Cosmos Diner

I went here about an hour for an early breakfast about an hour before I had to be at LaGuardia because I had never been to a real New York diner and, also, I was hammered. It did not disappoint. I went with a friend who knew the server (possibly the owner? I was drunk) so it was very good experience. I had an egg and cheese sandwich and it was so good I got a second one before hopping in a cab to the airport. I felt like I was drunk and in an episode of Seinfeld, but that could also be because it’s called Cosmo’s.

Greeks diner again.
Go figure.
Decent, nothing more nothing less.
I miss the great diners that once existed.
They try but are missing something.

One of the most depressing diners I have ever been to. It should be shut down. It’s dirty, service is slow, and the people are not very friendly. A bowl of chicken soup is actually the size of a cup. It’s downright ugly — -just why?

Average Diner. Service typically so so. The food is diner standard.

Everything a diner should be (take it from a guy who grew up in Jersey; I know my diners).
I used to come into this place a lot when I went to SVA several years ago, but stopped in the other night when driving around with a friend. After several minutes, a waiter approached us and took a drink order. I had a good cup of coffee, my buddy a beer. It took us a few minutes to decide what we wanted, but I settled on the Chicken Salad BLT triple-​decker. Our food came out faster than I thought it would (this may or may not be a good sign) but my sandwich was excellent. It came with fries that were crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, just as I like them. Overall spent $ 14 with tip.
Definitely worth stopping by; easily as good as anything else in the immediate area, if not better.

Bizarre, surreal experience here. So you walk in and it’s a typical diner.
We order our food from the t-​shirted, apparently Greek waiter who seems like he should be in the back doing the cooking. First thing that comes out is a friend’s strawberry cheesecake, which is awful and seems to have been sitting in the fridge for ages and is described as tasting like rubber. Upon sending it back, it is immediately replaced with a snow-​white, perfectly fresh slice of acceptable NY cheesecake topped with a dollop of freshly applied pie filling. Why was the original piece served to begin with?
I sip my coffee and am shocked. Pretty damned good coffee for a not-​so-​great looking diner, served by aforementioned greasy-​haired waiter.
The food is hit or miss. My waffle topped with bananas is fresh. My friend loved her lox and bagel, but another friend said his sandwich was awful, with a stale bun.
While eating, we can’t help but ogle the cashier, who looks like he should have been cast as an aged wizard in Lord of the Rings.

They’re «open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, 366 on a leap year,» according to the scratchy voiced waitress. (Think Marge’s sisters on The Simpsons.) As far as cuisine, they pretty much stick to the general diner-​fare, and as long as you know that going into it — you won’t be bummed.

It’s okay, literally not much else to say about. I’ve had some decent meals and some terrible ones. I like there chicken fingers, but the grilled cheese I got once was terribly burnt. The wait staff is really nice though, and they’re open 24 hours.

I ordered the Friday Special: BBQ Spare Ribs $ 10.95 (see photo)
This meal came with choice of soup (I chose Matzoh Ball) and side (I chose Mashed Potatoes & Broccoli) and of course the main course, BBQ Spare Ribs.
The Spare Ribs were making my taste buds jumping with joy. The steamed broccoli was perfect with no added butter, just how I like it. The potatoes were good but not amazing. The Matzoh Ball soup… I have heard of but never tried this soup until tonight. I did not know it was a vegetarian soup and was expecting real meat. Needless to say, I didn’t like it too much.
Service: Better than Lyric Diner!
Note: I’m not sure if Cosmos offers student discount like Lyric Diner…

I walk by this place all the time. I ate here twice before it was shut down by the health department in Sept. 2009. One time I had glass shards in my water. The other time wasn’t memorable aside from the place seeming grubby and sad. They re-​opened after a few weeks, but the Dept. of Health web site shows that they’re still running a pretty gross ship:
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One night after closing I peeked in and saw A CAT lounging on one of the tables. Sick. Now, a lot of NY delis have cats to keep mice away. A little gross, but whatever, I’m not eating off the deli floor. Cat should not be on table.

Turkey wrap ordered had an old crusty wrap. I notice they don’t clean the counters where the pastries sit. Service was OK and accommodating to substitute salad for fries. I bet this place does great just the way they are.

Food is more or less comparable to East Side Café a block away. Most run of the mill diners aren’t that differentiated in that regard.
However, whereas East SIde Café is warm and inviting, tends to be relatively packed, and has the nicest people, Cosmos Diner tends to be emptier, colder, and have surlier, grouchier staff. Although this might be an issue of self-​perpetuation, there is no reason to take it over the other.

Perfectly reasonable diner food. Good burgers, good soup, huge sodas, fast service. An entire sit-​down meal during a 1-​hour break.
When I have to come to work hung over, a grilled cheese from Cosmos always helps.

Food is average diner food, but thumbs up for their 24×7 delivery !! Ordered a veggie omlette, fried fish sandwich, salad and side of fries (at 12:30am) for $ 27 with tax (excluding tip). Delivery took about 45 minutes.
Avoid anything fried potatoes (I should have known better), they just ended up soggy/​chewy.

Lately, I have had two problems with dinner. It’s not that we don’t get along, dinner and I. We do. I love dinner. I love breakfast for dinner, snacks for dinner, dinner for dinner, even. But we’ve hit a rough patch in our relationship.
Problem one: All too often I find myself eating breakfast at 1 pm. This means lunch might not happen until 7 and dinner might not happen at all. This also means that drinking time might come before lunch time. Drinking on an empty stomach requires speed and agility. It’s a task navigated only by masters.
Problem two: I am ALWAYS hungry after drinking. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I ate before the drinking commenced, when the night’s a windin down: I want food. I see it as preventative medicine. The more I eat, the less hungover I feel. This may not seem like a problem per se, but I can’t help but think that eating before AND after drinking is a touch… excessive.
The only way I’ve managed to deal lately is to skip the pre drinking meal, consume carefully and then hit the late night dinner with reckless abandon. I’m talking eggs, hash, bacon AND a toasted blueberry muffin (Yah, I don’t mess around).
Cosmos Diner, with it’s massive menu and greasy breakfasts, has more than once been the light at the end of the Hangover Tunnel. The breakfast plates bring me back from the brink of what could have been a very, very nasty hangover. I think Cosmos and I are going to be very, very happy together.

I can’t believe this place has a five star review. Worst meal we had the entire time we were in New York, and one of the worst I’ve ever had there, period.
We stopped into this place because it happened to be around the corner from the car rental place and I felt like I was going to pass out if I didn’t have breakfast soon. It looked decent enough, and cheap, but it was awful.
I ordered a hot chocolate. The waitress asked twice if I wanted whipped cream. Both times I said yes. It came out half-​spilled into the saucer beneath the cup *without* whipped cream. I didn’t care too much but since I’d been really clear (both times) about wanting the cream, I figured I should say something. I mentioned it to her and she waved at a bus boy who then asked her a few questions, made various hand gestures, then went back to whatever it was he’d been doing before. I looked at my friend and said, «I guess I’m not getting any whipped cream.»
I ordered a combo meal that was supposed to come with a waffle, two eggs, bacon, sausage and a ham slice. My friend ordered two eggs and french toast. He asked for the eggs over hard, I said over medium. Both orders came with eggs over easy, slopped on top of the rest of the food. Under my eggs were hidden a janky looking sausage (that taste okay apart from the super gristly parts), two decent looking pieces of bacon, and (shudder) a warmed up slice of nasty deli meat that I couldn’t believe the waitress had served me with a straight face.
The eggs and gross meat nearly put us off the decent portions of our meals (the toast and waffle) and the mediocre (nearly awful) service that accompanied them is what earns Cosmos this one (should be zero) star review. I haven’t been so unimpressed in years.

With the possible exception of amphetamine dealers, there’s no business more in service of Americans’ love of speed than diners.
OK, there’s the fast food industry (whose name even includes the word «fast»). But diners (or, as we call them in California, coffee shops), are just an earlier era’s version of fast food restaurants.
When I had dinner at Cosmos Diner last night, my cheeseburger deluxe and fries were brought out *so* fast, I had to scratch my head wondering how they accomplished it. I hadn’t taken two sips of my coke and hadn’t even opened my book before the food was placed on my table. The implicit message: there are better things to do than wait here for your food… or even sit here and *eat* your food, for that matter.
Does it even matter what the food tasted like? In coffee shops (not just at Cosmos Diner, where the cooks did a reputable job and where the wait staff were friendly, prompt and polite), «taste» doesn’t even enter into the equation, really.
In this setting, we’re not talking about taste so much as «sensation,» a more primitive capacity processed by the reptilian brain. Sensations — not tastes –are what our amphibian ancestors would understand. The sensations at play here follow along the lines of: is the hamburger bun soft; are the fries crunchy; is the cole slaw creamy…
Sometimes, you *want* to go back a step evolutionarily. That’s what this kind of food is for.
There are pleasures to be had, here though. One is observing that in coffee shops, cakes are quite literally placed on a pedestal. Or in tall, upright refrigerated cases, slowly revolving like heavenly bodies in orbit. Or in mirrored cases for our ogling pleasure (views immortalized by Claes Oldenburg and Wayne Thiebaud).
And the architecture and interiors, too. Unfortunately, Cosmos Diner was remodeled sometime after it was first opened (1978). The scheme is a gray/​burgundy combination, with the counter made of faux granite.
The double seat booths are here, though, a feature I particularly like and one I’ve only seen in New York.

I happened upon this little diner while out for a morning walk. I wish the diners we have down here in Atlanta were a little more like this place. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Waffle House, but the various little diners around my neck of the woods have never impressed me.
I’d recommend it. I’m glad I stumbled upon it.

This has to be one of the best places to get your late night/​early morning grub on. When you walk in on the weekends you are greeted by the most memorable waiter ever, who not only with lightning speed gets your order but participates in all the antics the slightly less sober clientele dishes out. I usually get greeted much like norm from cheers, when the staff calls out my name, to alert everyone I have arrived. lol.
Anything on the menu rocks, and the waiter Isidor aka Malaka makes the it taste better with his great company.

As much as I love being Greek, that much more do I love it when I walk into Greek diners like this one.
Last night, I stopped in here for a Sunday night snack and a few beers with my friends. We ordered gyros, french fries, and calamari – and about three rounds of Buds. The food was wonderful and plentiful, as is common in diners.
The waiter, Isidoros, was really nice, especially after I started talking to him in Greek. We joked around and then he brought us a free piece of Baklava. Also, in the end he charged us for only half the things we got, and when he saw that we were taking a while to give him our money, he said in his thick greek accent, «Don’t worry, guys; if you don’t have the money now, just come back and give it to me tomorrow?»
It made me feel like I was back in a lovely llittle greek island, where human trust is always valued more than money – and we gave him extra tip and left. Will definitely be rerurning, if not tomorrow, then some other time soon.