24 hours in a diner in New York
1843magazine.com
1843magazine.com
Nearly everything I miss about NY has to do with food, and nearly all the food I miss is diner food: mystery meat gyros, the diner hamburger that's slightly too wet for the bun so you can't put it down once you pick it up, the right kind of natural-casing link sausages that snap when you bite into them, and above all, the matzoh ball soup: cure for everything. For dessert, rainbow cookies or a slice of pie from the glass rotating case -- and don't forget the weird chocolate mints on your way out.
A half-decent bagel, good pizza, and any bodgea's sausage egg and cheese on a roll round out my list of foods I atavistically seek out every time I'm within 40 miles of central park.
That's a great observation. We have our own diners in the south. But the dishes you want are chicken fried steak, meatloaf, green beans with bacon, mac-n-cheese, broccoli rice casserole, southern pies, etc. Completely different categories and experience.
Like competent, but sassy, wait staff. No diner puts up with your crap. Formica, pleather booths, tall laminated and fake leather trimmed menus, as well as neon seem to be common threads.
(also, there are plenty more 'yuppie' (read 'gastropub', 'artesenal', 'fusion', etc. spots that are good, but it's a bit harder for me to feel such an attachment)
Very early breakfast through lunch. Closed Sundays. Despite the latter, and the proliferation of "weekend dining" with the change to suburbia, they're doing just fine.
There is definitely a community of locals. Including many people in the trades and whatnot, who still grow up and live around here while the surrounding suburbia is much more "fluid" in its population.
I've also watched other "farm diners" close, such as the one out in the farm town where I went to school. Changing economics and demographics.
They are definitely their own sub-type of diner.
I assume you mean this in a sense of people from disparate backgrounds coming together on a common ground?
Is this even used in the context you meant it? Can you cite a text using it in a non-christian context? Just curious how the hell you ended up using this word lol.
It's a good ol' Greek word with no inherent religious meaning, so it's nice to see it getting reclaimed in a secular context. I think the fact that it tends to have a religious connotation imparts a sense of solemnity to it that is quite appropriate in the current context.
"Ecumenical" also avoids the grandiosity and detechedness of "universal" or "global". Perhaps because its meaning derives from "home", it feels a lot more down to Earth and closer to heart than either of those common alternatives.
Exactly. Diners and bodegas are common spaces for people from every slice of life -- and everyone plays nice, or else the waitress takes your matzoh away and nobody wants that!
But it definitely tends to be used in the religious sense.
Try this, and I think your soup will improve. http://www.momfluential.net/2012/03/21/my-grandmothers-matzo...
The white man had the schmaltz
The black man had the blues
No one knew what they was gonna do
But Tchaikovsky had the news
I might just give that soup a go and see what I can do. It's a bit hit and miss when you don't know the way it's meant to taste though :)
Not many people do it anymore. I had it once and am not a fan, it had a strong garlic taste from the roast.
Spread thin on toast with a sprinkle of salt it is amazing and instantly takes me back 30 years to weekends at my nan's.
You are not alone but the East coast has the media to promote their cuisine hence its dominance and over representation in US culture.
In my experience, Nothing in this article or your comment describe things I’d be hard pressed to find in most big cities.
I live in New England, spent a bunch of time in the midwest and southwest and pacific northwest, been in the south a little bit. None of those areas do it like this.
Pizza is a holy war; bagels -- I'll grant you Montreal.
- open 24 hours, breakfast all day.
- At least three industrial-grade bunn coffee makers
- waitstaff primarily comprised of middle-aged women and 20-something men of the "working folks" varities. Normally, greek or latino. Normally lifers. Normally gruff but kindly. The owner is likely to be on the floor, and will inevitably be a 50+ year old man, normally chunky, normally greek.
- red formica tables are a plus, as are naugahyde stool covers that have seen better days.
- chromed steel backsplashes and a bar with round stools that you can sit at.
- Gaudy exterior facade, that was last updated in about 1995, featuring (ideally) columns and usually neon signs.
- Menu should be big and tall with plastic sheets protecting the paper, ideally edged in fake leather. At least 6 pages long, with an inordinate number of dishes -- of which maybe 5 are ever actually ordered in real life.
- A lingering greasy smell of schmaltz and pancakes and hamburgers and singed coffee.
- not so much now, but historically, one jukebox per booth
- "Diner" in the name, normally also greek references (olympus, zeus, etc.)
Bodegas are corner stores with completely forgettable names, the usual selection of beer and drinks and snacks and other gas-station-like foods, a newsstand that actually sells newspapers, normally phone cards or phones and whatnot. Goya foods in abundance. There is also a long grill that makes aforementioned sandwiches, and there is nearly always a cat on the premises.
This year I’ve been in diners that match that description in New York, Vancouver, Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis & Atlanta.
I think the biggest difference ive seen is whether their ‘greek’ menu is supplemented by Jewish/southern/polish/German food.
The difference is the food. This kind of diner, which as another poster pointed out can be found from central NJ to the Catskills, has an obviously distinct menu from the rest of the country.
I’m curious what I’m missing.
You'll see matzo ball soup, pastrami, etc, but not as many knishes and latke.
In Australia we have some elements of this but they're fading fast. Greek, Italian, Lebanese family owned cafes and fast food places.
These days labour costs mean that most cafes / bistros, even ones with a strong Italian theme will be staffed by newer non-European immigrants. Often no less good, but a different vibe.
Also, you'll almost never get staff older than 30 or so. The exception are highway roadhouses where the chain has out-competed the bypassed towns. So the older staff only have one choice.
So basically New York diners are available in rural Iowa?
Good diners have a gestalt that’s difficult to capture by just listing the characteristics of them. Diners are community hubs in a way that places like Perkins can’t typically become (though I won’t deny they have some regulars at least). Take one of my former locals, the somewhat famous Tom’s Restaurant in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Google Image Search it and tell me if it feels like a Perkins. There’s a ton of history there that you can only feel when you’re in the diner. When Dr. MLK, Jr. was assassinated, there was unrest in the neighborhood. Tom’s had no security gate, and neighbors (of all races according to reports [and the owner at the time]) locked arms and formed a human chain around the restaurant to protect it from damage.
See also this obit of Gus Vlahavas[1], the former owner of Tom’s, who was a face I saw almost every Saturday morning in my early twenties when I lived in the neighborhood.
So anyway, that’s my diner spiel. Tom’s is a pretty famous diner with a lot of history, but there are countless others like it in NYC.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/nyregion/gus-vlahavas-own...
Think wilted salads with pancake syrup as the dressing (what... the...).
As far as Diners go though, I’m yet to travel somewhere in the US that lacks a good one. 24 hour operating hours is a very LA/NY thing. I’m sure they’re in SF, Chicago, etc but I haven’t spent enough time in those locales to know. Otherwise I’ve had a lot of variable quality food from 24 hour truck stops.
Maybe the best was a 24 hour sea food oriented spot in the middle of nowhere Indiana.
The worst was the Fosters Freeze on the 10, smack dab in the middle of the LA to Phoenix stretch. Simply horrible.
The second question people could answer is, “_Why_ are there ‘NYC diners’?” The answer to _this_ question is the real reason why people are so fond of diners and claim they’re unique to NYC. NYC-style diners thrive in the unique-to-NYC combo of...
- true 24-hour foot traffic from the city’s “never sleeps” thing, cars being impractical, and its massive 24-hour (lol, mostly) metro system
- an economy that supports individual-owned quirky businesses (for now!) with decades of history
- people having to leave their tiny apartments in order not to go mad, so you find more people from all backgrounds using the same few public spaces to relax, and more of these random communities of “regulars” built around nothing other than a shared space
- you can be almost whatever you want here and no one will stop you, so we accumulate more glorious eccentrics than elsewhere, and our diners fill up with legendary, cherished characters
- you’re often anonymous and lonely here so some people get into the habit of quick intimacy with strangers
As the article mentioned, diners are dying out a little in Manhattan. This because it’s getting harder to run a small business here (taxes/expenses/rent), and people might just stay home and watch Netflix to relax rather than go out, among other reasons...
But diner fanatics are usually just NYC lovers. I can’t imagine who would love diners but hate the city.
i'd bet those sausages come from a particular supplier somewhere on Long Island and get sold to many diners in NYC, and that's why they are so distinctive.
this is definitely true of the rolls used for the classic sausage-egg-and-cheese-on-a-roll. like, yes, I can buy a breakfast sandwich anywhere in the US, but it will be noticeably different from the New York version, and the New York version will be pretty consistent across many independent bodegas because the ingredients are the same.
Mexican street tacos are not vegan but they are delicious. How is eating terrible diner food tasty as opposed to a cultural experience (which I buy)?
Someone in this thread mentioned bottomless coffee. I too enjoy that experience but as a coffee lover I won’t pretend that diner coffee is actually good.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/172/24-hours-at-the-golden-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/arts/television/chris-har...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/saying-f...
Small and basically meaningless point, but Katz's is not a diner.
I was expecting something more than text and images?