On New Year’s Eve, 1998, Andrew Tarlow and Mark Firth opened Diner on a desolate corner in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge. The dilapidated diner that the roommates, who’d met while working at the Odeon, had rebuilt with friends didn’t have gas. So chef Caroline Fidanza, whom they had recently hired, carried cassoulet over from their unregulated loft. The rest was Brooklyn history. Diner became the first subway-tiled clubhouse for the neighborhood’s early adopters. It also drew adventurous eaters across the bridge, who were delighted when the server began writing out the day’s simple, seasonal dishes on the paper tablecloth. (Tarlow never thought to order menus.) Every night for the past 25 years has felt like a dinner party: familiar, flirtatious, eventually a smidge unhinged. Restaurateurs around the world have been trying to replicate it for decades, but you can’t clone soul. —Christine Muhlke