Chef Telly Justice of HAGS shares her favorite diners in the Big Apple.

I think that Brooks Headley is one of the most brilliant chefs of our generation. He’s so quiet and humble about it, but he’s one of those guys that came from this fine dining world and realized that the power of food is in knowing yourself and then communicating it to the world and Superiority Burger is this diorama of who he is. Camille always gets the collard green sandwich—it’s massive—she eats half and then saves the rest for later. And we’ll ofen get whatever they special is.

We treat Veselka like it’s our office. It’s a place that we can go to around the corner from the restaurant. It’s always so welcoming, warm, and inviting. The food is so consistent, and it’s just a classic—you feel New York in that room, you feel the eras. Camille always gets the weekday breakfast bowl with poached eggs and kielbasa that she douses in tons of Tabasco. I get the western omelet with a side of potato pancake.

We go there all the time. This is where, if I want to meet up with a chef friend, I know that they want to go to Thai diner. Everything that you could possibly eat there is excellent, but I’m a big fan of the Thai disco fries. I gotta get that, and thir crab fried rice, it’s classic, it’s unconscionably good.

This is a place that’s open 24 hours, and it feels that way. You can feel the patina of yesterday when you’re there. It’s a timeless place. It has the grit and the realness of a real New York 24-hour diner. These are the types of places that I grew up going to after punk shows in Philadelphia. The burger is big and it’s somehow never hot, but it’s perfect, just a wad of French fries and they’re like half-cooked, and they’re huge. The portions are huge. If you do something crazy, like order pasta, it’s like three boxes of pasta. And so it hits you in that comfort place, it gives you exactly what you want out of that experience. And you can get it at four o'clock in the morning, the room is full. For whatever reason, there’s always a lot of queer people there, so it feels incredible to be in that space.

Their breakfast sandwich, if you add that hash brown to it, it’s probably the best breakfast sandwich in town. It’s one of those comfy, cozy diner food places that also has a pretty creative menu. They take big swings and they pay off, and if you can get a table, it’s such a fun time.