Tag Archives: Queens

The ABCs of Astoria, Queens

A is for Astoria is the best place in NYC.

B is for the Bel Aire Diner, the best diner in Astoria, and therefore, in the whole city.

C is for Christos Steakhouse, the greatest steakhouse in the history of steakhouses.

D is for Ditmars, second only to Broadway in being the most awesome thoroughfare in the borough.

E is for the everything bagel that I always get when I go to Brooklyn Bagel on Broadway.

F is for the free can of Coke that I always get when I order a combo meal at Fatima’s Halal Kitchen, the best Chinese food place on planet Earth.

G is for Gleason’s Pub, where one time, my trivia team almost finished third place. (We blew it by wagering too much on the last question.)

H is for the Hellgate Bridge. It’s so fucking cool. And it’s in Astoria.

I is for Icahn Stadium, where I saw the Warped Tour when I was in high school. It’s really close to Astoria. You just have to take the Triboro Bridge and get off before entering Manhattan or the Bronx.

J is for my friend Jim, he lives on 36th Street in between Broadway and 31st Ave. He has this ridiculous setup in his apartment with a gigantic projection screen and an XBOX Kinect. We have so much fun playing video games together. Hey Jim, if you’re reading this, what’s up man? You want to play some DDR later tonight? (If you don’t have plans already, that is.)

K is for Kans, a sports bar on Steinway. It’s OK … just OK.

L is for Loukaniko, some sort of a Greek sausage. They have it all over Astoria. It’s awesome.

M is for Manhattan, currently in a four-way tie for second-best borough in New York City. (A distant second, I might add.)

N is for the N train, which takes you to Astoria.

O is for Omonia, the bakery that made the wedding cake for the box office hit, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

P is for Passion Hair and Nails on Broadway, where they just raised the price of a men’s haircut from ten to twelve dollars. (It’s cool. I still love them.)

Q is for the Q train, which also takes you to Astoria. (Just not late night or on the weekends.)

R is for the R train, which has several Astoria stops. It’s also for the Rite-Aid on Broadway and 21st, which just had a massive renovation, and is now open 24 hours.

S is for Socrates Sculpture Park, where one time I let my dog off his leash, and he started terrorizing some neighborhood kids. A park guy came up to me and was like, “Hey man! Get your dog under control!” and I was like, “What do you mean? I thought this was a leash-free park!” and he was like, “Nah man, not until nine. Either before nine or after nine,” and I was like, “Isn’t it always technically either before nine or after nine?” and then he just got really pissed off.

T is for the taco truck on Broadway and 36th Street. The best tacos in North America.

U is for Uncle George (RIP.)

V is for the V train (RIP.)

W is for the W train (RIP.)

X is for X-Men: Days of Future Past, which I saw at the Regal Theaters on 38th Street in Astoria, the best movie theater in the city.

Y is for Your favorite neighborhood in the city, Astoria.

Z is for Zenon Taverna (I’m not sure if it’s spelled with a Z or an X, but you pronounce it Zenon Taverna.)

6 things only people from Queens will understand

When I say that I’m from Queens, what I really mean is, I grew up on Long Island, and moved to Astoria right after college. That’s the same as being from Queens, right? Anybody? Listen, Queens is like the number one immigrant destination in the country. And so, technically, yes, I can say I’m from Queens, just like my neighbors from Lahore can say that they’re from Queens too. My journey just happened to lack all of that hardship and sacrifice. Yeah, I guess mine wasn’t really much of a journey. I think my dad drove in with the minivan to help move the mattress to my first apartment.

But come on. Long Island’s not that far away. And do I really have to get out the map? Queens, Long Island, even Brooklyn, it’s all the same geographical landmass. I’m not even kidding, one time I rode my bike from my place in Queens to my parents’ house on Long Island. It didn’t even take that much more than an hour. Also, Queens is huge. It’s the biggest borough. Like once you get past where the subways don’t run anymore, those outer Queens neighborhoods are virtually identical to where I grew up. Some of them are even much nicer (I’m looking at you, Douglaston.)

So whatever, call me a poser, but here are 6 things only people from Queens will understand.

Diversity

OK, maybe you don’t have to be from Queens to understand diversity, but our borough is like a modern day Ellis Island. You know, without the typhoid quarantine rooms and forced name-changing registration books. OK, look, I went to an all-boys Catholic high school (on Long Island) where only about ten out of the sixteen hundred students weren’t white. So I can appreciate how any comments about diversity coming out of my mouth tend to sound straight out an after-school-special. But for real, Queens is one of the most ethnically diverse places in the country.

And I’m not just talking about all the different restaurants available to deliver take-out. (Although, from Filipino fast-food chains to the best falafel in New York, we’ve got basically every food group covered.) I’m talking about people with backgrounds from all over world living together in this multicultural ethnic tapestry. Sure, that sounds cheesy as hell, but it’s true. In Queens, different communities oftentimes exist occupying the same exact space. The result, I think, is the truest example of America as a melting pot.

Wait, where?

In Queens. What, you’re lost? Well, nobody really gets lost anymore, not since everybody started carrying around their own personal GPS inside their pockets. But even if you do know where you’re going, if you’re going to get lost anywhere in modern America, it’s probably going to be in Queens.

Don’t believe me? I live on 31^st Drive. The next street over is 31^st Road. After that it’s 31^st Avenue. Confusing? Yeah. I get rings on my doorbell all the time, delivery guys that can’t tell if it was me that ordered food or one of my almost identically addressed counterparts. Apparently there’s supposed to be some order behind what looks like chaos, although you might need an advanced degree in urban planning in order to figure out the system. Just don’t get discouraged if you can’t find your way around Queens. In addition to Roads, Avenues, and Drives, there are Crescents, Terraces, Streets, Places and Lanes. Take solace in the fact that you’re hardly the first person to get totally lost meeting a friend at 60^th and 60^th.

No, seriously, where? Is that a hyphen?

Oh yeah, and to make things just a little more confusing, all of the street addresses are two sets of numbers separated by a hyphen. Nothing says going to Queens quite like typing in a bunch of hyphenated numerals into your maps app followed by, “Sorry, we couldn’t find that address. Did you mean …” No, I meant it like I wrote it. It’s the same with online delivery. “We are unable to verify your address. Send anyway?” Come on, you can’t figure out how to incorporate a dash into an online address form?

There’s actually a good reason for the hyphen. It’s supposed to serve as a small clue to help you get a little closer to figuring out where you’re going. So if you’re address is, let’s say, 12-34 32^nd Street, then the second part, that 34, tells you that the cross street is 34^th Avenue. In theory, this is great. It gets a little complicated though when, say, then next avenue after 34^th Ave. is Broadway, and then it picks up again with 31^st. In that case, I think they just make up a random number, at least to maintain the continuity of the hyphen.

Shea Stadium was cooler

Yes, it was a dump. But it was our dump. Have the Mets won any World Series since they moved to Citibank Field? I’m not saying it’s a direct causal relationship, but it’s hard to ignore such striking evidence. And why did Citibank get to take over the Mets? How come the Yankees got to keep their stadium as simply Yankee Stadium while we have to suffer the indignity of the corporate branding? Does anybody else feel a little dirty saying “Pepsi Porch?”

Shea Stadium was awesome. The post-modern ruins of the World’s Fair, that giant metal globe at Corona Park, that other stadium across the way where they play tennis once a year, all of it capped off by those huge neon baseball player silhouettes that lined the perimeter of Shea. I don’t know, maybe Citi Field will grow on me in like twenty or thirty years, but every time I see that logo, all I think is, “Sorry we almost ruined the economy. Thanks for selling us the Mets.”

Does that Wendy’s Look Familiar?

The one that was on Queens Boulevard, don’t you feel like you’ve seen it somewhere? Maybe a classic 1980s comedy? Yep, that was it, the McDowell’s from Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America. Unfortunately, they tore it down in 2013 to make room for some ultra luxury condo or something. I always ride my bike to and from work across the Queensboro Bridge, and once in a while I’d stay on the bike lane to Queens Boulevard. I’d ride to Wendy’s, thinking about asking for a manager and saying something like, “When you think of garbage, think of Akeem!”

But I never made it inside. I’d always get too tempted by the White Castle just down the block. There used to be a White Castle right across from where I live by 21^st Street. But one day I went to get a Crave Case and there was a sign on the door: “Sorry! We’re closing down! Visit us at Queens Boulevard!” I was so pissed, but a little hopeful. I thought, man, if they got White Castle to close up shop, there must be something really amazing coming to take its place. And I waited and watched as construction crews came and did all of this work behind taped-up windows. And then one day, finally, the big reveal: a Radio Shack. I’ve never been more disappointed in my life. Honestly, in like two years since it’s been in business, I’ve never any customers inside. I have no idea how they’re turning a profit. White Castle, on the other hand, had a line out the door, twenty-four hours a day. They even had a pedestrian drive-thru on the outside, for those times where you really wanted White Castle, but just didn’t feel like going all the way inside.

6. Queens is the best

I got off topic a little, but Queens is great. It’s the greatest borough in the city. If I had to rank all five boroughs, I’d start with Queens as number one, obviously, and then I’d get so bored thinking about all of the other boroughs, like Staten Island, or Brooklyn, and I’d just give up, because who cares? Let them all be tied for a very, very distant second place.

Really, it doesn’t matter. Queens is number one. Did I mention that it’s the biggest borough? I read that in some statistic somewhere. There were actually two statistics, one of them said biggest per capita, and the other said biggest geographically. And now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t remember which one applied to Queens. The other one was the Bronx. Whatever, let’s just say that Queens is the biggest. It’s the best, and the biggest. If you’re from Queens, you know just what I’m talking about. And if you’re from Long Island and now you’re living in Queens, then you totally know even more, exactly what I’m talking about.

Originally published on Thought Catalog

You’re not supposed to hang out on the stairs

I was taking the train a couple of weeks ago. Where I live, the subway is aboveground, so if you want to take a ride, you’ve got to walk up these two flights of stairs to get to the platform. And exactly halfway up, I ran into my old friend Greg, he was coming down the opposite direction, man, I hadn’t seen him in probably like five years, maybe longer. We caught each other’s eyes right away and stopped to say hi.

A lot of the time it’s a pain to have to stop and say hello to someone when you’re just trying to go about your day. But this was different, Greg used to be a pretty good friend, at least for me, this wasn’t your typical “hey how’s it going,” I mean, maybe it was a chore for him, but if it was, he was doing a good job of not letting me know it, trying his best to seem genuinely pleased to see me.

But after maybe fifteen seconds of pleasantries, right after we got the “It’s been such a long time!” automatic intro sentences out of the way, but right before we could really get into any specific “Where are you living these days?” advanced conversation points, this MTA employee comes up from behind me and gives us this really curt, “Listen, you guys can’t congregate on the stairs, OK, you’ve got to move.”

And yes, it wasn’t the ideal spot to catch up with an old friend, but it wasn’t super crowded, and we both made sure to move as far to the side of the staircase as possible. People were going around us. I’m very aware of whether or not I’m causing a traffic jam, and this was definitely not at all impeding the flow of foot speed.

So I kind of motioned to the MTA employee, like I didn’t say anything to him directly, but I made eye contact, I nodded, and then I looked back toward Greg with renewed urgency, like, yes, let’s continue what we’re doing here, but let’s maybe speed it up a little bit, because we are on the stairs, we can’t very well stand here for too much longer.

But the MTA guy wouldn’t have it, he wouldn’t even let Greg and me get in another back-and-forth, I was just about to ask what he was up to these days, but this guy shouts, “Look, I can’t let you just hang out here. OK, you either have to up the stairs, or you have to go down the stairs, but you can’t just stand here on the stairs.”

And I instantly got kind of annoyed, like yes, I know that we shouldn’t be standing here, but this is where this conversation happened to take place, OK, it’s not like I was like, hey, Greg, do you want to get together this afternoon to catch up? Yeah, great, meet me at the Broadway stop of the N train, the Northwest staircase, about halfway up.

Also, I resented this guy’s message, like, here, let me spell it out for you, let me give you one of these long detailed overly worded I’m-in-charge ways of communicating to you what could easily be said in three or four words. So I turned around, I looked this guy in the eye and I said, “Thank you,” while trying not to appear visibly pissed off, like I tried to smile, and I hoped to get the message across that, OK man, I hear you, we hear you, but thank you, now please go back to doing whatever else it was that you were doing before you came over here to start vigorously enforcing the no-standing-on-the-staircase rules.

So Greg and I kind of continued talking, but it was only like a word, maybe two words, because the MTA guy in his orange neon MTA worker’s vest was not having it. “Gentlemen,” he interrupted. And now I thought, OK, this guy’s not going to let up, maybe we should move? But where? Was I going to go all the way back down the stairs? Because Greg didn’t look like he was willing to walk all the way back up. What if one of us made that effort and then the conversation fizzled out? What if it turned out to be nothing more than a heavy initial dose of nostalgia before we both realized, wait a second, there’s a reason I haven’t seen this person in years, it’s because whatever it was that we had in common wasn’t strong enough to sustain a lasting friendship?

And this got me even more annoyed, like what the hell man, you can’t just let two people run into each other and say hi? Can’t you just take a hint? OK? I took your hint, right, you don’t want us standing here anymore. Hint taken. Can you now take my hint and leave us the fuck alone? Just for like a minute? How long do you really think we’re going to stand here? Is it that important to you that we move right this second?

And so I turned my attention from Greg toward the MTA guy, I started giving him the business, throwing out stuff like, “Why don’t you just back off, all right?” and more stuff like, “You’re not a cop, OK? You want to call the cops? Call the cops, because the last time I checked, MTA guys don’t really have too much in the way of actual authority.”

Which, I don’t know what I was going for here, it was a pure reaction. If I was thinking that my display of defiance might have somehow bought Greg and me a little more one-on-one time, I was wrong. Because even though this MTA guy might not have had any actual enforcement abilities, he was still wearing that vest, he still had a few non-arresting powers at his disposal.

Like getting-in-my-face powers, asking me if I was aware that threatening an MTA employee was a felony offense. “Who’s threatening? I’m not threatening?” I shot back with my hands in the air.

At this point Greg started heading down the stairs, “All right man, it was great to see you. Let’s catch up soon!” and I thought about going down with him, continuing the conversation at on the sidewalk, but that was it, the goodbye was said. And would our forced continued discussion be required to talk about the sort-of argument I had just engaged in with this total stranger?

Yeah, that conversation was over, I’d probably never see Greg again, not that it really mattered, not really. I was already feeling that nostalgia buzz start to die down somewhat. And then it was just me and the MTA guy, he was just staring at me, sort of smiling, like, ha, there goes your friend. I just turned and headed upstairs, muttering, “Asshole,” under my breath.

“What was that?” he screamed out after me, I guess I muttered it a little louder than I thought. But just as I considered saying something else, I realized, no, I muttered that exactly as loud as I had intended, just loud enough for him to hear me say it, and now I’ll just slip back into the background of the city, paying no attention to this crazy guy in an orange vest yelling up at some other guy already disappearing into a crowd of people waiting for the N train.

30 awesome things to do in Astoria, Queens

1. Hanging out at my friend Bill’s place, drinking beer and playing Call of Duty online multiplayer until like two in the morning.

2. At like two or two-thirty, throwing out the question, “Do you want to get something to eat?” before opening up the Seamless App and realizing that all of the restaurants that you want to buy food from closed at like ten.

3. Remembering, wait a second, Bel Aire diner on 21st Street is open 24 hours. Let’s just order from there.

4. You realize that you really want a burger and fries, but doesn’t diner food always taste a little weird in a take-out container? Not weird, bad necessarily, but not great, not like sitting at the diner, getting a fresh burger. It’s the fries, yeah, they’ve got to be crisp. They can’t sit there steaming in a to-go container, everything gets all soggy. Rhe lettuce and tomato on the burger, that gets soggy too. You guys are really stoned and this food should at least hit some of the right buttons.

5. Bill says, “Let’s just go to the diner. I mean, it’s open all night.” And you’re like, “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s do it.”

6. And then you sit around for like two more hours, playing some more video games, but your fingers hurt, you’ve lost that video game spark, and you’re just kind of mindlessly moving through the maps, not really making any contribution to the team kill count, passing Bill’s little pipe back and forth.

7. It’s the same with the pot. It’s like, smoke all you want, at this point in the night it’s not doing anything, you’re not getting any higher. It’s just making that metallic taste in the sides of your mouth more pronounced.

8. You’re like, “Hey Bill, weren’t we going to go to the diner?”

9. And at this point, you don’t even want to go anymore. It’s close to four-thirty, the sooner you get to bed, the sooner you can get up tomorrow and start nursing that buzzing hangover already starting to give birth at the sides of your head, the one that’ll insist on you streaming all of your favorite Netflix shows while you lie stunned on the couch, while simultaneously making it impossible to really absorb or digest what’s happening on screen. So while yes, you’ll technically be able to say you watched all of House of Cards season two, you won’t really remember what happened, or who did what, and when everyone talks about it at work, you’ll just try your best not to look confused.

10. But Bill is finally like, “Nah man, we’re going. Let’s go.” And he gets his coat on and you’re like, OK, I guess we’re going.

11. Bel Aire diner is much farther away than you remember, and it’s always pretty depressing walking this west of Broadway past one or two in the morning. That buzz of life and activity that defines your mental definition of Astoria, you question whether it ever existed in the first place as you gaze out at the desolate parking lot on the corner of 21st and Broadway, the Rite Aid, the Post Office. What happened to the White Castle?

12. But you go inside and, seriously, you didn’t expect it to be this crowded. Where are all of these people coming from? Why doesn’t anybody else look as dead as you feel on the inside right now?

13. They seat you right away and, even though you knew you just wanted a burger, this menu is huge, and maybe you want a milkshake, or a waffle, or some fried calamari.

14. You ask the waiter for just another minute, and he disappears for twenty. Actually getting food feels like an eternity. You have all the time in the world to mull over what you’ll order.

15. And when the waiter finally shows back up, you surprise even yourself when the words, “I’ll have a Monte Christo please, and a Coke,” come out of your mouth.

16. When Bill says, “What’s the Monte Christo?” you don’t even remember, and the waiter already took the menu away, but it must have looked really tasty.

17. And while the walking to the diner took forever, and the ordering took half a lifetime, the food shows up two and a half minutes later. It’s the Monte Christo. It’s French toasted challah topped with hot turkey and ham covered in melted Swiss. The waiter gives you a little monkey dish of butter and maple syrup, again, you had no idea, but you think, whatever man, he gave it to me for a reason.

18. And then you blink and you’re walking out of the diner, only having the vaguest idea of having devoured something delicious, the corners of your lips coated with the residual stick of mapley deliciousness.

19. And then you blink again and you’re back at your place, you’re lying in your bed trying to go to sleep but, even though you couldn’t keep your eyes open toward the end of the night at Bill’s, now everything’s kind of buzzing. But it’s not a buzz, buzzing, it’s like just enough of a buzz to keep you up. And the sun’s starting to come up and that’s not helping you drift off either. All you’re thinking about is how you overdid it, how you were looking so forward to this weekend but now it’s over, and tomorrow’s shot, and maybe some of Monday too.

20. You wake up in the morning and the hangover is soul shattering.

21. There’s nothing in the fridge. You place a takeout order to Brooklyn Bagel, and the guy has you on hold for like fifteen minutes. You know that this is only the tip of the waiting-around iceberg here. You’re on the phone, lying in your own misery, while the rest of Astoria is out and about, they’re all awake, they’re all currently standing on line at Brooklyn Bagel. They take the priority, OK, take out calls for lazy assholes too hungover to put on a pair of pants, they’ve got to wait.

22. You order your two everything bagels with bacon egg and cheddar, you’re half gallon of Tropicana Some Pulp OJ, and no, you’re not being obnoxiously over-specific, it’s the take out guy. Everything you order has at least two or three follow-up questions. Cheese: what kind? OJ: what size? How much pulp?

23. And what time is it anyway? Twelve-thirty? That’s actually not too bad. Maybe some of Sunday night can still be salvaged here. I mean, it’s still kind of late. You’re not going to go running in Astoria Park or anything, but maybe drinks later at The Strand? I’m just saying, it’s not like it’s three, or four. Twelve-thirty, you can still get breakfast at twelve-thirty.

24. And then the food finally shows up, you hadn’t anticipated the shame of having to confront another human being in your current state, really hung over, disheveled, desperate for food. All while this other person is, what, he’s on a bike delivering the food that you couldn’t get yourself to get dressed and wait on line for like everyone else? Maybe if you just give him a big tip, like a seven or eight dollar tip, maybe he won’t think you’re such a loser. He must party every once in a while, right? You guys are just on different schedules. Just like an eight or nine dollar tip.

25. The food, it’s great, but it’s just like your grandmother always said when you were a little kid, that thing about your eyes being bigger than your stomach. Because yeah, you were really hungry, and sure, two bagels seemed like a good idea at a time. But two bites into that second sandwich and it’s obvious the extra money that you’ve wasted. Maybe you’ll eat it later, but probably not. More than likely it’s going to sit there for the rest of the day, a cautionary tale, a reminder when you go to order dinner that, hey man, just take it easy OK? Maybe you only need four tacos from Los Portales, OK, not eight. That’s just excessive.

26. And when Bill calls you up at four and you’re like, “Bill, did you just get up?” and he’s like, “Yeah man, when did you get up?” you don’t have to be honest, you can just say that you don’t remember. But take a look, OK, that’s a guy who doesn’t have his shit together, OK, you can’t sleep until four in the afternoon, man, this isn’t college, all right, this shit isn’t cute when you’re almost thirty.

27. You’re starting to feel better about yourself, but you remember all of that pot Bill bought yesterday, how you guys barely made a dent last night, even though you just kept smoking, over and over again, you can still feel it on the back of your throat.

28. “Hey Bill, you want to get together and watch some House of Cards?”

29. “Yeah man, I’ve still got all of that pot. You want to grab some beers and come over?”

30. Bingo. And then you head over to Bill’s for a nice, easy Sunday. Nothing crazy, nothing like last night. Maybe just Corona, you know, nothing crazy. And bring the bagel. Someone’ll eat it. Just enjoy it man, you’re still young, just put on a clean pair of pants and go to Bill’s. And fucking House of Cards man, that show is the fucking best, you gotta savor that shit, because you know you’re going to blow through, if not all thirteen episodes, at least six, at least a solid six or seven hours of once-a-year, quality TV.

California burger, medium

I was having lunch with one of my friends at a nearby diner here in Queens. Although I probably eat here once a week at the minimum, it’s not like I’m all that familiar with this particular menu. But I’ve grown up eating at diners, I worked at a diner all throughout high school and college, and so I’m super familiar with the New York diner menu in general. Sure, if you look closely enough, the brushstrokes might go in the occasionally different direction, but if you’re just browsing from a casual distance, it’s almost exactly the same anywhere you go.

“What are you getting?” my friend asked.

“The California burger,” I told him without even looking at the menu. I go to a diner, I don’t want to look at the menu. All it’s going to do is signal to the waitress that I don’t know what I’m doing, like I need a few minutes or something. I don’t need a few minutes.

“That sounds pretty good,” my friend said, “I think I’m going to get that too.”

The waitress came over, “Hey guys. Can I start you off with anything to drink?”

I don’t need you start me off with anything to drink. I’m ready to give you everything. Don’t worry about my friend still looking at the menu. He’s ready too. I’m not going to ask him, I’m just going to go ahead and let you know that, we’re both ready, we’ll give you the whole thing right now.

“I think we’re ready,” I told the waitress, “I’ll take the California burger, deluxe, I’ll have it medium, waffle fries, and can I get a Coke? Please? Thank you.”

“And for you?” She asked my friend.

“I’ll also have the California burger. Medium-rare …”

Big mistake. I’m not going to say anything, of course, I don’t want to come across as being too pushy, especially since I may have rushed the ordering process a little bit. But, and I get it here, I really do, usually medium-rare is the way to go. You’re eating at a steak place, medium-rare definitely. A specialty burger restaurant? Again, anything about medium-rare and you’re just wasting your money.

But at a diner, or diners in the tri-state area anyway, medium’s always your best bet. Chances are the burgers are frozen, which, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I actually like the taste of frozen beef patties, but I’d prefer to give the whole thing at least a little bit of time to come down in temperature.

Plus, and this is in no way trying to disrespect the staff, but think about the guy working the grill. Think about all of the other burgers he’s trying to cook at the same time. Everybody that goes to a diner, everybody orders medium. So he’s got a whole section of his grill dedicated to cooking medium burgers. He’s got it down to a science. But then a new ticket comes in the window. “Order in!” the waitress calls out, and instead of the standard “M” circled next to the order, it’s “MR.” The grill guy thinks, OK, I got this. Medium-rare. And he tries, he really tries. But he’s trying a little too hard. He’s out of his element.

Just … just trust me. You go to a diner, you order a burger medium. Anything under, you’re going to want to save a little bite to send out to a lab once you start getting sick later that day. Anything above, well, I hope you like eating hockey pucks.

“You want that deluxe?” the waitress was still here, it was apparent that my friend didn’t have this down to the science that I did.

“Yeah … regular fries please.”

Regular fries. Man, who goes to a diner and gets regular fries? There’s a reason that they charge you fifty cents extra for waffle fries. Because they’re fifty cents more delicious. Seriously, regular fries are just that, regular. They look like they’ll be pretty tasty, but once you take that first bite, it’s obvious that these things aren’t even a tenth as good as their identical looking cousins from McDonald’s. No, for whatever reason, despite all of the things diners do right, diner fries are never up to par. They’re not salty enough, they’re dry in the middle, you need at least a bottle and a half of ketchup to get through one order.

You’ve got to go with the waffle fries. Or onion rings. But onion rings are a distant second place. Waffle fries are what diners do right. You don’t even need ketchup. I mean, if you wanted to lightly coat the end of one waffle fry just to capture a little essence of tomato, go ahead, that couldn’t hurt. But it’s unnecessary. Diner waffle fries are fantastic, a treat in and of themselves. And for only fifty cents? Please, I’d gladly pay two, two-fifty extra for waffle fries.

“Here you go boys, enjoy,” the waitress said as she placed the burgers on the table. “I’ll be right back with another Coke for you,” she nailed it, I didn’t even have to ask.

For whatever reason, diner burgers are always served open face, and so it took me fifteen seconds or so to balance all of the toppings on top of the meat and close everything shut. I picked the whole thing up in my hands, studied from which angle I’d attack my lunch, and took a first bite. It was perfect. Juicy. Delicious. I wasn’t really surprised, that’s what I love most about diners, the consistency, their almost inability to screw up a burger and fries. But while I was lost in the flavor of meat and bread, my friend interrupted my feeding.

“Wasn’t there supposed to be avocado? Cheese?” he hadn’t even touched his food yet. He was kind of just looking around it, peering under the toppings, giving my burger sideways glances, trying to see if our meals were identical.

“Oh yeah,” I told him, “You’re thinking of a restaurant California burger. This is a diner California burger: lettuce, tomato, raw onion, and mayo.”

It didn’t even occur to me that he wouldn’t have known the difference, and yeah, when I heard him fumble with the medium-rare and the regular fries, I guess I should’ve known to give him a little heads up about what exactly constitutes a diner California burger. Because yes, he was right, kind of. If you to a restaurant, especially one of these cool artisanal craft burger spots, a California burger most always comes with avocado, some sort of jack cheese, a specialty sauce, like an aioli or a sriracha infused mayo. Yeah, now that I was really thinking about it, that’s what it’s like at the restaurant where I work, it’s the California burger, it’s topped with organic arugula or something like that.

But diner burgers are different than restaurant burgers. I’m not saying that it’s better or worse, but there’s a parallel menu system that defines what you’re going to get when you order at a diner. And this is especially true regarding the burger section. I don’t know how it happened or from where it originated, but all diners have pretty much the same exact burger section. Even though these operations are individually owned and managed, it’s like they must have had their menus inspired from the same source.

Like a Texan burger. Without being as familiar as I am with the diner menu, what sort of toppings and sauces come to your mind just from hearing the words Texan burger? Maybe some tangy barbeque sauce? Nope, that’s the barbeque burger. Smoked cheese? No, that’s a Vermont burger. Or maybe it’s topped with chili? Chili burger. Spicy peppers? Mexican burger.

A Texan burger is a regular burger with a fried egg on top. That’s it. Welcome to Texas. Yee-haw. Or the London burger, served on an English muffin with a slice of raw onion. I don’t really know any British people, but this is exactly how I imagine them to eat their hamburgers. My favorite is the Twin burger. No, it’s not a double burger, that is, one burger made with two patties, but it’s two individual hamburgers served on one plate. Why order two burgers when you can just order one twin burger? It’s genius.

Maybe none of this makes any sense, maybe you haven’t been to too many New York diners. But like I said, I’m intimately familiar with the thick-as-a-phonebook diner menu, I have a deep understanding of that whole page of burgers, there’s got to be at least fifty choices. And yeah, I don’t have an explanation as to what exactly is so California about a regular burger with lettuce, tomato, onions and mayo, but that’s what it is, that’s the California burger. If you wanted something with avocado and cheese, you probably should have ordered a Santa Fe burger without the sautéed peppers and onions.

As soon as I took my last bite, a busboy materialized out of thin air to take my plate away. The waitress was right behind with check in hand, “Anything else today?” as she dropped it on the table, not a question, a formality really, a nice way of saying, “Thank you, please leave.”

I looked at my friend’s plate. He was done, like he stopped eating, but there were a bunch of toppings that had spilled out of his burger, globs of mayo next to his half-eaten portion of regular French fries.

“That was great!” I said with a big smile to my friend as I counted out my money for the bill. Even though it was noticeable that he was a little underwhelmed with the whole diner experience, I wanted my enthusiasm to shine through, maybe he’d see it, how happy I was, that I wasn’t faking it, that I really love the diner, and maybe he wouldn’t give up hope that next time things might go better for him, that maybe he’d figure out how to order correctly.

Because that enthusiasm, the huge smile of satisfaction, it wasn’t forced, I wouldn’t have been able to stop smiling if I wanted to. Because I love diners. I could eat at a diner for every meal, every day, for the rest of my life. When I’m an old man someday and I retire, that’s all I want to do, sit in a booth, drink coffee, and order all my diner favorites. It’s like that’s where I feel most comfortable in life, at a diner. There’s seriously nothing better.