I once suggested the Garden State be renamed the Diner State—New Jersey has more of them supposedly per capita than any other state in the union. They all seem to be open 24 hours and offer the kinds of food I love, especially around 2 a.m., such as a Western omelet, corned beef hash and eggs, and disco fries (French fries in gravy and melted cheese). And they have terrific names like the Golden Bell, Queen Nefertiti, Athena, and the Tick Tock Diner. The latter was already well known, but now it is the center of a (ahem) Greek tragedy involving a torture and murder plot within a family.
Georgios Spyropoulos allegedly wanted to kill his uncle, Alex Sgourdos, a co-owner of the Tick Tock Diner (as well as have him tortured until he opened the house safe). As Kate Zernike explained in the New York Times,
