I suppose that the best way to appreciate this place is by driving up some frosty morn, showing off a tongue-lolling 10-point buck in the back of your pickup. Or, if you're a vegetarian, staggering in at 5 a.m., famished after being lost on a mushroom hunt in the wilds of Exeter. The Middle of Nowhere Diner is an oasis for the ravenous and is wasted on the modest of appetite.

It's conveniently located on a state highway, but has no competition for miles, like a wolf that needs plenty of territory. If customers were prey, this restaurant would catch most of the county, or so it has usually looked when I've walked in mid-day. There's a counter right ahead when you enter and a few tables and booths to your right. Another room had to be tacked onto the place past that -- this is where non-smokers are banished. From the wood veneer surfaces to the Route 66 sign, there's nothing to clash with all the flannel sported.

The 10-page menu makes life difficult for head-scratchers, especially since breakfast is served all day, except Fridays. There's the usual collection of burgers and sandwiches, from clubs plates under six bucks and four Parmesan variations under five, to a half-pound rib eye for $6.10. The dinner offerings are the most voluminous, with separate pages for pastas, seafood, meat, and -- separately -- chicken. Quite a span, from items only a diner would offer, such as liver and onions ($6.40), to a dinner with five jumbo fried shrimp ($8.99), and a parmigiana platter with chicken, veal, eggplant, and meatballs over pasta for only $9.99.

Having been to the Middle of Nowhere a few times for lunch with a friend, I recently got around to taking Johnnie. I couldn't see ordering pasta in a diner, whatever the bargain, but the Southwestern chicken ($7.75) sounded appealing. Good choice, I saw, when out came two large pieces of chicken breast, mercifully not overcooked, topped with crisp bacon strips and melted Swiss. The fries were the frozen kind, but vast in quantity, under, as well as beside, the chicken. Once I stirred it up, the coleslaw was juicy, the way I like it.

My companion chose a breakfast, and lucky for her. She was intrigued with the idea of a four-egg (extra large) omelet and picked the veggie ($4.45). Red bliss home fries and a humongous omelet filled with grilled-to-order bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, spinach, and so on. It provided a second hefty meal at home the next morning. For $5.25, the items in a carnivore version of the omelet climb to 10 and include a little of every breakfast meat. For such short money, who needs a haunch of venison dangling off a fender?

The next week I learned that my Exeter pal Gary, who'd introduced me to this place, always orders that veggie omelet for breakfast, as intrigued with its fresh cornucopia as we were. (His wife, Marie, says she usually has the western breakfast sandwich and wonders how they can fit in so much ham for $2.65.) Another favorite of Gary's is the fish & chips ($6.75), which he describes as light-battered and not greasy.

A couple of specials did us just fine, this time out. My Yankee pot roast ($8.99) is available every Wednesday, as corned beef and cabbage is on Thursdays. Four slabs under brown gravy, big boiled potatoes, onions and carrots. Your basic, patented meat-and-potatoes fare, which inspired me to order a Michelob. Gary's open-faced chicken sandwich ($6.99) had plenty of white-meat chunks under kitchen-made chicken gravy -- the cook had just whipped it up, we were told. The mashed was also homemade and tasty. For our gratis cups of soup, I had a rich broth clam chowder, and Gary had a kielbasa and cabbage concoction, slightly sweet, that I recalled rhapsodizing about on a prior visit.

Stuffed or not, I had to order a slice of the appealing sounding pie, billed as peach "creme" ($2.75). What arrived was topped with Cool Whip, or some other substitute that had never come close to a cow, leading me to concede that I hadn't been promised whipped cream. Canned peaches and tapioca were beneath. I was too charmed by the array of edible Americana to be disappointed, though I didn't go so far as to finish it.

You gotta love a place like the Middle of Nowhere Diner -- gun rack behind you or not.