"Not only does the food come fast, but it's like a cult thing. They talk to you, they're sarcastic," he says of the cooks. Sometimes, he says, the cooks take five-minute smoking breaks and all cooking stops.

"Another great thing about the Tasty," he says, "is that you can say you'd like a bagel and herbal tea, and what do you get? The cheeseburger with onions. That's all they serve. You can see the desserts, but you can't eat them."

Aamoth, by experimentation, has discovered the basic principle of late-night Tasty life. Although the formal menu stretches across the back wall, during peak hours Smith and Drapeau serve only the Red Alert Special: double cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and Husky superburgers. "We used to try to make everything," says Michael Smith, "and we were going out of our minds."

"You're welcome to read everything else," Drapeau tells a hapless customer, "but this is what you'll be tested on, right here." He points to the Red Alert board.

There is a $3 minimum, and loitering is not encouraged.

Drapeau flips the burgers and brings them, still dripping with grease, to the counter. Smith lays out buns and cheese, puts on lettuce and mayonnaise, and skewers the burgers with a cocktail toothpick.

Drapeau puts them on plates and they rest at the counter: waiting for the next person to pass by, see the light, hear the music, get the craving.

"Girls like it the most because they eat, and eat, and eat," says Aamoth. "Guys like it too, but girls wouldn't normally eat like this."

"True," he emphasizes, his eyes large behind hornrimmed glasses.

On the other side of the restaurant, Michelle R. Voci, clutching her black suede purse on her lap, disproves Aamoth's theory about women's lust for Husky cheeseburgers.

"The food is pretty awful," says Voci, who is in her final year at the Graduate School of Education. She toys with a french fry.

She comes to the Tasty because "I know it's the only place that's open 24 hours," she says. "Also, we drank too much, so we wanted to get some food in our stomachs."

Next to her, Ted T. Kataji, a first-year Harvard Business School student, nods in agreement as he eats his double cheeseburger.

"Actually," Voci adds, sipping a Coke, "this place would be okay if it just had more of a selection. The $3 minimum is ridiculous."

"Yeah, a buck for a soda," says Kataji. "We spent $90 going out tonight, so we figured we had to round it off to $100."