“Is the corned beef hash homemade?” I asked our no-nonsense waitress, whose lack of smile epitomized a slice of humorous diner culture captured in a spate of TV shows and movies born of the 1980s.

“Canned,” she recited tersely, as though she’d been asked the question a thousand times before.

“How about the sausage in the Godfather Omelet? Is it homemade?”

“Sysco,” she answered with knee-jerk brevity, in a satirical tone that could have easily been interpreted as “It’s nothing special.”

Then, while eyeing the list of various fruited pancakes, I inquired if the kitchen uses fresh strawberries.

“We get ‘em frozen and then heated.” Period.

Hardened perhaps by years of experience, the waitress proved to be a likeable and proficient server in my two visits to Perry’s Café, where the blue-collared and blue-haired have converged daily since 1985 for undecorated truck-stop fare presented in a central San Diego location that feels neither here nor there.

Perry’s emerges from a colorless stretch of Pacific Highway situated between Old Town and Sea World Drive, entrapped by an industrial-looking naval public works building across the street, and an Interstate 5 overpass snaking behind it. Plastic plants, cheap brown paneling and harsh florescent lighting appoint the spacious, two-room interior – exactly the passé motif I expected after spying curiously on the place in drive-bys during the past several years.

The front dining room features large windows, a lengthy lunch counter and booth seating. The back section is duller and strewn with insipid wall art and fake wood tables, not to mention an occasional sugar packet and French fry littering the matted green carpet. And during peak hours, the wait staff reload freshly washed silverware into a service bin rather brutally, which in my first visit exacerbated the noise level stemming from a nearby trio of loud-talking senior men reminiscing over hot turkey meals about their days in the military.

In that initial solo lunch I zeroed in on a Rueben sandwich, nearly classic except that the Russian dressing comes on the side, and the rye bread slices take on a heavier slathering of grease than most in the grilling process. Yet for only $6.50, the corned beef was faultlessly brined and tender, a welcome relief considering that the thickly sliced meat sported a funky pink hue, caused likely by the achromatic interior lighting. A generous heap of crisp, golden fries accompanied the sandwich.

Revisiting with a friend that same week, we dabbled in the breakfast menu as well, available until the restaurant closes at 2 p.m. each day.

“I feel like I’m in a mobile home park,” she commented semi-jokingly of the pallid atmosphere and pragmatic food offerings. Though operated jointly by the daughter (Perry) and widow (Margaret) of Greek founder Constantine Georgakopoulos, there isn’t a spec of feta cheese or pita bread to be found here. The menu instead contains an assortment of pedestrian Mexican dishes and Italian-style frittatas woven into an all-American breakfast-lunch menu seemingly resurrected from a bygone diner along Old Route 66 – patty melts, BLTs, grilled cheese, steak-n-eggs, plain chef salads, etc. Oddly, there are no pies, cakes or pastries of any kind available. Blueberry muffins or cinnamon toast are the closest things to dessert that you’ll get.

Our Godfather Omelet was wrecked from overcooking, to the point that it lost most of its airiness and yellowish-white color. Packed with sliced, lean Italian sausage, the meat was nearly as rubbery as the grayish-tinted eggs. Conversely, a tablet of hash browns on the plate was moist in the middle and tastefully crunchy along the perimeter, reminding me of those canned potato sticks I loved as a kid.

Jumbo, mealy strawberries were the bane of two rolled pancakes made soggy from the waterlogged fruit crammed inside, which looked disturbingly red and overripe when I performed an autopsy on the second cake that we ended up abandoning. Stark white whipped butter came on the side, along with two mini pitchers of warm maple syrup that would’ve kept us duly stocked had we embraced the dish.

A tuna melt we ordered was too fishy tasting for my liking. Speckled heavily with chopped celery (not a bad thing), my friend found it tolerable, although commented that the albacore tuna melt at Crest Café still carries the blue ribbon in this town. And I thoroughly agree.

On the plus side, Perry’s reasonable prices and ample portions make it a viable destination when you’re carrying a thin wallet. Plate orders fly out of the kitchen fast. And there’s plenty of parking available in an adjoining lot that is much larger than the restaurant itself, a telling clue that we’re never alone when that hankering strikes for food that doesn’t pretend to be glamorous.