New York, what's new?
The future of diners and luncheonettes in the ever-changing city.
Published on Cook_inc., 02/2024
The urgency to reinvent oneself. A golden rule blindly applied to every longitude, context, or entity. New York is New York not only because it complies with change, but because it embraces it. Adorned with iridescence, it becomes its embodiment. Magnificent and mythological, ever-changing and untameable. To the people of the old world - Italians, say - change is inevitable, something to deal with. Our unapologetic preservation nature ultimately takes the lead, holding dearly to our traditions, costumes, and past to define who we are. There are strong arguments supporting each of these views, equally respectable once put into context: take the never-ending extension of the subway line C in Rome. For every construction site you dig, a new archeological treasure is discovered; for every delay, a much-needed service is not provided. Rome is Rome because of its heritage. In New York City, legacy rhymes with opportunity.
The competition for space in the density of N.Y.C. is the spark that ignites its engine. Thrive or die, everything and everybody living within its space tacitly subscribes to the concrete jungle's law. It applies to churches, former factories, playgrounds, commercial activities, and its 8 million actors. New York used to be the place to make it; today, it's mostly called home by those who already made it. To try, you have to move a little further, to the other side of the Hudson in New Jersey or deeper into Queens, where rents can still (almost) sustain the efforts of artists, lunatics, visionaries, intellectuals, and poets. You can't help but feel nostalgic about the city back in the day, even if it's something you've never experienced. In Finland, it's called kaukokaipuu.
I was asked to write about the city's dining scene on a broad scale. I accepted, realizing immediately after the unlikeness of my success. I don't think the 38 Essential Restaurants updated every month can achieve this goal, nor the curated lists of restaurants, bars, and cafes to visit for birthdays, first dates, or when parents come to visit. Everything so relevant yet ephemeral. The place where you could eat gumbo and jambalaya in winter, gone. The place where they really knew how to slice prosciutto, relocated. The garage with improbable gigs every night, demolished. It's not a place for nostalgics, reactionaries, and conservationists. We shrug for what was lost while waiting in queues to check what's new. I've even learned to monitor the construction sites in my neighborhood with optimism despite they generate peaks of activity in the city's most iconic rodent population. New York is dirty, it's paradoxical, it's tough. New York is alive, it's fast, it's fluid. Take it or leave it, New York is my city. I hate and miss it, and to love it, I surrendered to the tedious charm of its mutability. However, there is one category for which I would be willing to chain myself to the gates: that of diners and luncheonettes, a precious and endangered species.
The fondness for the pastel tones of those retro spaces, the waitresses circling around to pour coffee while chewing gums, sugarcoating bad days with way too much maple syrup, the sound of crispy bacon, hanging with friends and meeting strangers. It's an inexplicable closeness, a familiarity devoid of direct experience. But my fascination with diners as a non-American is not singular; it is more of a shared feeling crystallized in our collective imagination of foreigners. Whether it was Grease, Hopper's Nighthawks, Happy Days, Friends, Suzanne Vega's hit, Pulp Fiction, or Seinfeld, those aluminum counters and leather boots are inherently exotic and familiar, a romantic approximation of whatever America means.
The first diner I set foot in was called Good Stuff Diner. It was in Chelsea, open 24/7, it used to serve breakfast all day, and the laminated menu counted something like 15 pages. There were gyros and pasta, steaks and omelets, meatloaf and waffles, burgers and cakes, fried calamari with marinara sauce, and quesadillas. I ordered a forgettable chicken soup and, adventurously, a root beer float, a 50-milliliter of folk-remedy-tasting soda with two scoops of vanilla ice cream in suspension. The expectations of intimacy dissipated at the first sip.
In my home library, Richard Gutman's American Diner Then and Now, a Boston curator who, since the late seventies, has traveled throughout the country retracing and documenting the history of this piece of Americana: from the night-lunch wagons to the iconic silhouettes of train cars, from the golden era of being a synonym of middle-class restaurant to the decline caused by fast food chains, to the impossible competition posed by delivery. The book shed light on their history, but the chaos of Good Stuff's menu was still tormenting me, offering a more than valid reason to frequent others, learn to navigate the offerings, chat with the staff, and privately award the best tuna melt in the city.
The history of New York City's diners largely shadows the national one, only accentuated by its pronounced multiculturalism. After World War II, many diners were taken over by first or second-generation immigrant families. The first wave was represented by Greeks - hence the stereotypical to-go coffee packaging adorned with blue Hellenistic motifs - later Ukrainians, Indians, and Mexicans. Each adds to the menu dishes from home, hoping to attract a diversified clientele by expanding the offer. Over time, diners' menus hybridized until converging towards a standardized chaotic plurality: when in doubt, the kitchen offers everything, and to justify such a large inventory and maximize returns, it remains open all the time, from Monday to Sunday, twenty-four hours a day. The extensiveness of menus is a mere reflection of the clientele. At the diner, you find taxi drivers, celebrities, students, ravers, politicians, policemen, homeless, nurses, families. Often, these categories arrive in clusters; other times, they eat shoulder to shoulder. And they do it without haste.
In the more or less acclaimed restaurants of New York, the countdown to free the table begins the moment you step through the door: 45 minutes for a table for two, the available time increases depending on the number of guests, about 15 minutes more for each guest. The bill lands concurrently with the last course, ritually accompanied by the emptiest "no rush," credit card on the table, thank you and goodbye. Because time is money, and lots of money is at stake in the hospitality industry. Inside the diners, the old-school ones, time is not a variable. Your order arrives: you can pay immediately or finish your meal, a book, a project, or a conversation that can't possibly be ended. It seems like a modest comfort, but it's unbeatable. I get it: it is not an anti-cyclical policy where variables like lack of staff, rent schizophrenia, and brutal competition can be ignored, so the bottom line is that today, this kind of service is simply unsustainable. Good Stuff Diner permanently closed in August 2020, the pandemic its coup de grâce. The old guard gives way, the historic ones close, and new species emerge.
The steel, neon lights, and Art Deco touches remain, but the hours of service and the pages to flip in the menus are cut. Opened in 2019, Sam Yoo's Golden Diner, under the Manhattan Bridge, opts for a compromise of twelve hours of service seven days a week. It offers classics like a touching Matzo Ball soup with galenic properties, cloudy pancakes, and entertaining variations on the theme, such as the Chinatown Egg & Cheese Sando - scrambled eggs, American cheese, and a hash brown patty inside a sesame seeds and scallions milk bun - or the pungent Kimchi Tomato Soup softened by the most ruffian of Grilled Cheese. Absent the floats, the Soju Bloody Mary works even better.
Baby Blues Luncheonette, in the eastern part of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, opened in 2022 as a contemporary Greek diner. It's nostalgic and fresh, like their H.L.T. with halloumi cheese replacing the institutional bacon. There is Agi's Counter in Crown Heights, with its sophisticated Hungarian pastries and the Pogacsa, toasted bread with fried eggs, Alpine cheese, and mayonnaise. There's Thai Diner, the neo-colossus of Thai cuisine in Soho, which of diners bears just the name and the very conscious kitsch interior design. The same logic applies to Andrew Tarlow's Diner in Williamsburg, restaurateur extraordinaire who, in 1999, changed the face of the neighborhood by opening one of the city's most visionary and impactful restaurants inside a stationed railroad car. Despite the palpable effort to preserve an aesthetic dear to most, form and content often diverge: the ones listed above are all excellent places to eat, and some come very close to the untamed concept. Still, it won't be like reliving the vertigo effect of the canonical Goodfellas scene.
The purists still exist; they save places considered landmarks and twist them as little as possible. It's the case of Three Decker in Greenpoint, where the management change was almost imperceptible, and only the quality of coffee has significantly improved - and the three-story sandwiches are still there. The same goes for Old John Luncheonette, next to Lincoln Center, which has been active for over 70 years (changing location once and ownership twice) and proudly serves the offspring of the historic clientele today. Then there are the diehards, like Tom's in Morningside Heights, Square Diner in Tribeca, Bel Aire Diner in Astoria, and Pearl Diner on Wall Street, to name a few. They tweak as needed and keep doing what they do best, which is not the outstanding culinary execution. But you don't pick a diner solely for its kitchen creations, just as you don't become a regular of a dive bar because the mixology guru is behind the counter. Not that you can't have a sublime meal in a diner (take Phoenicia Diner in the Catskills, a few hours north of the city) or drink an incredible beer in a dive (look at the vast and carefully curated tap rotation at 7B Horseshoe Bar in the East Village). However, those are the places you return to because even if they don't slap it in your face, they carry the badge of honor of seasons of sticky floors, graffiti - or worse - inside the bathrooms, and gums under the tables. They have weathered cultural storms and continue to endure the most unlikely mood swings. They are places thick of memory and resilience, and inside, you feel safe, pampered, and sheltered.
New York doesn't allow you to stand still, and it’s likely we won't be able to rewrite the fate of these and the other active diners. Still, pay them a visit, and you'll understand why "we are happy to serve you" isn't an empty slogan.