do eat occasional fish. This is the only restaurant in Ocala that I know of that really caters to vegans. The food was delicious even though the plates had processed “chikn’ and soy meat. I loved the burrito with chikn . And, the side of taters were delicious. Atmosphere reminded me of an old fashioned NY diner. Some creative vegan dishes without the highly processed “meats” would be really welcomed. Definitely we will be back.