Kellogg’s Diner, November 2018.
The idea of a good life for Irene Siderakis was being able to stay at home with her four children. She got to live that dream until her husband, Christos, died suddenly in April, leaving her to run the 24-hour Williamsburg diner they owned together. Life has a way of throwing things at you, she told me one November afternoon, standing behind the counter. Clad in black, she wore no adornments, save a pair of pearl earrings, and teared up as she recounted Chris’ burial at the Antonopoulos funeral home in Astoria, where the line of mourners snaked around the block. Irene had no time to grieve. Someone needed to take the reins at Kellogg’s, one of the oldest and busiest diners in Brooklyn.