We're riding the B and V from Coney Island all the way to Forest Hills, jumping off frequently to rave about our favorite restaurants and food stores near the subway.

Steinway Street is where the gastronautic joys of Queens really begin. We hope it won’t seem perverse of us, then, to choose a non-ethnic, non-hole-in-the-wall restaurant for Steinway Street. You walk past a number of them, as well as the Museum of the Moving Image, on the way to Cup.

In a borough with some of the finest diners in the greater New York area (the Astoria and Neptune being especially exemplary), Cup is the most successful attempt yet to modernize and elevate the diner concept. (The Pop Diner, in Elmhurst, is another.) Everything at Cup is an improvement over its rivals — its chili heavier and thicker and richer, its meat loaf larger and fluffier, its crab cakes denser. The place is also spotlessly, immaculately clean, and once settled in we never really feel like leaving again. But then the V line beckons us, and we’re back on the subway again.