Counter Culture
A Classic ’50s Diner Comes to the Bowery

It’s very important that you don’t read this until 12:00:01am on January 1.

We want your first thoughts of 2012 to be glorious.

And also of something you can eat.

Welcome inside The Bowery Diner, an all-American homage that updates the 1950s comfort food institution in all the right ways (yes, your diner now has a raw bar), slated to open in early January.

If you’re doing the math on this one, you’ll notice that you now have a late-night greasy spoon smack-dab in the middle of the neighborhood where you do the majority of your late-night damage. So that frees up one New Year’s wish.

First, the familiar. You’re still taking your mug of coffee and your breakfast for dinner up at a Formica counter surrounded by quilted aluminum. Flattops still sizzle with double cheeseburger deluxes till 2am. Waitresses still wear far too much lipstick.

But there are changes. Nuanced twists. Little tweaks to the classic diner formula. Like the paper-hat-wearing chef who shucks booth-side oysters and clams. And a bartender who’ll spike your vanilla milkshake with bourbon.

And sure, there’s the blue-plate specials (stalwarts like meatloaf, pot pie and baked mac and cheese). But the house-smoked Reubens (start with the crumbled blue cheese number) are new inventions.

You love a sandwich that plays by its own rules.