City Limits Diner in White Plains is the Lower Hudson Valley’s most awarded diner — a Livanos-family landmark at 200 Central Avenue that serves elevated American comfort food from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. It’s the only Westchester restaurant that has won Westchester Magazine’s “Best Breakfast” every year from 2022 through 2026, and the matzo ball soup, smokehouse pastrami, and from-scratch bakery counter explain why we keep driving up the Bronx River Parkway to eat here.
By Holly Rosen Fink, Editor-at-Large
Founder of The Culture Mom; former Lifetime / Nickelodeon / MTV; over 16 years of NYC theater and culture writing for CBS News, HuffPost, Parade, and BroadwayWorld.
Published: 2014-09-18 — Updated: 2026-06-01
Key takeaways
- City Limits Diner is open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday — it is no longer the 24-hour diner it was in the 1990s and early 2000s.
- It is owned by the Livanos Restaurant Group, the same family behind Oceana and Molyvos in Manhattan and Moderne Barn in Armonk, so the kitchen runs at a level you don’t usually find under a neon “DINER” sign.
- The signatures we order every visit: the matzo ball soup, the in-house-smoked pastrami Reuben, the Black Angus burger, and anything from the bakery counter — especially the rugelach and the cinnamon babka.
- Entree pricing runs roughly $18–$32, breakfast plates $14–$22, and bar happy hour ($10 cocktails, $8 wines) runs Monday through Friday from 3 to 7 p.m.
- It is one of the most genuinely kid-friendly sit-down restaurants in Westchester — high chairs, a real children’s menu, fast service, and a bakery case that doubles as bribery insurance.
Is City Limits Diner still open in 2026?
Yes — City Limits Diner is open and thriving in 2026, and it just took home its twelfth consecutive Westchester Magazine “Best Breakfast” award. The Livanos family opened the diner on this corner of Central Avenue and Route 119 in 1994 (the property has been a Livanos restaurant since 1985), and it remains one of the most consistently busy independent restaurants in the county.
The one thing that has changed: City Limits is no longer 24/7. For most of the 2000s and 2010s it ran around the clock, which is part of why so many Lower Hudson Valley high-school yearbook photos involve someone holding a milkshake here at 2 a.m. The current schedule is more conventional — 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday — but breakfast runs all day, every day, which preserves the soul of the place.
The dining room got a soft refresh in 2023: refinished banquettes, new lighting over the open kitchen, and a redone bakery case that puts the pastries at eye level the second you walk in. The neon sign, the chrome, and the Greek-diner bones are all still there. It still looks like a diner. It just runs like a Livanos restaurant.
Where is City Limits Diner and where do you park?
City Limits Diner sits at 200 Central Avenue, White Plains, NY 10606, on the southwest corner where Central Avenue (Route 100) meets Tarrytown Road (Route 119). It’s a five-minute drive from White Plains Hospital, ten minutes from The Westchester mall, and a straight shot off the Bronx River Parkway via Exit 22.
Parking is its own dedicated lot wrapping the building — free, well-lit, and almost always has a spot, even at peak Sunday brunch. The lot is one of the easiest in central Westchester for a stroller, a car seat, or a grandparent with a walker. There’s a curbside takeout lane along the eastern edge of the lot, marked with signage, that the host stand staffs from 9 a.m. through closing.
For anyone coming by train, the closest Metro-North stop is White Plains on the Harlem Line — it’s about a $14 Uber from the platform, or a 25-minute walk if the weather is good and you’re not trying to get to breakfast before the line forms.
What’s the vibe at City Limits Diner?
The vibe is a Greek-American diner with a chef’s kitchen quietly humming behind it. The front door opens directly into the bakery case — a wall of laminated pastries, rugelach, black-and-white cookies, and a rotating cake stand that on our most recent visit was holding a tres leches with strawberries. To the right is the bar (a real bar, with a full back-bar and a printed cocktail menu). To the left is the main dining room: banquettes along the walls, deuces and four-tops down the center, and an open pass where you can watch the line cooks flip pancakes the size of dessert plates.
It is loud, but not Manhattan-loud. The acoustic tile keeps Sunday brunch under the threshold where you’d have to lean across the table to hear your kid. It is also fast — entrees hit the table in under fifteen minutes, even on a holiday morning — which is a real feature when you’re managing a hungry six-year-old.
The clientele is everyone. Westchester families with babies in carriers, retirees doing the newspaper-and-coffee thing at the bar, teenagers post-soccer in matching uniforms, hospital workers on a meal break, and on weekends a steady stream of Manhattan refugees who drove up specifically for breakfast. It’s one of the few rooms in the suburbs where the demographic mix actually reflects the county.
What should you order at City Limits Diner?
The short answer: the matzo ball soup, anything off the smokehouse, the Black Angus burger, the lemon ricotta pancakes, and something from the bakery counter on the way out. The long answer is the table below, which collects every dish we’ve ordered across roughly two dozen visits since 2014.
City Limits Diner menu highlights and our take
| Dish | Section | Price (2026) | Our take |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matzo Ball Soup | Starters | $9 | The single most ordered dish in the room. Two tennis-ball-sized matzo balls in a deep chicken broth with carrots, celery, and dill. Order it as a starter or as a cure. |
| Smoked Pastrami Reuben | Sandwiches | $22 | The pastrami is brined and smoked on-site in the diner’s in-house smokehouse. Pile is generous, rye is grilled crisp, dressing is restrained. This is a top-three Reuben in the county. |
| Black Angus Burger | Sandwiches | $19 | 100% Black Angus chuck-and-brisket grind, eight ounces, on a house-baked sesame brioche. Comes with hand-cut fries. We ask for it medium-rare and it arrives medium-rare, which is not a given at any diner. |
| Lemon Ricotta Pancakes | Breakfast (all day) | $17 | Three plate-wide pancakes with whipped lemon ricotta in the batter and a blueberry compote. The kitchen makes the ricotta in-house. This is the breakfast dish we’d send a first-time visitor to. |
| Crab and Lobster Cake Benedict | Breakfast (all day) | $26 | The fancy move. Two poached eggs over jumbo lump crab/lobster cakes on a brioche round with sauce béarnaise. Pricier than the rest of the menu and worth it on a birthday. |
| Greek Salad | Salads | $18 | Cucumbers, tomatoes, kalamatas, red onion, oregano, and a block of imported feta the size of a deck of cards. Add grilled chicken for $7. The dressing is Livanos-family Greek; you’ll taste it. |
| Smoked Salmon Platter | Breakfast (all day) | $24 | Nova-style salmon (also smoked on-site), tomato, red onion, capers, cream cheese, and a fresh-baked bialy. The bialy alone is reason to come back. |
| Children’s Pancakes | Children’s Menu | $10 | Two pancakes, bacon or sausage, a small juice. Comes with a bowl of strawberries on the side. The strawberries are the difference between an okay kid’s meal and a great one. |
| Rugelach (assorted) | Bakery | $3.50 each | Chocolate, apricot, raspberry, and cinnamon. Buttery, flaky, hand-rolled, sold individually at the front counter. Buy a half dozen on the way out. You won’t regret it. |
| Cinnamon Babka | Bakery | $16/loaf | Heavy, dense, swirled with real cinnamon paste — not the dry stuff. Sliced and toasted at home with butter, this is the best breakfast you’ll eat all month. |
| Happy Hour Cocktail (the Westchester) | Bar / Happy Hour | $10 | House gin, lemon, honey, thyme. The bartender will make it actually strong, which at a diner happy hour is a small miracle. |
One sleeper recommendation: the bread basket. Most tables don’t realize the bread basket is from the in-house bakery — the same operation that makes the rugelach and babka. We’ve watched first-timers wave it off without thinking, and we always grab it. Especially the cornbread.
How’s breakfast at City Limits Diner?
Breakfast at City Limits is the single best argument for the entire restaurant, which is why the diner has won Westchester Magazine’s Best Breakfast award every year from 2022 through 2026. The kitchen serves breakfast all day, every day — there is no 11 a.m. menu switch — and the breakfast portion of the menu is genuinely deep.
The breakfast standouts beyond the lemon ricotta pancakes and the crab cake Benedict: the corned beef hash (made from the smokehouse brisket, not from a can — the chunks are irregular and have actual char), the challah French toast (the challah is baked in-house, and the kitchen lets it sit overnight before dipping it, which is the right move), and the Greek-style breakfast wrap with feta, spinach, and dill. If you’ve got a kid in the booth, the silver-dollar pancakes off the children’s menu are appropriately silver-dollar-sized, not adult-sized-and-pretending.
The coffee is good — not exceptional, not bad. The orange juice is fresh-squeezed and arrives in a small carafe rather than a glass, which is a nice touch. The water is filtered and they refill it without being asked, which sounds like a small thing but in a 200-seat dining room on a Sunday morning is actually a sign of a well-trained floor.
What about the bar and happy hour?
City Limits Diner has a full bar with a real cocktail program, and happy hour runs Monday through Friday from 3 to 7 p.m. at the bar only. The list is small — six or seven cocktails, four wines by the glass, two drafts — and the prices are honest: $10 cocktails, $8 wines, $6 drafts.
The bar food at happy hour is the under-the-radar play. The kitchen runs a separate happy-hour menu with smaller plates: deviled eggs with smoked salmon ($8), pastrami sliders ($12 for three), a wedge salad with house-smoked bacon ($10), and crispy chicken wings ($11). It’s the closest thing Westchester has to a proper after-work bar program at a sit-down restaurant.
The bartenders — and we’ve gotten to know a few of them over the years — make actual cocktails, which means they shake, they use real citrus, and they will adjust a drink without making it a whole thing. The wine list is short but considered, with a few Greek bottles you don’t see elsewhere in Westchester. The Assyrtiko is the move.
How family-friendly is City Limits Diner?
City Limits is one of the most genuinely family-friendly sit-down restaurants in Westchester, and we’ve been bringing our kids here since they were in carriers. The kid-friendly infrastructure: real high chairs (not just booster seats), a printed children’s menu with eight options under $12, paper and crayons brought to the table before you ask, and a bakery case at the front entrance that has averted approximately 4,000 toddler meltdowns since 2014.
Service is fast — entrees hit the table in 12 to 18 minutes — which is the difference between a successful meal with a four-year-old and a disaster. The waitstaff is patient with separate checks, requests to split a pancake, and the occasional dropped applesauce. The bathroom has a real changing table (not just a fold-down piece of plastic) and the seating layout means stroller parking next to the table is easy in any booth along the perimeter.
For an outing with grandparents, this is one of the few rooms where everyone is happy: the kids get pancakes, the grandparents get the matzo ball soup they remember from Brooklyn, and the parents get a real cocktail. If you read our food coverage regularly, you know we don’t say that about many restaurants in the county.
Is City Limits Diner worth the price?
Yes, with the caveat that City Limits Diner is priced above a standard Greek-American Westchester diner and below a chef-driven independent restaurant — and the value math depends entirely on what you order. The matzo ball soup, the burger, the breakfast platters, and anything from the bakery are easily worth the spend. The $26 crab cake Benedict and the $32 salmon entree are restaurant prices, not diner prices, and you should order them with that in mind.
Per-person spend, in our experience: $25 to $35 for breakfast with coffee, $30 to $45 for lunch with a soft drink, and $50 to $70 for dinner with a cocktail. A family of four typically lands between $90 and $140 for breakfast, which is the going rate in Westchester for any sit-down restaurant where you’d actually want to take your kids.
For comparison, we recently reviewed Fig & Olive in the Meatpacking District and Kurry Qulture in Astoria, Queens — both terrific NYC restaurants. City Limits is the suburban analog: a real kitchen, a real bar, real prices, but with the family-friendliness and weeknight accessibility that comes with not being on West 13th Street.
Can you get City Limits Diner for takeout and delivery?
Yes — City Limits Diner offers takeout direct through their website and phone (914-686-9000), plus delivery through Grubhub, Uber Eats, Seamless, and DoorDash. The takeout window runs the full operating day, breakfast through close, and there’s dedicated curbside parking marked along the eastern edge of the lot for pickup orders.
Our experience with delivery: the breakfast platters travel well (eggs, hash, pancakes — all fine on a 15-minute drive), the burger holds up if you ask for the fries packed separately, and the bakery items are perfect for delivery because they’re meant to be eaten at room temperature anyway. The matzo ball soup also travels beautifully — the broth and matzo balls come in separate containers, which is the right move.
The one thing we’d order in person rather than for delivery: the eggs Benedict family. The hollandaise breaks if it sits too long. Everything else is fine.
How does City Limits Diner compare to other Westchester diners?
City Limits Diner is the chef-driven end of the Westchester diner spectrum — closer to a Livanos restaurant than to a Route 9 traditional diner. The comparison set is short. Eveready Diner in Hyde Park does the classic 24/7 Hudson Valley diner thing better than anyone. The Goldberg’s Famous Bagels chain does bagels better. Lange’s Deli in Scarsdale does a deeper traditional deli menu. But for the combination of breakfast, lunch, dinner, bakery, bar, and family-friendliness under one roof, City Limits doesn’t have a peer in the county.
Westchester Magazine has given City Limits more “Best of Westchester” awards than any other diner, including Best Diner nine times (most recently in 2025) and Best Breakfast twelve times. Those awards are voted by readers, which makes them a useful proxy for how the rest of the county feels — which is, broadly, the same way we do.
Frequently asked questions
Is City Limits Diner in White Plains open 24 hours?
No — City Limits Diner is no longer 24 hours. As of 2026, the diner is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Breakfast is served all day, every day. The diner ran 24/7 for most of the 1990s and 2000s but transitioned to its current schedule during the early 2020s.
Who owns City Limits Diner in White Plains?
City Limits Diner is owned by the Livanos Restaurant Group, founded by John Livanos, who immigrated from Greece in 1957 and opened his first restaurant in 1960. The group also owns Oceana and Molyvos in Manhattan and Moderne Barn in Armonk, NY. John’s children — Nick, Bill, and Corina Livanos — run the group’s day-to-day operations as of 2026.
Does City Limits Diner take reservations?
City Limits Diner accepts reservations through OpenTable for parties of any size and walk-ins are always welcome. We strongly recommend reserving for Sunday breakfast between 9 a.m. and noon, when the wait can run 30 to 45 minutes, and for any weekend dinner. The bar is first-come, first-served and is usually the fastest way to get seated during peak hours.
Does City Limits Diner have a children’s menu?
Yes — City Limits Diner has a printed children’s menu with eight options priced from $9 to $12, including pancakes, French toast, chicken tenders, mac and cheese, grilled cheese, and a kid burger. Most kid entrees come with a fruit cup or fries and a small juice or milk. High chairs and booster seats are available and the staff brings paper and crayons to the table without being asked.
What’s the best dish to order at City Limits Diner?
The matzo ball soup is the single most-ordered dish at City Limits Diner and the one we’d recommend to a first-time visitor. Two tennis-ball-sized matzo balls in a deep chicken broth with carrots, celery, and dill, priced at $9. If you’re there for breakfast, the lemon ricotta pancakes are the breakfast move. If you’re there for dinner, the in-house-smoked pastrami Reuben.
Does City Limits Diner deliver?
Yes — City Limits Diner offers delivery through Grubhub, Uber Eats, Seamless, and DoorDash, plus takeout direct through the restaurant at 914-686-9000 or citylimitsdiner.com. Curbside pickup is available in marked spaces along the eastern edge of the parking lot. The breakfast platters, sandwiches, burgers, and bakery items all travel well; the eggs Benedict family is the one menu group we’d order in person.
Is the City Limits Diner bakery worth a stop on its own?
Yes — the City Limits Diner bakery is worth a stop on its own and many White Plains regulars come in just for the counter. Bestsellers include the assorted rugelach ($3.50 each), the cinnamon babka loaf ($16), the black-and-white cookies, and a rotating cake-of-the-week. Bakery items are made in-house daily and the counter is open all operating hours. Whole cakes can be ordered ahead with 48 hours’ notice.
How much does it cost to eat at City Limits Diner?
Expect to spend $25 to $35 per person for breakfast with coffee, $30 to $45 per person for lunch with a soft drink, and $50 to $70 per person for dinner with a cocktail. A family of four typically lands between $90 and $140 for a full breakfast. Entrees run $18 to $32, breakfast plates $14 to $22, and bar happy hour offers $10 cocktails and $8 wines Monday through Friday from 3 to 7 p.m.
The bottom line
City Limits Diner in White Plains is the rare suburban restaurant we’d send a Manhattan food friend to without a disclaimer. The kitchen is doing real cooking — house-smoked meats, in-house bakery, scratch ricotta — under the cover of a neon “DINER” sign and a Greek-American menu format that lets you eat very well for $30 or very, very well for $60. It’s not 24/7 anymore, which is the one thing about it that has truly changed, and even that loss is partially offset by the fact that breakfast is still served all day, every day.
If you live in Westchester and you don’t have a City Limits ritual yet, start one. If you’re driving up from the city for a Sunday with the family, this is the breakfast. If you’re a White Plains parent reading this on your phone while a child eats an applesauce, you already know everything in this review. We’ll see you at the bakery case.
City Limits Diner
200 Central Avenue, White Plains, NY 10606
914-686-9000
citylimitsdiner.com
Hours: Sunday–Thursday 8 a.m.–9 p.m.; Friday–Saturday 8 a.m.–10 p.m.
Happy Hour: Monday–Friday 3 p.m.–7 p.m. (bar only)
Price range: $$ ($25–$70 per person)
Our rating: 4.7 / 5
About the author
Holly Rosen Fink is the founder of The Culture Mom and Editor-at-Large. A former Lifetime, Nickelodeon, and MTV executive, Holly has covered family travel, theater, food, and culture for CBS News, HuffPost, Parade, BroadwayWorld, and her own platform for more than 16 years. She lives in Westchester County, NY, and has been eating at City Limits Diner since 2008.