Empire Diner

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Empire Diner
Tenth Avenue at West 22nd Street
New York, September 2007

“The Empire Diner, which graced the corner of Twenty-second Street and Tenth Avenue for thirty-four years, was a New York superstar. Its Art Deco façade had a cameo in Woody Allen's ‘Manhattan’ in 1979, it was depicted on the cover of this magazine in 2010, and it still flickers by in the opening credits for ‘Saturday Night Live.’ The food was nothing special, but they had live piano, and they were open all night long, even when far-west Chelsea was something of a foreboding wasteland. Many of the neighborhood’s pioneers agreed with the establishment’s tagline and self-assessment: the hippest diner on earth. In May, the Empire closed its doors, and, without substantial renovation, the proprietors of Coffee Shop have opened a new restaurant there called the Highliner. The body remains, but the soul has vanished.” (The Highliner by Ariel Levy, The New Yorker)