Trending

Not Even a Literary Slant Can Make Philadelphia’s Diner en Blanc Less Lame

By Coggin Toboggan

Published: Aug 21st, 2025 · 9:38 AM EDT

---

Well la-di-da, look what we have here. Philadelphia’s Diner en Blanc is BACK for yet another year of pretentious snacking and swamp ass, as the city’s most pompous denizens ready their wittiest bon mots (ripped from the reels of Tik Tok) and discount Wegman’s olive bar amuse-bouches for a “wonderful” night of picking up after themselves and ruck sacking their way to a mystery section of historic Philadelphia blacktop where Ben Franklin once contracted syphilis.

The WORST of Philadelphia is back for another humid and poncy night of pretending that eating with thousands of other moist individuals is fun because everyone is dressed in white and bordering on the edge of heat exhaustion. But hey, that’s nothing an old-timey cover of Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir on the lute from a man riding a penny farthing won’t fix! WHAT MIRTH!

Wait a minute… this year’s Diner en Blanc is based around a literary theme to make it ULTRA CLASSY. Instead of its usual “food-borne illness and malaria” theme, this year’s Diner en Blanc celebrates “100 Years of Gatsby,” proving definitively that nobody with an English degree is sitting on the event’s planning board.

But we’ll get to that later.

Oh how I’ve tried to warn you people about Diner en Blanc. I’ve written this screed every single year since 2019, but no matter what I say or what I do, thousands of people dressed in elegant whites bought with hard-earned Kohls cash will lug beach chairs and personalized $600 picnic baskets from Williams Sonoma for the “privilege” of eating their own cooked and prepared food in the exact location where William Penn once accidentally slipped in a pile of horse manure and ruined his finest pantaloons.

How is this still happening? WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING? How is the city still willingly throwing itself into a night of gridlock so a mob of 26-year-old real estate agents can exchange business cards, brag about the latest shitholes they’ve sold to desperate millennials, and pretend that sweating through their white Gap chinos is the utmost pinnacle of class.

“Did I tell you I sold a townhouse over in Queen Village today for $100K over asking, all cash offer?”

“That’s nothing, I sold an apartment in Fishtown for $150K over asking and they didn’t even have a home inspection! That water heater is definitely fucked, bro.”

::Both laugh deeply as they shovel cockroach egg-laden hummus down their gullets::

I ask of you, how can McGlinchey’s no longer thrive in Philadelphia, but Diner en Blanc is still be going strong?

The obvious answer? There is no God.

But I digress. A quick reminder for the uninitiated –

Diner en Blanc is a “high class” social event invented by the French in 1988 as a way to make smoking in public socially acceptable for at least one night. You know the rest at this point…everyone has to dress in white, lug their own food and drink to an unnamed location in the city to ensure they’re covered in a thin sheen of sweat and tears before everything begins. There aren’t a lot of constants in this world, but the one thing you can absolutely count on at every Diner en Blanc is the majority of party goers getting into a knock down, heat-induced fight with a spouse or lover when they both realize how much money they’ve wasted for the honor of eating outside and neither can remember whose idea it actually was to come to this hell hole.

For reasons beyond human comprehension, tickets sell out for this “klassy” affair every single year, but if you can’t get in, don’t worry! If you miss out you can simply wear a white t-shirt and sit in traffic on the Schuylkill for three hours with your windows up and the air conditioner off. Eat an old bag of rancid peaches and regret all of the life choices that brought you to this moment. Decide whether or not to drive into a bridge abutment at some point. Ta dah! You just had as much fun as anyone at Diner en Blanc. You actually probably had more fun because you didn’t drop $63 a ticket for the freedom to eat truffle risotto from the ACME hot bar in a CVS parking lot.

Also, hasn’t everyone seen Sinners at this point? Nothing good can come out of an event where people dress in all white and sing old-timey songs accompanied by an instrument that hasn’t been popular since 1924. If you do get roped into attending and you hear someone break into a rendition of “Pick Poor Robin Clean,” just pack up and leave. Nothing good is going to come from the rest of the night.

But look, I’m a REASONABLE MAN. This year’s Diner en Blanc is different. Different from all the rest! You know why? Because this year’s event has a theme! “100 Years of Gatsby” is what the event organizers came up with, or at least what Grok came up with when the organizers typed in “scam,” “overpriced,” and “white” into the AI chatbot when they couldn’t think of a theme themselves.

It’s insanely clear that nobody in charge of anything with Diner en Blanc has ever actually READ The Great Gatsby. You know, the timeless literary classic that has warned readers for decades about the hollow pursuits of wealth and extravagance that will ultimately leave you empty and unfulfilled? FUCK THAT. The idea for this absolutely came from someone half-remembering the gif of Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Great Gatsby movie, you know the one, where where he holds up a glass of champagne to the camera and gives a knowing nod? How waggishly delightful! Wouldn’t that be fun to do in real life? While wearing all white and sitting around in a monsoon?

To hell with understanding the timeless theme and poignant warning of the hollowness of materialism, how opulence and grand displays of wealth can’t fulfill you as a person, how you can only do that through real connections with people in your life. FUCK THAT. We all get to wear white clothes to dinner! Huzzah! Maybe the poors can eat our shrimp tails and streak gristle when we’re all done! We’ll all live forever and always be happy! The good times will never end!

::Charlestons through a pile of rancid fois gras and IPA puke in open-toed shoes::

What’s the theme going to be for next year’s Diner en Blanc? Might I make a suggestion and base it around Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, perhaps? May everyone that comes to Diner en Blanc win the lottery! Why are there so many piles of rocks around this year?

But again, and I’m just throwing this out there like I did for the last five years, the solution to all of this is Diner en Heights at my house. $10 gets you a red solo cup with keg access and at least two slices of pizza from Ralph’s on Station Avenue. Judging from the popularity of the idea last time, we’ll move it out from the backyard to the street. Don’t worry about the neighbors, they’ll be as piss-drunk as the rest of the us.

See everyone there. If you wear white you will not be admitted.