Grits and Determination: A Recipe for Success

Iscoe finishes his steak and orders another one. The room is hazy with grease smoke. "The second steak was better," he says, finishing the last bite. So much for diminishing marginal returns.

There are good things about working alone, says Rawlings, who is wearing a black T-shirt and cap. He keeps all the tips and he gets to experiment a little with the menu. He makes a Blue Smoky Mountain burger, that mixes bleu cheese with the barbecue sauce. As a bow to history, he writes "S & E" in sauce on the cheese of each cheeseburger, for Steak 'n Egg.

He likes the food and he likes Oz. "The dirtiest job in here, Oz will do it," he says.

And he likes the pressure. "You drop it, they see it," he says. "And you burn yourself, you can't go off screaming."

Each of the cooks has the same scar on his forearm -- from the waffle iron.

Well-Oiled Machine

As Rawlings's shift winds down around 10:30, business picks up. Students in baseball caps order waffles and ice cream. A silver-haired man in a blazer and gray flannels orders two eggs, sunny-side up. Sike Sharigan, who gives his age as "62 or more," likes to stop by on his way home from a night of socializing at his favorite downtown watering hole, the Prime Rib. "If I don't have dinner there, I have it here," he says. "People who work here are very industrious."

The energy rubs off on others: The guys who run their coffeehouse in the bottom of Politics & Prose bookstore honed their business plan while meeting at the diner.

So does the ease: Erika Eckstrom, 21, and Jon Smith, 20, are having a late-night meal together. She works for the Peace Corps; he's an Army sergeant stationed at Fort Myer.

God bless America.

There is a drunk woman at the counter talking Rawlings's ear off. She asks if any celebrities ever come in. Rawlings says Mike Tyson once showed up and ate two Smoky Mountain burgers.

Just before 11, cook Kevin Naylor and waiter Malcolm Magwood arrive. They immediately pitch in. Naylor hands menus to three customers; Magwood empties garbage. The transition is seamless.

Both men wear the informal Steak 'n Egg uniform -- black T-shirts and caps. Naylor has wire-rims.

The sounds: the kuh-lank of clean plates going back on the shelf, the scrrrrippp of the spatula scraping the edge of the grill. The ssshhhiiissshhh of vegetable oil on the grill and the boom-she-boom of hip-hop songs on the radio.

At 1:20, a cop comes in and Naylor fixes her some hash browns. Ten minutes later, steak lover David Iscoe is back, with four friends in tow, for some chili-and-cheese hash browns.

The patio is closed tonight. If people want to sit outside, they must order their food to go. Magwood explains this to a young brunet woman who asks for a root beer float. She is wearing a blue T-shirt that reads: "If you love him, set him free. If he doesn't come back, he's with me."

Magwood tells her that the outside is closed.

"Even for strippers?" the woman says, lifting her T-shirt and flashing Magwood and Naylor in the doorway.

Somehow, Magwood finds a way to deliver the root beer float and other food to the patio.

"Welcome to the night shift, dude," says Naylor, returning to the grill.

The stripper sits with a cop who says he's not hungry, he just wants to watch her eat.

It's 3:05 a.m. and the place is hopping. There are 15 people in the diner, ordering and eating. Naylor is in the zone -- flipping hash browns, laying down the bacon presses, snatching buns from a bag and cheese slices from a stack. He applies liberal amounts of vegetable oil to just about everything. Ssshhhiiissshhh !

Before you know it, the sun is up. Eventually the next shift will arrive. If all goes according to plan, they will follow Barrie's philosophy of industry, ingenuity, generosity. They will keep pouring the coffee, poaching the eggs, using the lulls to prepare for the onslaughts and -- from this one small place -- they will keep their world spinning.