“Say sugar, you got a match?” Humphrey Bogart asks the diner waitress in The Big Sleep, while Lauren Bacall waits for him on the other end of the coin telephone.
I could not have been happier to discover that The Grand Canyon, my former Park Slope home away from home, was open for a take-out cup of coffee this afternoon. And when I walked in, who should I see but Cesar, my waiter from Clarke’s, in Brooklyn Heights, where I ate weekly when I worked at Plymouth Church School.
The following is from an essay I’ve been working on about the New York diner.
“I had a pastrami and fries,” the woman wearing a heavy coat in Eisenberg’s told the girl at the register. Uptown, at Burger Heaven, which closed this week, after 77 years at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 62nd Street, perhaps the culprit was Sweetgreen’s Tingly Sweet Potato Kelp Bowl but downtown, at Eisenberg’s, which has been “raising New York’s cholesterol since 1929” a pastrami and fries wasn’t threatening anyone’s lunchtime routine.
As a child growing up in 1970s Yorkville, the corner diner was part of my DNA; I grew up in one -- Gracie’s Corner, on 86th Street and First Avenue. My mother worked in the Russian typing pool at the United Nations three weeks a month during the days, and one week a month at night. Wanting to make sure my dad and I had a hot meal in case she hadn’t cooked for one of those night shift evenings, she set up an “account” at Gracie’s, where we could eat now and pay later.
For years Spyros, the manager, in that “everybody-knows-your-name” manner served me cheeseburger deluxes and Cokes. My dad always ordered lamb chops with cheesecake and coffee for dessert. And my friends loved coming to my house after school because it meant they got a free meal at Gracie’s. Because it was on the corner, there was great “people watching.” Children and their parents, owners and their dogs, and the usual Yorkville characters, were all part of the local parade. The best table, and the largest, was the one right on the corner, which gave you a view of both 86th Street and First Avenue. I recently ate at Gracie’s, which has moved to the corner of Second and 86th, having taken over the old Viand coffee shop space. As I sat in the sunny corner window, and read my paper, I watched the customers come out of another venerable Yorkville institution, Schaller & Weber. My smiling waiter asked, “You want more decaf?” “Can I get you some mustard or mayonnaise for your burger?” “Here. Let me help you,” he said to an older man who tried to maneuver his walker through the front door.
Gracie’s was just one of so many diners that fed New Yorkers when I was growing up. Burger Heaven was another one. This was the fuel stop before a shopping trip to Bloomingdale’s, two blocks away, where my mother bought my clothing and purchased fabric for sewing. Burger Heaven was also located on a corner, which was brighter and sunnier than 86th and First because the surrounding buildings were no more than four floors in height. The majority of the tables were along the window that faced 62nd Street, with its beautiful brownstones. Here I did less people watching and more fantasizing about who lived in these historic buildings and what they looked like on the inside. Burger Heaven also had a fabulous literary allusion: it served as the “office” where lawyer Mr. O’Shaughnessy met it-girl Holly Golightly regarding her “arrangement” with Sally Tomato in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
And if you wanted to see the swells, such as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and her son John-John play with the salt-and-pepper shakers, you could drop by Burger Heaven’s sister, on 53rd, off Fifth, which was nestled in the shadow of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A particular feature at the 53rd Street location was the high-school-like wooden flip-up tray that was attached to each individual seat, in keeping with the diner’s sleek modernity, speed and ease of use.
The Viand’s other location, on Madison and 78th Street, was special because it was where my father always took me on his days off from his job at the Queensborough Public Library. He would pick me up at school, around the corner, and have his coffee and cheesecake while I munched on my French fries and sipped steaming hot chocolate.
In middle school I began doing research at the Mid-Manhattan Library and discovered the Chock Full O’ Nuts on Madison and 41st. Although it was a chain and not a mom-and-pop operation, it could not have been more fun to sit at the curvy counter and order a tuna fish sandwich and a Coke.
Many a high school coffee (and French fries, of course) were consumed at Three Star, on 86th and Columbus.. Diners, or coffee shops, as they are often called in New York City, were so ubiquitous in the ‘70s that there was another one right across 86th Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam. Then there was Big Nicks, where my friends and I consumed one of the many burgers – there were over thirty varieties –they were known for. A side note is that this was the era of Barry Levinson’s absolutely pitch-perfect “you-gonna-finish-that-sandwich?” Diner, about a group of high school friends in 1950s Baltimore.
One summer in high school, a friend and I auditioned for an acting class at HB Studios on Bank Street. The venerable Herbert Berghoff, for whom the school was named, was alive and well and at the helm of a hard-to-get-into class that I was surprisingly accepted into. Around the corner from HB was the down-and-out Bus Stop café, so named because of the Marilyn Monroe film of the same name, and the fact that the M11 bus concluded its Ninth Avenue run at the café corner, Hudson and Bethune. And just up Eighth Avenue was the equally marvelous LaBonbonniere, a narrow little space now made famous as an occasional setting for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
When I graduated from college and worked at Random House there was a beautiful moment when there was still a lunch counter at a drug store on Lexington and 50th, as well as the glorious Automat, with its dolphin-spouting coffee urns, on 42nd Street and Third. Fancying myself a big girl with a real job in the city, I envisioned eating at either of these establishments on a weekly basis.
For the several years I worked at Pratt Institute as a writing tutor I found myself at Mike’s, the corner diner on DeKalb and Hall. I still stop there on my way to a teaching job I currently have in Bushwick.
Years later I worked in Brooklyn Heights and treated myself, once a week, to a turkey burger deluxe at Clark’s, again on a corner, this one Henry and Clark. I would sit at the counter, have my coffee, while I waited for my order, which by this point my extended family at Clark’s -- Cesar and Miguel -- already knew. I would chat with the son of Victor and his wife, the older couple who ran Clark’s. Up until fairly recently, Victor’s wife was still answering phones and taking orders.
I will always have a soft spot for the Lexington Candy Shop, where they still have accounts for the local school kids and there’s a photo of, among others, Robert Redford in his prime, around the time of The Sting. In fact, the Candy Shop was where he grabbed a sandwich only to report back to work in the neighborhood and find his whole office “taken out” in Three Days of the Condor.
Then there was, and thank God still is, the Waverly, on Sixth Avenue in the Village, where my husband and I began one new year speaking with Nick, the manager. “Ekberg! I call you Anita Ekberg!” he proudly proclaimed before handing us our bill.
These experiences don’t take place in chain establishments where no one knows your name. It is exactly this fact, that you may be a regular and that your order is already etched in the mind of the server, that makes the New York diner such a special place. This is where your extended family is, indeed the “bedrock of your community” as the New York Diner Map attests.
This dandy little map, which must by now list many more diner casualties, relates the history of these working-class eateries, which are descended from the food wagons that sold sandwiches to late-shift factory-, newspaper-, and dock-workers in the late 1800s. Workers began asking for hot meals and eventually the dining car, which resembled an old railroad car and had a full-service kitchen, was born. Just like the Star Diner, in White Plains, where my husband and I ate when we were in college. As the diners evolved through the twentieth century, they developed a clean modern style that promised modernity before the advent of McDonalds. One of the reasons I have always loved diners is that they cook real food served on real dishes. Dinerware is even what I eat off at home; I have been collecting it for decades.
I now see the trajectory from late-night food wagon to Gracie’s, where my mother, an immigrant from Ukraine, made sure there was a hot meal available for my dad and I. This is a very immigrant thing, the hot meal -- no cold sandwich will do --and as I recently met a friend for my usual, a turkey burger and coffee, on a very blistery February afternoon at the Lexington Candy Shop, I was in my happy place, warm, and cozy, with a hot meal on the way.
“Give him some ham and eggs,” says The Girl, played by Veronica Lake, to the waiter.
“That’s very kind of you, sister, but I’m not hungry. A cup of coffee and a sinker will fix me up just fine,” responds masquerading hobo Joel McCrea.
This scene, from the Preston Sturges masterpiece, Sullivan’s Travels, could only take place in a diner. After all, where else would a Hollywood wannabe and a Depression-obsessed director meet?