Diner

Andrew Tarlow’s first restaurant is no longer the Southside loner it was when it opened in 1999. These days, it’s credited with creating and typifying the hip, seasonal, and Americana-mining New Brooklyn restaurant. The kitchen’s alumni list is an all-star team of the Williamsburg restaurant scene — it includes founders of the Commodore, El Cortez, the Meat Hook, Pies ’n’ Thighs, and Saltie — and indirectly spawned a legion of admirers and imitators. Diner, though, at least pretends not to know it, even if the crowd is more well-heeled and maybe a little more foreign. The servers are still effortlessly cool, the floor remains uneven, and specials will forever be written out on a piece of paper tableside by a server who’ll sit down with you, if there’s room, and explain what’s up. That food changes more or less daily — there could be a peach and marinated-tomato panzanella one summer night, a rare trout steak with kraut on a colder evening — but always includes the restaurant’s famous burgers. That’s not to say Tarlow and his restaurants haven’t grown up. For a restaurant group, wine and cocktails are notably well done, too, making Diner, like all Tarlow spots, a good place for a late-night eats.