The Mel-O-Dee Restaurant is a diner in Florida by highway US 41, and also acts as a loop. The loop is managed by Norma Abernathy.
Jacob Portman and Emma Bloom use the diner as a meeting point with the hollow hunter H, who used to work with Jacob's grandfather, Abraham Portman.
A Map of Days[]
H gives Jacob instructions of "Abe's spot, nine p.m. sharp. Sit at his booth. Order his usual." for their meeting on Jacob's interview for a mission. Jacob assumes Abe's spot means the Mel-O-Dee restaurant, where he used to go to with his grandfather often, sitting in the same booth and ordering the same meal every time.
Jacob and and Emma arrive at the Mel-O-Dee, sit at this booth, and Jacob orders Abraham's meal. The waitress, Norma, gives Jacob a blue key and points him down the hall, last room past the bathrooms. When Jacob and Emma go in, they stumble through the diner's loop and have to fight a hollowgast that Jacob eventually manages to control after the fight breaks out from the cold storage room into the main dining area. H is there and speaks to them, also revealing the hollow is his pet named Horatio.
H tells them about Abraham's life and the organization he had started. Eventually he gives Jacob and Emma their mission: to deliver two packages. He also gives them a Mel-O-Dee cartoon map of Florida telling them where to go, before they all return to the present day Mel-O-Dee. There, H greets Norma, who reveals that she is a demi-ymbryne who keeps the Mel-O-Dee loop open, along with a few others.
Description[]
Present day[]
The restaurant has been open since at least 1936, and it is described by Jacob's parents as "depressing" and served "old people food." By the events of A Map of Days, it looks "like it [is] barely clinging to life," with a nearly empty parking lot and its old neon sign partly burned out.
On the inside, the diner has yellow plastic booths separated by fake plants, a long Formica counter and a soda fountain. When Emma asks why the restaurant is called Mel-O-Dee, Jacob tells her he thinks it used to be one of those singing-waiter places. By the bathrooms there is a heavy insulated metal door with a signs that says No Admittance. Inside the room is chilled for the frozen food. In one area there are thick plastic flaps to separate the room with the words "Meating Room" stencil-painted across them. This room has cuts of meat everywhere, spilling from torn-open boxes and scattered across the floor (the work of Horatio), and dusted with frost.
Loop[]
There is also a loop entrance in the Meating Room, denoted by an X on the floor. The looped restaurant still has singing waiters and the diners wear vintage clothes.
Trivia[]
- The Mel-O-Dee is based off a real, now-closed restaurant of the same name, located off US-41 at 4685 N Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL. It closed in the mid 2000s, most likely around 2004.