Cafeteria

Long Live New York Restaurant Cafeteria, Chelsea’s Eccentric 24/7 Time Capsule of the Early Aughts - Eater NY

"While the word 'basic' has become wildly overused, it's hard to come up with a more fitting word for the menu at Cafeteria. It has avocado toast; it has a kale salad; it has 'street tacos' sold at prices that certainly do not connote any taco found on any street anywhere. Yes, it's basic. Yes, with mac and cheese eggrolls, an early-aughts aesthetic, and 24/7 hours, it's a dinosaur of a restaurant. But it's also perfect. ... It feels like a singular place, somewhere to catch up with friends or hit after a wild night out. Maybe its appeal in 2019 has something to do with the resurfacing of early-aughts trends in general. Or maybe Cafeteria is like the scrunchie of restaurants — clunky but undeniably practical, versatile, and strangely, even this many years later, utterly appealing." - Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya