By Hannah Elliott | Bloomberg
The first time I drove to the Tesla Diner, I took one look—and kept on driving.
There’s no way I was joining that chaotic line of hundreds of people that snaked down Santa Monica Boulevard across from Jeffrey Deitch. It was a Friday night in Los Angeles. The block was hot, in more ways than one.
I should have known this would be the scene. The diner is located on the spot that Elon Musk had spitballed since 2018. It opened last week, just as Tesla reported its steepest revenue decline since 2012 and at the moment the company faces darkened projections across multiple endeavors while Musk combats fallout from recent damaging entanglements, political and otherwise. The fervor around the $1 trillion brand has never been stronger, simultaneously compelling fans to make pilgrimages from as far as Nova Scotia and attracting protestors who decry Musk’s stance on just about everything.
The second time I went, I was ready. It was early on a Monday evening; I slathered on sunblock, and grabbed a water bottle and a hat. I was arming myself for an anticipated multiple-hour wait to try the menu developed by Le Cordon Bleu graduate and grilled-cheese guru Eric Greenspan. The promise of molten cheese and thick, buttery toast went a long way toward overriding my anticipated annoyance at having to wait in line for, well, anything.
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Luckily, the dozens of Cybertrucks that had coiled through Hollywood’s side streets on Friday had dissipated somewhat. I street-parked my old Rolls-Royce and walked through 80 supercharger stations toward an edifice of unpainted metal and neon lights. The patrons were mainly local devotees at the moment; the parking lot was full of California license plates, along with one from Florida and one from Nevada.
For a year I have driven past the site, watching as it slowly coalesced into a Jetson’s spaceship of a drive-in—futuristic and retro at the same time. Now, finally, it was open.
“In a kind of environment where we hear a lot of negative stuff, it’s great to see the positive energy that’s happening here,” says Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen, who also designed the silver rotunda diner. “We have seen probably three times more people than we ever expected.”
A crowd was milling around the parking lot when I got there around 5 p.m., watching Star Trek on two large screens while others charged their car and waited for food. Many customers had been smart enough to order meals ahead of time from inside their Teslas; the rest of us non-Tesla owners would have to wait in line. (You can valet your non-Tesla or park it off-site, but self-parking inside the Tesla gates wasn’t possible.) Electric cars aside, being there felt like stepping back in time to one of the drive-ins that permeated Southern California in the 1950s and ’60s. Young families and middle-aged couples quietly snapped selfies. Tesla employees handed out cold water in small plastic cups while we waited in the rather oppressive heat. A bored-looking security guard said it would be 90 minutes before I ate. I settled in.
Thirty minutes later, Greenspan and Von Holzhausen, whom I remembered from 2012 when I wrote a cover story about Musk, appeared like saving angels and invited me inside. The unlikely duo says they have spent almost every waking hour at the diner since it opened, chatting with customers and directing the hundreds of employees who operate it 24/7. (Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, has stopped serving guests for now, Von Holzhausen told me. He declined to comment on whether—when the bot was engaged in that role last week—it had been remotely operated.)
Greenspan was downright giddy—about the menu, about the special tool Tesla engineers invented to help press the beef patties for the burger and about the nostalgia that pushed him to create his gooey chili cheese fries.
“In high school I was a little bit overweight, but I lost weight my junior year,” he says. “My cheat meal at the end of every week was [Original] Tommy’s chili cheese fries, so that taste is in my head like crazy. For the diner, I went to the guys who make Tommy’s and said, ‘I basically want Tommy’s chili, but I want you to make it out of wagyu beef.’”
We ordered a bit of everything: a smashburger-style Tesla burger with a Martin’s potato roll bun ($13.50); a grilled cheese, with New School American cheese ($9); those chili cheese fries ($7); four dipping sauces, in flavors like avocado crema ($4); and the sleeper hit of the night, an albacore tuna salad melt with pickles on Texas toast ($14). And a coffee ($4, drip).
Then we went upstairs to the second-floor roof deck to catch the breeze and wait for the food. Fifteen minutes later, a feast! The verdict on the chili cheese fries from someone who can’t remember the last time (if ever) she’s eaten that particular concoction: The decadent emulsion of fat and cheese does a lot of good for anyone craving comfort and down-home American food. It’s like a baseball game on a warm summer night.
Another highlight: the crispy smashed edges of crunchy beef on the hamburger patty, made even more enticing when dipped in a delicate Dilly Ranch sauce. Yum. (A lot of this food isn’t currently listed on the website, but it’s there, trust me.)
A true believer in the traditional American diner, Greenspan has sourced many of the ingredients locally, like the meat that comes from LA’s RC Provisions and the New American cheese, which is his own blend. He has carefully sourced the rest, like the hot dogs from Snap-O-Razzo.
“You don’t take a road trip and get off the road and eat at a diner anymore,” he says. “But it’s a really important part of the American culinary tradition. And when they asked me to be a part of it, frankly, it was like, ‘I’ll be damned if somebody else is gonna tell that story.’”
Tesla’s diner is well suited for those fans in so deep it’s “like a cult,” Greenspan says—but the goal is to feed something bigger. “What makes a diner is hospitality,” he says. “It needs to feel comfortable, welcoming, and that’s really hard to do in a quick-service environment, especially when we’re serving you in your car.”
The diner isn’t perfect yet. The waiting times need to be reduced by more than half, and the menu could stand to be expanded past the burgers and chicken-and-waffle fare. They need to restock the kitsch Cybertruck-shaped paper boxes that hold the burgers (they had run out by the time I got there) and choose a style of fork that is better able to grasp those cheese-dripping chili fries. The roof-deck shades that were removed after one hit a customer need to return, in some form or another, to protect against the brutal SoCal sun. (Von Holzhausen assured me they would.) The flow of the waiting line outside could be better organized so it doesn’t wander across the exit routes and into the random succulents that skirt the property.
Still, Greenspan’s enthusiasm is contagious, and I applaud any automaker that devotes ample resources to engaging with and bolstering its customer base in such a positive and egalitarian way. Jaguar should have tried it before trying its unfortunate attempt at relevance. Despite the well-documented buyers who have deserted the Tesla nameplate, returning their cars in protest or embarrassment in such numbers that it has hurt the company’s bottom line, the acolytes who were at the Tesla Diner were genuinely happy to be there, asking to take photos with the friendly and patient Von Holzhausen and professing their gratitude.
I don’t own a Tesla, and chili cheese fries aren’t any part of my daily diet. But I admit I was smiling as I walked back to my Silver Spur. I was also carrying a to-go box with the rest of that grilled cheese sandwich.
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