NYC’s best ‘fine diners’

We are currently in the age of the New York diner renaissance. Earlier this year, observing that millennials were transforming the traditional American diner across the city, the New York Times asked, “Can Young Chefs save the NY Diner?”

I would venture that yes, indeed they can.

20 years ago, when I moved back to New York City as an adult (more or less) and enrolled at New York University, diners sustained me. They were foreign to me (I was raised in Hong Kong and Hawai’i) and they embodied a nourishing kind of kitschy, retro Americana that was otherwise rare in NYC. Diners were places where I got to figure out for myself what American comfort food was: large portions, served on heavy ceramic dishes, disco fries, and your coffee cup refilled without you asking.

Everyone I knew back then had their go-to neighborhood diner and mine was the Neptune Diner in Astoria, where a chicken salad sandwich and a cup of soup were so large, they could sustain me for three separate meals, there were dinner mints wrapped in cellophane by the door, and service was brusque. The food—unwieldy bagel sandwiches, omelets with home fries, Caesar salads—was always just fine.

The Neptune Diner closed this year after a 40-year run, but diner culture is alive and well in the city. There are diners that, well, are just diners, but spruced up and reopened within the last three years, like Old John’s Luncheonette (first opened in 1951, reopened by a former employee in 2021), Montague Diner (formerly the Happy Days Diner, reopened in 2024), and Three Decker Diner (first opened in 1945, taken over by Variety Coffee Roasters in 2023). And there are other recent revivals with fine-dining flourishes, like the ones on this list.

Overall, NYC diner culture doesn’t look anything like it did 20 years ago. Here is a guide to New York’s reimagined diners, many of them rescued from a fate like Neptune’s. They’re all nostalgic in different ways (perhaps because post-pandemic, everyone is still looking for comfort food) and on their way to becoming new legends. Their food is far better than just fine, and I tapped a couple other longtime New Yorkers to tell me about what they love most about them.