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This 24-hour diner helps New Yorkers make it through the night

Kai Ryssdal and Nicholas Guiang Jan 23, 2025
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Kellogg's Diner closed during the pandemic and reopened. New York Times reporter Priya Krishna stayed awake to sample the atmosphere and the food. Victor J. Blue/Getty Images

This 24-hour diner helps New Yorkers make it through the night

Kai Ryssdal and Nicholas Guiang Jan 23, 2025
Heard on:
Kellogg's Diner closed during the pandemic and reopened. New York Times reporter Priya Krishna stayed awake to sample the atmosphere and the food. Victor J. Blue/Getty Images
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Once the clock strikes 2 a.m., options for a quick bite shrink to a handful. For those out and about, the most convenient option is fast food, like McDonald’s or Taco Bell. But in New York City, there’s a favorite source: the 24-hour diner.

However, these all-night institutions are closing one by one as “the city that never sleeps” gets a little sleepier. As recently reported in The New York Times, “According to Yelp data, the city lost 13% of its more than 500 round-the-clock restaurants from February 2020 to February 2024.”

But even though many have scaled back hours or closed altogether, some diners are making it a point to keep the lights on all night long.

Priya Krishna, a food reporter and interim restaurant critic for The New York Times, spent a night at Kellogg’s Diner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, witnessing the magic of midnight meals and beyond. “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Krishna about her experience. An edited transcript of their conversation is below.

Kai Ryssdal: Tell me why you chose Kellogg’s.

Priya Krishna: I thought Kellogg’s is a really great example of a 24-hour diner in that it has existed for a century. It closed during the pandemic, and then it bucked this trend that we’ve seen of 24-hour establishments either closing or curtailing their hours and reopened as a 24-hour establishment. So I thought it perfectly combined old and new.

Ryssdal: And, by the accounts that you give, it was hopping pretty much the whole time you were there — 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., right?

Krishna: That’s correct.

Ryssdal: So, interesting clientele through the evening. But, I did want to touch on a couple of those folks. First of all, you have the regular evening-goers who are just out for a good meal and they go to a diner in New York City, which struck me as interesting.

Krishna: I think one thing that’s really interesting about Kellogg’s is it has these two really amazing chefs, Jackie Carnesi and Amanda Perdomo, behind it. So, it has a little bit more food cred than your average diner. So I think people who had heard of the chefs and had heard the food was good were sort of treating it like a culinary destination, which I thought was very interesting.

Ryssdal: I will point out here, and I was interested to see that there is a $95 rib-eye steak on the menu for this diner. Now, I understand New York City is expensive, but my goodness.

Krishna: That was a really divisive one. A lot of the diners, especially a lot of the diners who had been coming there for 30 to 40 years, were really shocked to see anything that cost $95 on a diner menu. I did ask the server, and the server said that in her entire tenure as a server at Kellogg’s, only three people had ordered it.

Ryssdal: It was interesting to me that of the people you surveyed through the evening, a couple of them, here’s one quote: “Apartments are too small. Everyone needs somewhere else to be.” And then another woman said, “We need a place to go.” It is very much a third destination place, right? You got your home, you got your work, and now the Kellogg’s Diner, it seems.

Krishna: And I think diners have always served that purpose. It was heartwarming to see that the diner still serves that purpose.

Ryssdal: The other thing they do, or I guess the other thing they do not, is fast food, right? Because there are a lot of places, and look, I don’t go to many all-night diners here in Los Angeles, but I bet fast-food places outnumber 24-hour diners by a significant amount.

Krishna: They definitely do. And I brought up fast-food establishments to these customers, asking, ‘Why not go to a McDonald’s at 3 o’clock in the morning?’ And a lot of them spoke to this idea of wanting to sit down and have a proper restaurant experience and be served a hot, homemade meal. So, diners are really one of the few establishments providing that at 3 o’clock in the morning.

Ryssdal: The staff didn’t give you any hassle about sitting there for 12 hours, which was kind of cool.

Krishna: It was really interesting, and they definitely had no idea who I was. They had no idea I was a restaurant critic. I was just there with a rotating cast of friends. And I told my friends to keep ordering because we needed to justify our existence.

Ryssdal: You sat there from 8 to 8, but you had friends come for like, couple-hour shifts.

Krishna: Yeah, exactly. I had a spreadsheet.

Ryssdal: Who drew the 2 o’clock in the morning shift? That’s what I want to know. Was that the lowest friend on your totem pole?

Krishna: No, I want to shout out my friend Jay, who stayed from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. He never left.

Ryssdal: And what did you eat?

Krishna: Gosh, I feel like we covered a good chunk of the menu. We had Caesar salad. We had shrimp cocktail. We had the passion fruit pie, which is my favorite thing on the menu, and lots of chocolate mint shakes.

Ryssdal: You are a trained restaurant critic. What’d you think?

Krishna: I thought the food was really good. I feel like it was certainly better than a lot of diner food, but it wasn’t too fancy. And I almost feel like at a diner, the food doesn’t need to be fancy or superspecial. It just needs to satisfy and nourish. And I think the food at Kellogg does just that.

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