Waitress: Hello. How can I help you?
Kid: I wanna buy some sushi.
Waitress: You want to buy some sushi? What kind of sushi would you like?
Kid: I don’t know.
–Wasabi Sushi, Bensonhurst
Waitress: Hello. How can I help you?
Kid: I wanna buy some sushi.
Waitress: You want to buy some sushi? What kind of sushi would you like?
Kid: I don’t know.
–Wasabi Sushi, Bensonhurst
Waitress: Is that book you’re reading fiction or theory?
–Cosi
Waitress: Is this your granddaughter?
Grandma: Yes.
Waitress: She looks just like you.
Grandma: No, she looks like my son’s mother-in-law.
Waitress: Mother-in-law?
Grandma: She’s a big woman.
–Chinese Restaurant, UWS
Waitress: How do you want your burgers cooked?
Foreigner: Cooked?
Waitress: Meat is cooked. What color do you want the meat inside to be? Pink, red, brown?
Foreigner: What?!
–Jackson Hole, 36th Street
Server: Oh no, not you again! Whatchoo want?
Customer: ‘talian col’ cut.
Server: Whatchoo want on it?
Customer: I said ‘talian col’ cut!
Server: Whatchoo want on it?
Customer: Damn baby, I want you on it!
Server: Shit, you wouldn’t even know what to do with me!
Customer: Damn baby, I eat that shit!
–Bed-Stuy deli
Waitress: Will you have a soup or salad?
Girl: Sure, I'll have the super salad.
Waitress: No, will you have the soup or salad?
Girl: I said I'll have the super salad.
Waitress: No, (really slowly) will you have the soup or salad.
Girl: Ohhhhh, the salad.
–Elmo, Chelsea
Waitress #1: Do you have any tampons?
Waitress #2: Yeah, I have regular and super.
Waitress #1: Are they the plastic kind? The cardboard snags my vagina.
–Restaurant, Brooklyn
Overheard by: Unappetized
(older woman flailing her arms around while speaking to younger woman she is dining with)
Waitress: Yes, did you need something?
Older woman: Oh, no! I was just doing an imitation of ferocious wolves in the wild.
Waitress: Oh, okay.
–French Restaurant, Spring St
Guy: Yeah, he has this obsession with white weasels. It’s just very New York, you know?
–23rd & 8th
Overheard by: Kate
White Girl: I’m leaving this city, it’s all just bed bugs and bad drugs.
–Queensboro Plaza
Overheard by: Zach
Prudish waitress, to another: In New York, you just come to expect cock-on-cock, ass-on-ass talk… In DC, you don’t.
–1 Train
Student to friend: You play the paranoid freak, I will play the egomaniac. We will call it "New York".
–49th & 1st
Thug #1 to Thug #2, while observing typical, plain, Midwest vacationing family getting off a tour bus: Get back on that bus! This New York! You can’t handle this shit! [Teenage kids smile. The father, absolutely horrified, grabs the kids and throws them back on the bus.]
–42nd St & 5th Ave
Overheard by: Bunk Moreland
Chinese food lady in Chinese take-out restaurant: Duck sauce, soy sauce?
Mr Clean-looking guy: Uhh Uhh… [Scratches shiny head.] I dunno, the Black sauce.
–Flushing, Queens
