greasy spoon
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
a small, cheap restaurant serving basic food
Literally: a spoon with grease on it
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Julia Roberts, Jason Patric, Michelle Pfeiffer and John Malkovich have all been seen chomping junk food and rubbing shoulders with the masses at various LA greasy spoons.
I found one of those plastic and formica Little Chefs that were replacing the old greasy spoon eateries and went straight into the Gents.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “greasy spoon” mean?
a small, cheap restaurant serving basic food Literally: a spoon with grease on it
Is “greasy spoon” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.