Joe's Diner is a placeholder name for a fictional or hypothetical everyman's restaurant. Although there are franchises that use the name, its rhetorical use is often to describe a small, local business contrasted against large businesses or franchises. The phrase "Eat at Joe's" is a complementary fictional or hypothetical typical advertisement for such an establishment, and has itself become a snowclone in the form of X at Joe's, Eat at Y's, or simply X at Y's.
In addition to the fictional and hypothetical senses, there are of course many real eating establishments named "Joe's Diner". Some were so named prior to the popularity of the term as a placeholder name, and their existence contributed to the rise of this placeholder name. A famous example is the Joe's Diner located in Lee, Massachusetts, which was the subject of Norman Rockwell's work "The Runaway." The actual Joe of Joe's Diner is the man behind the counter in this classic picture. Others were created after the name became popular for this purpose, and were named to take advantage of the term.
The expression, "Eat at Joe's", was a frequently-used gag in the Warner Bros. cartoons during the 1940s, typically used when an image of a neon sign or other complicated tubing would appear. One example occurs in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, in which Daffy Duck faces a host of dangerous characters, subduing them all, the final one being "Neon Noodle", whom he quickly twists into the shape of an "Eat at Joe's" neon sign, with a triumphant cry of "Tah-dah!" In another example, "Super-Rabbit", the scientist's laboratory shows liquid flowing through tubing, which at one point takes the shape of the sign. In another such gag, a bear carries a sign that said "Eat at Joe's" through an entire episode, eventually going into the Joe's Diner followed by other. After a ruckus, Joe (the bear) comes out with a new sign that says "I'm Joe". Another cartoon, a joke-laden cruise, mentions the actual Sloppy Joe's Restaurant rather than using the generic "Eat at Joe's" gag.
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