The exterior of Monk's Café on "Seinfeld" is a real Manhattan eatery. What is its name?

The exterior of Monk’s Café on “Seinfeld” is Tom’s Restaurant in Manhattan.

Tom’s Restaurant stands at the northeast corner of Broadway and West 112th Street, near Columbia University on New York City’s Upper West Side. The diner’s exterior appears throughout “Seinfeld” as Monk’s Café, the fictional coffee shop where Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer regularly meet.

Although the outside is a real location, the café interiors were filmed on a soundstage in Los Angeles rather than inside Tom’s Restaurant. That distinction is easy to miss because the show cuts between the familiar exterior and the recurring booth-and-counter interior as if they were one continuous place.

Tom’s Restaurant has another major pop-culture connection: it inspired the diner in Suzanne Vega’s 1987 song “Tom’s Diner.” Vega attended nearby Barnard College and wrote the song after spending time at the restaurant. The real diner’s fame therefore comes from two separate associations—Vega’s song and its role as Monk’s exterior. It is not Gray’s Papaya, Junior’s, or Katz’s Delicatessen.