I used to live around the corner from Tom's Restaurant in the 1980s (it's just south of Columbia University), but I think I only ate there once. When I saw it later on Seinfeld it looked very familiar, but it took me a while to convince myself that it was actually the restaurant from my old neighborhood.
Ironically that version is very heavily compressed. Flipping through a bunch on YouTube I couldn't find any that weren't shitified in some way. Playing it on Spotify high quality (requires premium I think) was the best version I could find: https://open.spotify.com/track/7f9sC9fvtjYSZYOLSmKJlq?si=5L3...
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 26.3 ms ] threadI didn't realise that Tom's Diner is Monk's Cafe from Seinfeld.
Also, just had a look at it on gmaps; got a kick out of seeing Penske trucks around it.
What's the connection to Waits? As far as I know, the Tom of Tom's Diner (and Tom's Essay) isn't Tom Waits, and I don't think he covered the song.
(Reposts are fine after a year: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)
And this is the version most people know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLP6QluMlrg
But... this was not the version referenced by Brandenberg. That was the acapellla version, which I also could not find a decent version of online. https://open.spotify.com/track/6OKUhXuJMvoVPde9fMJJzy?si=gLJ...