After I bought a large ceramic mixing bowl at Fishs Eddy, I asked a clerk where I could still get breakfast food, being 2 p.m. on a Sunday. Around noon downtown, I’d had an intense hangover-recovery need for sodium and grease and really, really just wanted a breakfast sandwich of the sort many delis and bodegas in New York sell: plain egg and meat and/or cheese on a bagel or a roll. But none of them were still serving breakfast and I was feeling I’d have to go to an actual restaurant. The clerk at Fishs recommended Big Daddy’s, and since I only had to walk down 19th to Park, I tried it. Can’t miss it: there’s a giant script sign above the door, spelled in carnival lights.
It’s sort of like if the Hard Rock Cafe decided to open a diner. Or, better still, if aliens were to have recreated a diner based on a description of its contents. Cheesy ’80s pop burbles from the sound system. Little ceramic holders of vintage Trivial Pursuit cards are set on the counter here and there. The menu cover and an entire length of a wall at the restaurant are plastered with pop culture logos. Shelves of eBay purchases line the wall behind the counter: rusted steel soda cans from the ’60s, vintage lunchboxes and boxes of breakfast cereal. A peeling bumper sticker for Richard Nixon hovered on the painted brick wall near my head. The place is packed with likely tourist-types. Waiting for my order to arrive as I listened to Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” I started to make a list of all of the logos I could see from my seat, but I got exhausted; this is about one quarter of them:
- Atari
- Coleco
- Corey Feldman
- Franco-American
- Hong Kong Phooey
- Hostess
- Indiana Jones
- M*A*S*H
- MTV
- Pan Am
- Rolling Stone
- School House Rock!
- Sesame Street
- Spider-Man
- The Brady Bunch
- The Godfather
- The Monkees
- The Price is Right
- The Rolling Stones
- Tony the Tiger
- Trix
- Tron
- Twisted Sister
- Twister
- Wrangler
- Yogi Bear
- Yugo
The food, like the decor, approximates a diner experience. Yes, it looks nice in the photo, doesn’t it? But the bacon was cold, not frying-pan fresh. The Challah French toast was groggy with liquid egg. And the prices were decidedly not diner-like, as you can see below. I almost would have rather had Denny’s.
Big Daddy’s
- 239 Park Avenue South (at West 19th Street)
- (212) 477-1500
- Meal 9 of 52: French toast and a side of scrambled eggs ($11.94), side of bacon ($3.96), orange juice ($3.26) and coffee ($2.53).