You can often find as many customers eating tuna melts (hot grilled cheese and tuna sandwiches) at 3 am as there are eating Monte Cristos (fried ham and cheese sandwiches sprinkled with powdered sugar) at 3 pm.

BBC: New York City��s classic diners survive

If they had a good day selling papers -- they had enough to give to their mammas, and then some -- Frank would stop with the other guys at the U.S. Restaurant, on Columbus: fried ham on French bread, a big sandwich for a dime.

CNN: Excerpt: 'Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life'

The restaurant's most popular items are fried chicken, burgers and spaghetti topped with ham and a sweet tomato sauce.

WSJ: Sweet Spaghetti, and a Bit of Pride: A Jollibee Opens in Jersey City

The iron stove had a cast-iron warmer on the top, and in that warmer would be pork roasts and pork chops and fried chicken, two gallon pots of butter beans with salt pork, navy beans with ham bone, rattlesnake beans glistening with bacon fat, pans of chicken and dressing, macaroni and cheese, cornbread and cathead biscuits, mounds of mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, skillets of fried green tomatoes.

NPR: Excerpt: 'The Prince of Frogtown'