After serving customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 35 years, the family that owns Waverly Restaurant knows what New Yorkers want in their diner food: consistency. Many menu items are reliable classics, from a belgian waffle with ice cream to a hot pastrami sandwich to an order of crispy Disco fries topped with cheddar cheese. In a 2009 article in the New York Times, food blogger Ben Leventhal named the restaurant's pizza-turkey burger his favorite late-night snack. It's the kind of place you know you can go for a hearty meal after an evening on the town or a morning spent discussing the economy with the dogs in Washington Square Park.

Though the space was—according to DNAInfo.com—renovated in 2011, it still invokes nostalgia for yesteryear. Drew Pisarra of New York magazine found the place's wood paneling and vinyl booths to be reminiscent of a "working-class steakhouse," and summed up its ambiance by adding, "In the end, you just might reinterpret those black-and-white actors’ eight-by-tens lining the perimeter as a forgotten pantheon: patron saints of cheap food, fast service, and fading traditions, like the bottomless cup of coffee."