Southern Kitchen has been frying chicken on Congress Street in New Market since the 1950s — a real, beloved diner, not a themed recreation of one. Friday is seafood night. It opens at 7am and stays open into the evening, seven days a week, making it one of the most reliably-open meal stops in the whole region.

It is deliberately old-fashioned, not a modern update on diner food — go in expecting exactly that, and it delivers.