The Diner and the Counter

The American diner belongs to the industrial Northeast, and New York, with its crowded streets, its working shifts and its habit of eating away from home, is among the places that shaped the idea of the counter as a public table. Molly O'Neill's New York Cookbook gathers the city's eating houses, delicatessens, coffee shops and neighbourhood restaurants within a single account of how New Yorkers fed themselves, and it is from that account that the diner and the counter are read here.

The counter is the simplest table in the American repertoire: a length of stone or laminate, a row of fixed stools, and a cook who works within sight of the person eating. Its logic is speed and trust. The customer sees the griddle, the grill and the coffee urn, and the cook sees the customer, so that an order is made and delivered across one narrow space without ceremony. O'Neill's New York Cookbook treats such rooms as part of the city's civic life, where people of every trade and means ate side by side, and where the food was judged by whether it was hot, prompt and the same as yesterday. The repertoire of the counter is short and exacting. Eggs are cooked to order on a flat griddle, potatoes are shredded or cubed and browned in the same fat, bread is toasted and buttered, and coffee is poured without being asked for. At midday the griddle turns to the sandwich, to the burger, to the melt, and to the plate of roast meat with potatoes and a vegetable. Each of these rests on technique more than on rarity: a hot, well-seasoned griddle, a pan that is not crowded, and timing that lets several orders finish together. The cook who can hold twelve tickets in mind and keep every egg at the stage requested has mastered the discipline the counter demands. The New York counter also carried the cooking of those who arrived in the city. The delicatessen, the Greek-run coffee shop and the lunchroom each gave the same stool and the same quick service to different food, so that a single street might offer pastrami on rye, a plate of eggs with feta, and rice pudding in a glass dish. O'Neill's survey of the state shows how readily the city absorbed these dishes into everyday eating, until they were no longer felt as foreign but simply as what one ate for lunch. The counter, in this sense, was a place where immigrant cooking became American without losing its character. What the counter offers a cook is a lesson in economy. The menu is limited so that each item may be made well and repeatedly; the stock of ingredients is small and turns over daily; and the pace of service leaves no room for waste or hesitation. The same lesson serves any kitchen. A cook who learns to season a griddle, to time a plate, and to keep a station clean and stocked through a rush has learned something that no single recipe contains.