After a half-century serving soup and burgers in Manhattan, the Cozy Soup N Burger Diner closed this past summer. I look back on my first (and las) visit a few months earlier.

After years of seeing Duchess signs along I-95, we finally sat down for a meal at this family-owned, Connecticut fast-food chain.

We had lunch at Sami’s Kabab house in Astoria feasting on Afghan kababs and tasty appetizers.

When I worked in midtown, I would eat at the Red Flame a few times a month. Then the pandemic shuttered offices across the city. I returned with my wife and kid on a cold winter Saturday.

We stopped at Mel’s Diner in Naples, Florida, where we found a classic diner from a southwest institution.