Greta Lee did not want us to end up at Dimes. The tiny, cliquish café on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, with its pastel cafeteria tables and oversized palm fronds and pillowy tahini toasts, is such a scene, after all. It’s the kind of place where you can find runway models and Swedish tourists alike sitting on the blond wood bar stools all day long, sipping orange blossom kefir and eating macrobiotic power bowls. It’s not that Lee objects to any of this, really, it’s just that she wanted to take me somewhere a little more New York.

Her first idea was to meet for breakfast at the nearby Golden Diner, a new greasy spoon that prides itself on being old school: The chef, Samuel Yoo, set out to replicate the classic Queens diners of his youth, chrome swivel stools and all. Lee wor...