The Old Corfu
We were on a quest to find the grossest diners in the city...
I drove delivery trucks in New York City for years, way back in the 20th Century. First, I delivered bagels, then fine pastry and wedding cakes. It was another lifetime for me, actually two lifetimes. In one of them I was high and in the other I was sober. I have scribbled notes for years about that time and have often thought about collecting the stories into a book. Let this be a downpayment on that plan...
The Corfu Diner squats on the southeast corner of 10th Avenue and 18th Street. Until it was redone in neo-stucco a few years ago, it looked just like the railroad car diner that was planted there forty years earlier, but with forty years’ worth of wear and no maintenance.
Some days, I made the first run of the day with a guy named Frank, the other driver. He and I had an ongoing dare with each other about eating at the Corfu. We were on a quest to find the grossest diners in the city. It was a trucker thing. We got paid by the hour, so it was a good way to stretch out the day. I had to overcome my natural tendency to push it and try to be the best delivery man in the world. Frank had years of experience in making a short workday long. When we went out together, it was an exercise in compromise.
A big breakfast was an important ritual in Frank’s day. His favorite place was the Vega cafe, on lower Greenwich Street, where they would serve us fistfuls of bacon on our bacon&egg-on-a-roll sandwich. He used to speak Spanish with them and we would give them cakes from the back of the truck. James, the third driver, called it the “Little Vega.” Frank loved the Jones Diner, too, on Great Jones Street, which is where I first saw him eat corned beef hash and eggs. He chopped the toast meticulously into little cubes, then made a stew of the hash, eggs, and toast cubes, a lumpy yellow and brown glop which he ate with a soup spoon.
We would cruise the city, make deliveries and point out divey-looking diners. “Oh, we got to hit that one, Paulie,” he would say. I would forget about it, but a week or two later, after the morning run, Frank would direct me to head there, and we would soon be eating breakfast there. We passed the Corfu every day because Tenth Avenue was the preferred way to get uptown if you did the west side route. The Corfu reeked of decay. The sign and the facade looked as though they had never been painted or cleaned. It was surrounded by auto and truck repair shops. It looked like it had been abandoned for years, but it was open. It became a standing joke: “Maybe we’ll do that place on Tenth today, Paulie.”
“What, the Corfu?” and Frank would start laughing like a hyena.
“Oh man, the Corfu...”
and we would drive on. This went on for over a year. We kept sampling other diners and kept passing the Corfu. The old place began to take a strange hold on my imagination. Neither one of us was in a hurry to eat there, though. It just looked so old and dirty, even for us.
One day, we were driving up Tenth, talking about where to eat, when the Corfu came into sight on the right and Frank said, “Let’s do it, pull over.” I swerved the truck over quickly and we got a space right in front of the door, on the corner. We threw our cigarettes out of the window and grinned at each other. We got out, shut the doors, and kept grinning at each other as we walked in the front door of the Corfu. Frank was wearing his black baseball cap that said “Bronx” on it. My heavy plastic sunglasses stayed on, as usual. I just said. “Oh, man” while Frank laughed.
We sat down at the counter. There were six ancient, grimy booths behind us. The menu display frames over the counter were filthy and filled with old, yellowed stick-in letters and handwritten cardboard menu items. The grill man turned around and looked at us. His eyes were glowing in that funny way that can happen to people who work too long around a grill or an oven. He looked like he was thinking really hard about something else, something really nuts. He had a manic, jerky energy to his motions. He asked us what we wanted.
Frank and I, in our ever-increasing pursuit of gross cuisine, and in honor of the occasion, each ordered the same thing: “Two eggs, over easy, with bacon and sausage.” The grill man gave us each a tiny glass of juice and we turned to each other to resume whatever we had been discussing. We each raised our eyebrows at the same time to signal that we both thought the guy was crazy. We started to talk, but I don’t think either one of us knew what we were saying. It was just words. We were both too interested in the show that had already started in front of the grill, just a couple of feet away from us. The grill man was moving at hyper speed, breaking eggs with one hand, throwing bacon on the grill with the other, and pulling some gray, otherworldly-looking sausage links from beneath the grill and slamming an iron weight on top of them. Four pieces of white toast went into the toaster after that, all at double speed. We quickly got past the pretense of fake conversation and just stared at this guy in action.
He slid the eggs onto each plate, scooped up the bacon and threw it over the eggs, then pulled the toast out of the toaster while the sausages continued to brown. He buttered the toast with a small, oval-shaped spatula at rapid speed, and it all reminded me of someone who was shuffling a deck of cards really fast. He was using some yellow butter substitute from a cube-shaped, stainless steel tub to the right of the grill. During this flurry of scooping and smearing, a piece of the ersatz butter flew against the stainless steel splatter shield behind the grill. His hand flew out and he scooped it off with the spatula and spread it right on the toast. Frank’s jaw dropped and his cheeks filled with air as he stifled a gasp and a laugh at the same time. I don’t know what my face looked like, but I could feel my eyes widen. Then, with the next scoop, another big chunk of the fake yellow butter landed on the front of his greasy apron. Without missing a beat, he scraped the stuff off his apron and put it onto the next piece of toast, all with the manic motion of someone sharpening a straight razor at high speed.
At this point, both of our mouths opened in silent screams. Frank’s fists were clenched in front of his face and I was shaking my head. We both started groaning “oooohhhh...”
The grill man finished his opus and turned around with the two plates. His face was twisted and it was clear he was in another world. The sausages and bacon were so greasy that they bubbled on the plates. Frank and I looked at each other and, with the facial equivalent of “Fuck it,” we dug in. This was the only time I ever saw Frank leave meat on his plate. We both ate the toast, though, and when we got back out to the truck, we had a lot to talk about. In fact, we told everybody the story of that grill man’s apron for months.
Paul Vlachos is a writer, photographer and filmmaker. He was born in New York City, where he currently lives. He is the author of “The Space Age Now,” released in 2020, “Breaking Gravity,” in 2021, and 2023’s “Exit Culture.”
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So good, Paul! I was transported. When I lived in China, it became a maxim that unless the stools were a certain blue plastic, unless the indoor/outdoor areas were separated by strips of carwash plastic, or unless the woks were cleaned with heat alone, the guailufan just wasn’t going to be worth stopping for. It was just fried rice with everything but the cook’s shoes thrown in, but the place needed a proper backstreet seediness for the flavor to hit. The cook also needed the same oily glow to his eyes.
there are very few places like that left in the West, as you may already know, Paul. The Cracker Box in Carson City still exists with a similar show for people sitting at the counter. The place is always packed, which says a great deal about Carson Shitty (as my daughter calls it). I watches to such cooks working a tiny grill. No spectacular gymnastics as in your story, but it didn't surprise me at all when the health dept shut them down. Apparently, that happens often, so they do manage to clean up the place a tad before the next inspector comes in for breakfast.