The ‘Seinfeld’ restaurant

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While in Manhattan, seeing the sights, I had to find the exterior of Monk’s, the coffee shop where Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer spent endless hours eating, drinking coffee and yakking (and which I have spent endless hours watching, debating and obsessing over).

The Monk’s interior, obviously, was a set, not a working restaurant, but the Monk’s exterior exists. It’s an Upper West Side diner known as Tom’s Restaurant at Broadway and 112th Street.

And there it was, not far from Columbia University and the Guggenheim Museum.

I took a photo from across 112th to get the view of the restaurant most often seen on “Seinfeld.” (A bonus was that a half-block to the east was an excellent bookstore, Book Culture.)

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This second photo was printed with my column the other day as a mock version of our “Daily Bulletin on Vacation” feature. Ehh, who wants to stand in front of the Statue of Liberty holding a Daily Bulletin.

I didn’t dare cross the street to look in the Tom’s window. That would spoil the illusion. But I did cross Broadway to get a shot of the storefront, including the part of the sign usually cropped out except for a few moments during the first season.

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Later, at Two Boots Pizzeria, I saw a pizza named after the “Seinfeld” mailman. But I admit I opted for the Cleopatra Jones slice instead.

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