Alejandro El Grande

It's a New York City cliche (which probably exists elsewhere in the country) that every greasy-spoon diner in the city represents itself as a direct descendent of Ancient Greek culture - photos of the Parthenon and plaster casts of the Discus Thrower are about as common as those powdery after-dinner mints by the cash register.

The diner closest to my apartment in Ridgewood (Queens) has gone through several ownerships in the eight years I've lived here.  A few years ago, a Mexican couple took over, and, at first, they kept the same menu as before, and didn't do much to change the look of the diner itself.

At this point, the only immediate clue that you were in a Mexican-run establishment was the presence of Jarritos in the fridge by the Coke and Pepsi.

But over the past year and a half or so, they finally started making it reflect their identity:  it's a Mexican restaurant now, though it still has some of the officially listed items like souvlaki and corned-beef hash on the wall (I doubt that they ever get a request for that sort of thing, although there are a lot of Europeans in their 70s who might be sticklers).

 Note the Mexican-flag motif in the banner.  Even now that its menu is almost entirely Mexican dishes, the restaurant has kept the name "Fresh Pond Coffee Shop."

 

I can't think of a better shorthand image to demonstrate New York City (and Queens in particular)'s strange form of interculturalism.