MANHATTAN — Neither rain, nor sleet, nor Hurricane Irene can keep the Washington Square Diner from serving its hungry customers - even if it means making 360 sandwiches at once.
The Greenwich Village eatery — one of many restaurants and bars that stayed open into the night Saturday — fielded a massive sandwich order from the MTA Saturday night as the furious storm roared into the New York area.
Worker Alfredo Hernandez told DNAinfo that a supervisor from the transit agency placed the order for 360 sandwiches around 2 a.m. Saturday.
"I was shocked," Hernandez said. "I thought it was a joke. I was thinking he was playing with me."
He said that a number of the agency's workers pop in from time to time to get coffee.
The diner, at 150 W. 4th St., put three cooks on duty just to fill the order for wraps and sandwiches, including chicken salad, tuna salad, ham and cheese, roast beef and turkey.
"People love to eat in these kind of disasters," Hernandez quipped, adding that business spiked on 9/11 and during the blackout.
The diner, a mainstay in the neighborhood, expected to finish by midnight, a little more than an hour before its closing time of 1:30 a.m.
But instead of hunkering down while the worst of the storm passes in the early morning hours, the diner will be opening again at 6:30 a.m.
"We never stop," he said. "We'll be with the customers to the end."
MTA spokesman, Charles Seaton, said: "It's a possibility. We have a number of on-duty workers still in the area."
