Whym diner

With lyrics such as "I'm feeling someone watching me, there's a woman on the outside looking inside" she paints a picture of New Yorkers separated by the thickness of a diner window. This recalls artist Edward Hopper's most famous work, Nighthawks - four people in a hour restaurant, all alone together over their nightcaps. Paradoxically, the diner is about loneliness and isolation as well as down-home hospitality. Its enigmatic charm has helped it to resist fierce competition from fast food chains.

But fans of the wayside canteen can't be complacent. They would do well to reflect on the poignant question that you hear asked over the counter of every diner: "Do you want that to go? Additional reporting by Megan Lane. American recipes from BBC chefs. Sitting in a diner, on the inside looking outside. Because restaurants have higher health standards than, well, me, Pete worries a bit about butter waste.

This is reasonable. Sean Wilsey is the son of butter tycoon Alfred Wilsey. He has his own thoughts. Of course diner butter has the associations of diners themselves, where hot food meets managed expectations, my personal definition of quotidian pleasure. My boyfriend tucked into a tuna melt cooked in that margarine on his birthday, which our waitress noted with some horror.

Therein lies the chasm of our expectations about life and life itself. It was breakfast! Everyone says it is the most important meal of the day, and if this food belongs to that meal, then—ipso facto—it must be okay. Within the boundaries of the work week, different meals take on different moods. Lunch is an efficient affair, a desk-bound salad or a brisk business meal. But breakfast is simpler. It is a meal we almost always eat in the privacy of our homes. It is a little island of contentment.

It is sweet, or it is savory, or it is whatever you want it to be. That was the unexpected and delightful discovery of our diner routine: we had managed to make a weeknight dinner out into something new. There were no expectations. No need for assessments or ratings. This once-a-week meal was intimate and ordinary and cheap. It was quiet and easy and calm, in a way that so few meals in a big city like New York feel. The magic of the diner, open 24 hours a day, the air perpetually smelling of coffee, is that it allows you to have any meal at any hour.

Once a week, in those cracked pleather booths, we managed to turn a dinner into a breakfast. Yum Yum Too Thai. Inti Peruvian Cuisine Latin American. Kausa Chicken. Poke Bowl Hawaiian.

Zurutto Ramen Japanese. Most ordered in your neighborhood. Chick-fil-A American. Pure Thai Cookhouse Chicken. Wendy's American. Noodies Thai Asian. Delivered fastest to you.