This week, Where to Eat columnist emeritus Pete Wells has an ode to the patty melt that will send you running to one of the six New York City restaurant versions he spotlights, or the nearest diner.
Patty melts, after all, have long been the bread and butter (and caramelized onions) of the old-school diner, institutions that are in increasingly short supply in New York, but to quote “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” are “not dead yet.”
I grew up with Waffle House as my go-to diner and, for the record, I like my double hash browns smothered. Once I moved to New York, I nursed many a hangover at Tina’s Place in Bushwick, around for more than 80 years. Later I became fascinated with diners for millennials, by millennials like Golden Diner and Baby Blues Luncheonette, but I always come home to the unfussy and affordable comfort of the old school.
The New York diner in your head
I recently had one of the best patty melts of my young life on a trip to Arizona. (Should you ever find yourself in Black Canyon City, please stop by the Rock Springs Café to try it.) Before that, my most recent run-in with a patty melt was at Manhattan Diner on the Upper West Side.
I don’t recall the particulars of the patty melt — other than it being exactly what I was expecting and craving; a back-to-basics patty melt with Swiss cheese and onions on grilled rye — but Manhattan Diner is a New York diner in all its familiar glory. The menu is as long as a CVS receipt and so wide-ranging that our waiter kindly forgot about us in favor of serving customers who actually knew what they wanted. Craving calamari, pancakes, rigatoni Bolognese and an espresso martini? You can get it all here.
Plus it’s also conveniently located across the street from the Symphony Space venue, so it’s perfect for a preshow meal.
A preflight layover
Diners in proximity to someplace you need to be is always a win. For instance, if your flight is severely delayed at LaGuardia, consider a layover at Jackson Hole Diner in Astoria Heights.
Opened in the 1940s as the Airline Diner and as Jackson Hole in 1972, this low-slung, metal building ringed with a meander design in neon lights looks like it was picked out of a “Stereotypical Diners” catalog. (There’s a reason Martin Scorsese filmed part of “Goodfellas” here.) But it’s not just for show: All the diner favorites are there, plus an extensive Tex-Mex menu if you’re craving fajitas. And the Jackson Hole sundae with vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, chocolate cake, almonds and whipped cream will forever bond you with whomever you share it with.
Nothing but pancakes
Having mentioned diners worth your dollar in Manhattan and Queens, I’d like to end with an option in Brooklyn: Tom’s Restaurant in Prospect Heights. (Not to be confused with the Morningside Heights spot of the same name that inspired the Suzanne Vega song “Tom’s Diner.”)
Tom’s is a diner’s diner — cash only (there’s an A.T.M.), checkerboard tiles, vinyl booths with floral upholstery — but just modern enough to have paper straws. The menu is not varied; it’s all-day breakfast, every day, with a special focus on pancakes. Danish pancakes, silver dollar pancakes, streusel pancakes, mango walnut pancakes, sweet potato pancakes, classic pancakes. But I recommend going with the tangy lemon ricotta pancakes so spongy that you’ll question whether you even need to slather them in syrup. The answer is you definitely do — after all, the number one rule of diner culture is more is more.
What I’m into right now
Perhaps the only thing I love more than eating great food is listening to great music. This year I set a goal (not a resolution) to listen to more full-length albums and to resist the “hit singles” economy. On a recent Saturday night I played “Color Me Country,” the only album ever released by Linda Martell, one of the first Black performers to break into the mainstream country music scene and I really enjoyed it. You can give it a listen here.
