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.
