"It was the greatest place in the world I ever worked. In my time, I'll never find a place like that again. I loved the Tasty so much because it wasn't even like I was working--I met so many nice people," he says.

Coney expects that the institutional nature of an HDS restaurant will force him to modify the interactive cooking style he grew to love at the Tasty.

"I enjoy talking to people," he says. "I had so much fun talking to people and I won't be able to do that like in the Tasty."

Coney often had a joking relationship with Tasty clients.

"Students [at the Tasty] come from all parts of the world. I like to kid them and they get a great laugh out of it," Coney says.

Coney, who is now 62, had worked as a cook in Harvard Square for 40 years, including his time at the Tasty.

Early in his career he worked at Toga Lounge and As You Like It. In the 1980s, he worked at Tommy's Lunch (now Tommy's New York-Style Pizza) concurrently with his job at the Tasty.

Coney says he plans to work for several more years in the food service industry.

"I hope to work as long as I can because I've worked all my life," he says.

Coney says he hopes to spend a significant portion of his remaining years as a cook flipping burgers in a restaurant or a dining hall closer to the College--a wish shared by Mayer.

"At some point we'll get him on this side of the river," Mayer says. "He is so well-known that it would be nice to take advantage of his notoriety, because a lot of people on the other side of the river [at the Medical Center] don't know the Tasty."