When you are driving on Highway 41 in Marietta, it’s hard to miss the Marietta Diner. At night, this place is lit up like Times Square with neon and all sorts of eye candy. It’s a local legend that is adapting to the times.

Part of that adaptation is three new drive-thru lanes right up front. In pre-COVID days, there was always a wait. These days, it’s much easier to get a table, and they make it pretty fast to get your meal to-go. Like any good diner, there’s something for everyone. The menu is huge, over ten pages long. Here’s just one of them, containing 55 items:

Do the math and imagine the culinary possibility. Good luck making up your mind. Because the third party delivery services menus were a bit vague, we called them and they took our order. The guy on the phone knew the menu, which helped a lot. He told us it would be 20 minutes.

Drive up to the pick-up window and they bring you the food. This can take a bit of time as the pick-up guy has to run and get your food, then he has to process your credit card in a different location. They really should put a credit card reader at the pickup window. If you are comfortable with going inside, it’s probably faster to park and go get the food. They are two miles from Date Night headquarters, so a few minutes later, the food is safe at home.

Until we eat it, of course. Our solo offspring is over for dinner tonight, which gives us a chance for more food pictures…and dessert. Before we look at what’s in the bags, we should point out that one dinner is a lot of food. We split ours and our son took home leftovers. Look at what you get:

Soup. Matzo ball for us, but there are other choices.

Salad. Caesar, with dressing on the side. And the main course…

On page 9 of the menu, the Broiled Seafood Combo comes with shrimp, scallops, flounder and salmon. Throw in some mixed veggies AND a baked potato and you have gained five pounds. That’s why we split the entree. If you eat dinner there, you get bread and spanakopita. Too bad they didn’t throw some of that into the bag.

The Stuffed Jumbo Shrimp, coincidentally from page 9 of the menu, contains everything our dinner had, plus you get a picture of the baked potato.

Did you leave room for dessert? On page 10 of the menu is where the good stuff sits. There are 30 choices of cheesecake, pies and regular cake. They have them in a case inside, which is quite the photo op, but because I never got out of the car, we are denied that picture. I really wanted a slice of their Crazy Cake, which we enjoyed at a visit to sister restaurant Marietta Fish Company back in “good old days” when you could sit inside a restaurant and enjoy yourself.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist putting that “file photo” in there from 2015. For tonight, our order taker recommended the White Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cake.

Evidently, this is currently their best-selling cake. It’s light, which is good, because after eating all of that food, who needs a heavy dessert?!

The verdict: a good place to order takeout, especially if you have a lot of people with different tastes. Everything was hot when we got it home and it needed no reheating. It travelled well, and all that we ate was delicious. Some of it was even nutritious.

Hungry? It doesn’t matter what time you read this–the Marietta diner is open 24/7. If you can’t find something to like on their menu, you should probably make sure you are still breathing!