Driving on the highway often leads to hunger and boredom, which is why people stop at diners or think about how tall a dinosaur would have to be to lick the sun. Calm road-hungers with today's Groupon: for $12, you get $25 worth of comfort fare and drinks at the Comfort Diner on Staten Island. If redeemed Monday through Wednesday, today’s Groupon also entitles you to a half-price bottle of wine.

The Comfort Diner, which moved to Staten Island after 14 years in Manhattan, dresses up the traditional diner experience with classic comfort eats and modern-day hearty fare. Keep your growling stomach from frightening friendly ghosts by stuffing it with wild mushroom potato pancakes ($6.95), or start your chew cruise with mozzarella wedges ($6.95), which combine the food world’s most delicious cheese with the geometry world’s most delicious shape. The taco salad ($10.95) gives Mexico’s best-known culinary contribution a fork-friendly format, and oven-crisped fish and chips ($14.95) provide all of the flavor of the British classic without the sizzle of the deep fryer or the voyeuristic glare of Big Ben. Bread-heads can wrap their food-gripping phalanges around an array of sandwiches, such as a grilled chicken club ($8.95) or a Maine crab burger ($13.95), while proteiny-boppers can swoon over double-thick pork chops with homemade applesauce ($14.95). For herbivores, Comfort Diner slings savory angel-hair pasta with white-wine sauce ($10.95) and big bowls of veggie chili ($9.95). Breakfast and brunch options also satisfy early risers or late-to-bedders.

In 2000, Comfort Diner set a world record when it created a 6,000-gallon milkshake made with milk from a 4,000-foot-tall cow found in a Jersey swamp. Celebrate that historical moment and others with the diner’s fittingly retro interior, which helps set a tone of casual warmth in which taste buds can happily work at sledgehammering sustenance.

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Reviews

Comfort Diner's new Staten Island location was featured by SILive.com. Comfort Diner's former location in Midtown has an average of four owl eyes from TripAdvisors and at one time produced the Guinness World Record for Largest Milkshake:

• The Comfort Diner blends a 1950s theme with a contemporary one. It features a mix of cafe and banquette seating, a full bar and classic menu items. “We pay homage, but we’re not just living in the past,” Freehof said. As with diners of the 1950s, many foods are made from scratch and with local ingredients when practical. However, the menu also addresses current taste preferences and health concerns. – Maura Grunlund, SILive.com