Massapequa Diner gets shoutout on CBS' 'Elsbeth' episode

The Massapequa Diner got a shoutout on the whimsical CBS mystery series "Elsbeth," as a character reminisced about tuna fish sandwiches.

"How had he arrived here from walking home from school to his mother’s embrace and a tuna fish sandwich on perfectly toasted toast?" reads author Elliott Pope (guest star Griffin Dunne), identified as a Massapequa native, at a cultural event for his latest semiautobiographical novel. But as eccentric NYPD consultant Elsbeth Tascioni (Emmy Award winner Carrie Preston) later informs him in last Thursday's episode, "Murder, He Wrote," this cherished childhood memory wasn’t entirely true: Mom had been getting those sandwiches from the Massapequa Diner.

So in a similarly roman à clef way, was that Sunrise Highway institution a cherished childhood memory of episode writer and series showrunner Jonathan Tolins, who was born in Brooklyn but raised from childhood on Long Island?

Not quite. "The idea of Elliott Pope writing about his hometown was inspired by the way Philip Roth wrote about Newark, New Jersey, in his novels," Tolins told Newsday in an email. Though Tolins grew up more than 20 miles away "as a Roslyn kid, I knew Massapequa and liked the sound of it. I wish I could say I was intimately familiar with the Massapequa Diner, but I can’t say for sure."

Tolins — also a celebrated playwright (Broadway’s "The Twilight of the Golds," Off-Broadway’s "Buyer and Cellar") — added, "It was more about the fun sound of the town’s name, and the idea that Elliott has spent decades romanticizing the sandwiches his mother made for him after school (like the protagonist in Roth’s ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’), only to find out his mother actually bought them from the nearby diner."

Some research did go into it — "It’s from the diner near your childhood home, which has been owned by the same family for 75 years," Elsbeth tells Elliott. While the real-life diner has been in the hands of its current owners, cousins Nikolaos Glykos and Valentino Zarboutis, since 1988, it indeed was founded, by the unrelated Harry Diktaban, in 1950.

A delighted Zarboutis said he hadn’t known of his eatery’s mention beforehand. "I saw it on the internet just like everybody else," he said in a phone call Monday. "I'd love to tell you that there's something special about it," he noted of the diner’s tuna fish sandwich, "but I'm not sure that there is. It's just what we make every day," composed of "two scoops" of tuna fish salad with "plenty of fresh celery and some seasoning, on any bread [the customer wants] with lettuce and tomato — coleslaw and pickle as well."

Zarboutis hasn’t been watching "Elsbeth," he said, but now, "I'm planning on it." The diner previously has been not only mentioned but also seen on-screen, both in a 2018 episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s Netflix show "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," with fellow local Alec Baldwin, and in the 2024 movie "Because of Mika."

And Tolins himself may one day make a guest appearance. "Now I am very curious to have lunch at the Massapequa Diner," he said. "I hope they see an uptick in business because of ‘Elsbeth.’ ”