Diner
Andrew Tarlow and Mark Firth opened Diner on a lonesome corner under the Williamsburg Bridge on New Year's Eve, and the bar you sit at is an old Kullman dining car. Caroline Fidanza wrote a new menu every day off what farmers upstate were sending down. Jake Hetnarski runs the kitchen now.
Why go
Tarlow and Firth hosted and tended bar themselves and ended most nights with a hand of cards and a pitcher of margaritas. Kate Huling worked the floor and made the salads, scrawling the menu across table after table and then going back on the line when the tickets piled up.1 The restaurant describes its own room as warm wood and aged enamel, like being in the belly of a whale or the protected hold of a ship.
The kitchen still buys direct, so more of your bill reaches the people growing the vegetables and raising the animals.
Good to know
- Ordering: I have no dish to point you at.
- Booking: the site takes reservations for one room, in South Williamsburg.
Verdict
could-visit — Go for the bar and ask what is written up that day. Book it; it is one small room. Build an evening in south Williamsburg around it and let Hetnarski decide dinner. It is not a room I would cross a city for, and it is a very good reason to be standing on that corner.