c&c diner

raymond, Washington

Full disclosure: I can barely eat anything on this menu.

I am a dairy free girly and C&C Diner is a pizza and chowder and cheesecake situation, which is basically a dairy delivery system from start to finish. I love pizza. Pizza does not love me back. The bloating looks like a legitimate pregnancy and I get rashes on my eyelids specifically, which is such a weird and specific punishment. It's just not worth the cheese. It's never worth the cheese.

I was also getting over a cold for this shoot. Zicam, cough drops, the whole thing. But we got to take all the food home after, which is honestly how it should always work. I have had restaurants ask me to just quickly photograph someone else's order mid-service and it makes everyone feel a little weird and I won't elaborate further on that.

So I photographed all of this beautiful food, the pizza, the wings, the stuffed sandwiches, the chowder that locals genuinely rave about, the cheesecake, the carrot cake, and then I sent it all home to Rick and his daughter Peyton who were very happy about this arrangement. They love C&C. I love C&C. I just love it from a safe dairy free distance.

The light inside this diner is genuinely unreal by the way. Soft, warm, natural. The kind of light that makes food look exactly as good as it actually is without having to do a lot of work around it. It's the kind of space that makes hospitality photography fun because you're not fighting anything, you're just paying attention.

The owner is so nice and she liked the food photos so much that she's now booking family photos with me, which I love more than I can say. The photos ended up all over their menu too. For a little diner in Raymond that just wanted some good images of their food, that feels like exactly the right outcome.

Go get the chowder. Or the pizza, if your eyelids can handle it.

xoxo Chelsea