In happier days, fast-food used to come with fries. Now, it just comes with politics, no substitutions. Happy Meal toys conspire to turn your children transgender, Chick-fil-A waffle fries signal your allegiance to the Christonationalist movement, and the jury remains out on Taco Bell until we figure out what species comprises the chalupa. So, the recently opened Tesla Diner was always going to court controversy. But its location in West Hollywood makes it something of a colonial fort, like a Waffle House in Park Slope, New York. Locals have treated it as such, with protests following the opening and reviews railing as much against Elon Musk as the food and decor.

A retrofuturism diner with memeable menu items like “Epic Bacon” seems made in Musk’s image, so I can’t blame people for conflating the two. Yet it would be wrong to hold the child accountable for the sins of the father. I visited the diner on a Friday afternoon with two curious friends, chauffeured by one in their fiancé’s mother’s Tesla. The Los Angeles experience consists mostly of such tangential connections and brief grazes of luxury. To my disappointment, there were no protests, which I hoped would be the meat of my review. I cannot say I’m surprised by this; I find that LA weather often spurs emotions but does not sustain them.