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Seinfeld finds a new diner

Comedian chows down at Colony with Sarah Jessica Parker for web series

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It played out like a scene from NBC’s “Seinfeld.” Jerry Seinfeld was sitting in a diner one afternoon, eating lunch, sipping coffee, chatting about quirky, mundane topics with a friend, offering deadpan observations.

Except this wasn’t in New York City. Nor was he accompanied by Kramer, Elaine or George Costanza.

The location was the Colony Diner, on Hempstead Turnpike in East Meadow. His lunch partner was the actress Sarah Jessica Parker.

Seinfeld chose the East Meadow eatery as the location for an episode of his web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” He and Parker visited the Colony in May — Seinfeld ordered chicken parmigiana and Parker had a patty melt — as if they were any regular East Meadow diners. Only they were surrounded by several cameras and microphone booms.

It all came together rather quickly. The diner’s owner, George Strifas, said he got a call from the web series’ producers, who told him they wanted to film an episode there. Strifas, who said he gets these kinds of requests from time to time, was interested, but wanted to know more. At first the producers told him only that filming would take place at lunchtime. “I said, ‘Well that’s kind of hard to do,’” Strifas said. “It’s a little intrusive to the customers.”

When they told him the show would feature a “major television celebrity,” Strifas’s interest was piqued. When he agreed to keep the information confidential, the producers told him it was Jerry Seinfeld, to which Strifas responded, “Come on down. Love to have him.”

The episode aired on June 19 on the show’s website. The show, which features Seinfeld and another comic celebrity in a vintage car, on their way to a coffee shop or restaurant, focuses on their conversation — the same simple concept that made his NBC sitcom so popular.

In this episode, Seinfeld picked Parker up at her Manhattan home in a 1976 Ford LTD Country Squire, and the two headed east on the Long Island Expressway. The banter quickly steered toward city versus suburban living. Seinfeld, who grew up in Massapequa, told Parker, “When I grew up in the suburbs, I wanted to be in the city. Now I want to live in suburbs.”

Later, on Hempstead Turnpike, he remarked, “I can’t tell you how happy it makes me driving on these streets where I grew up.”

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