There's plenty of really good restaurants which I've loved and have closed, from glitzy cities to war zones, but one fairly normal place sticks out in my mind - a sloppy joe shack off the side of interstate 87 north of NYC in the corner of a Yonkers parking lot. The genre of classic American places where you can find ridiculous portions of very unhealthy food executed perfectly is rapidly dying out and anywhere around NYC it is practically extinct, but this place did it perfectly. My God, what could be more American than a sloppy joe shack? Eight dollars cash got you a quantity of meat, homemade french fries and toppings sufficient to feed a midsized European city for three months, and it was all done so well - brioche bun, good meat, very good homemade fries, shoved into a large cardboard box.
It's funny, because ten or twenty years ago the list of unhealthy all-American-huge-portions-done-right was a mile long wherever you'd go. You didn't even have to check the internet, you could just drive around until you found the right mix of cars outside and you'd know. Now the genre is as good as dead in large parts of the country and dying in the rest. You go into a diner and find that it's under new management by skinny hipsters and you just want to cry. It's the same ultra-processed-bullshit but now it's been rearranged by some jackoff without taste buds and downsized to fit in a teacup. I eat healthy, sane portions at home, I'm here for a reason, just give me a big pile of red-blooded-American-garbage-god-Damn-it!
If anyone else knows of any other true-American places in or near NYC, let me know :)