The exterior of Tom's Restaurant in NYC has a red neon letters on a blue background that appeared in Seinfeld

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Here’s a tasty tidbit for the highly precise group of people who love zeitgeisty media, food, and who also happen to be in The Big Apple: You can actually visit some of the big and small screens’ most iconic eateries. There’s NYC’s famed Magnolia Bakery for all the Carries, Samanthas, Charlottes, and Steves, Katz’s Deli for all the hopeless romantics whose partners could use some help in the boudoir, and pizza, for rats (and fans of “The Office”). And in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, one of the most recognizable location shots in all of media is still in operation today: “Restaurant” on the Upper West Side.

To be more specific, the neon sign that reads “Restaurant” from the (primarily) ’90s television show “Seinfeld” adorns a real place called Tom’s Restaurant at the corner of Broadway and 112th Street. To make things even kookier, it was called Monk’s Café on the show that was famously about nothing. The in-universe facade was merely emblazoned, unhelpfully, with “Restaurant”, which does, to be fair, approximate the needlessly convoluted experience of living here. What is the deal, indeed.

Visiting Tom’s Restaurant today




The outside of the restaurant featured in Seinfeld has a big sign that reads "Tom's," as well as patio tables with umbrellas

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Flag a cab, tap up a rideshare, or catch the subway to Cathedral Parkway-110th Street and you’ll see Tom’s all-caps glow from half a block away. Now, the Monk’s scenes weren’t filmed on-site, but a whole nation away in Los Angeles. But, you know, the source material is just the sort of real deal destination that the old show was presumably trying to approximate, so Tom’s interior isn’t totally alien to what appears on re-runs and streaming. Both have stools at a counter, a throwback cash register, roomy booths, and big menus (though Tom’s has tin ceilings and more wood paneling).

The menu fare is also more or less what you’d expect, whether you’ve seen the show or simply eaten in a fairly standard casual American restaurant before. Tom’s serves eggs a bunch of ways, a wide variety of omelets, all manner of sandwiches, burgers, and salads, as well as those beloved but dubious diner stalwart entrees, broiled fish or steak, and chicken dinners. The muffin tops that once made it as far as McDonald’s sadly appear to be absent, but there is plenty of soup for you.