Old John's Diner

A luncheonette opened on Broadway near 66th Street in 1951, moved one block north in 1998 when Barnes and Noble took over its old building, and closed when the pandemic hit in 2020. Louis Skibar, who had waited tables there as a teenager, reopened it a year later under its original name. He kept the black-and-white mosaic floor, the Art Deco light fixtures, and the 1950s soda fountain intact, and brought several longtime staffers back to their old stations. Ice cream is still made in-house, and jazz plays over the speakers rather than a jukebox.