THENEWYORKER, OCTOBER 28, 2019 13
PHOTOGRAPH BY HEAMI LEE FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
1
TABLESFORTWO
Golden Diner
123 Madison St.
On a recent Thursday at Golden Diner,
two patrons took three-hundred-and-
sixty-degree spins, in perfect unison, on
their swivelling stools. They looked glee-
ful. And who could blame them? It was
a gorgeous fall morning. Warm light
flooded the room on the Lower East
Side, just south of Chinatown. They
were drinking Yuzu Palmers, a cocktail
that cleverly replaces an Arnold Palmer’s
lemonade with yuzu-ade and iced tea
with Darjeeling-flavored soju. On the
other side of the counter, Samuel Yoo, a
pedigreed chef masquerading as a
short-order cook, was making them
something delicious to eat.
In New York, the classic diner is an
endangered species, mostly owing to
rising costs of rent, food, and labor, and
one that’s unlikely to be protected from
extinction. When, after thirty years in
business, the Cup & Saucer, on Canal
Street, packed up shop, in 2017, it seemed
as if that would be it for greasy spoons
in the area. But then, this past spring,
Yoo, who once cooked at Momofuku Ko,
opened Golden Diner, which does an
excellent job of upholding the archetype
while meeting modern standards.
Take, for example, Yoo’s grilled
cheese. It’s a perfectly unpretentious,
familiar-looking specimen: yellow goo
melting between buttery slices of white
bread, branded by the griddle and sliced
on the diagonal. It arrives alone on a
plate unless you upgrade to deluxe, which
gets you a pile of medium-cut fries and
a wedge of sour pickle for three dollars
and fifty cents. The fact that the sandwich
is vegan—made with coconut-oil-based
Gouda and pepper Jack from Follow
Your Heart, the company behind Vege-
naise, and griddled in garlic oil instead of
butter—is negligible from a flavor per-
spective, especially when you compare
the ingredients in the dairy-free cheese
with those in, say, Kraft Singles. Both are
highly processed. Both taste of fat and
salt. What the imitation lacks in stretch-
iness, it makes up for in buoyant ooze.
The fact that the sandwich is vegan is
crucial and exciting if you believe, as I do,
that humans should cut down on animal
products for environmental reasons but
enjoy, as I do, a diner-style grilled cheese.
There’s a vegan Caesar salad, too, which
made me want to spin around on my
stool, a simple but exceptionally satis-
fying bowl of crunchy green romaine in
a punchy, garlic-heavy dressing made
with Tabasco and mushroom powder
and tossed with shreds of Follow Your
Heart Parmesan and big toasty croutons.
This is not a vegan diner. Neither
of those dishes comes with a hint of
sanctimony, or even of prescription; in
fact, the menu suggests adding crispy
(real) chicken to the salad. It’s also not
a trendy restaurant posturing as a diner
for the sake of nostalgia. It’s a genuine
catchall, in the mode of its forebears,
but better. There is plenty to satisfy the
staunchest traditionalists. The matzo-
ball soup is plainly excellent, no bells or
whistles. Two eggs are indeed served,
as the menu promises, “How you want
‘em,” scrambled, fried, or folded into an
omelette, and plated with a superlative
crackly edged hash-brown patty rough-
chopped into bite-size pieces. Just like
at your local Athenian, you can order
half a grapefruit; a side of bacon; a Diet
Coke. Coffee refills are free.
Unlike your local Athenian, Golden
Diner tops its enormous, fluffy pancakes
with salted honey-maple butter instead
of syrup, in homage to a popular South
Korean potato-chip flavor. Like a for-
mal poet, Yoo, who is Korean-American
and grew up in Bayside, Queens, finds
creativity within constraints, telling an
enchantingly personal story without
ever quite coloring outside the lines.
Why does the fairly ordinary-looking
burger taste so distinctive? Because the
extra-shiny bun is a sesame-scallion milk
roll from a Chinatown bakery, and be-
cause the patty is dressed with a dash
of mushroom-gochujang sauce. Why
can’t I stop thinking about the pumpkin-
seed-and-cranberry granola? Because it’s
topped, in a stroke of genius, with fresh
orange zest. The diner is dead; long live
the diner. (Dishes $8-$15.)
—Hannah Goldfield
