New York City Food Guide: Where I’d Actually Eat

Order: A bagel with cream cheese and lox, plus a babka to go.

Four generations of the Russ family have run this appetizing counter since 1914, and the word appetizing is a whole New York food category: smoked fish, cured fish, cream cheese, bagels, done at a level nobody else touches. The line is part of the experience. Put your order together while you wait and say it once, clearly.

Go see them:WebsiteInstagram @russanddaughters

Order: The porterhouse for two, creamed spinach, and the thick cut bacon to start.

Peter Luger has dry aged and broiled steaks under the Williamsburg Bridge since 1887, in a room that feels like a German beer hall because it basically is one. Old school rule that still applies: it ran cash and house accounts only for most of its life, and the guides still tell you to bring cash. The steak is the history lesson and the dinner at the same time.

Go see them:WebsiteInstagram @peterlugersteakhouse

Order: A plain cheese slice. Maybe a pepperoni if you are feeling wild. Fold it and keep walking.

Joe's has sold the classic New York slice at Carmine Street since 1975: thin, foldable, sauce and cheese in balance, no tricks. A slice ran about $3.50 to $4 in the guides I read, which makes this the cheapest master class in the city. Every visitor should eat one standing on the sidewalk. It tastes better that way and I will not explain the science.

Go see them:WebsiteInstagram @joespizzanyc

Order: The tasting menu. If you book one fine dining night in New York, this is the one I would book.

Chef Eric Ripert's seafood temple has held three Michelin stars and the top of the city's fine dining list for decades, with lunch seatings the guides put around $100 to $150 a person and dinner higher. It is the one white tablecloth pick on my New York list, and it earns it the same way Katz's earns its line: nobody in America does its thing better.

Go see them:WebsiteInstagram @lebernardinny

Order: The fresh mozzarella slice when it just came out of the oven.

Yes, Joe's is famous, and yes, locals still eat there, which almost never happens with famous slice shops. The Carmine Street original is the neighborhood's default slice: after school, after work, after midnight. Famous and local at the same time is the hardest trick in New York food, and Joe's pulls it off daily.

Go see them:WebsiteInstagram @joespizzanyc

Order: A falafel sandwich with extra hot sauce, eaten on MacDougal Street.

Mamoun's has fried falafel on MacDougal Street since 1971, cheap, fast, and open late. It fed broke students, cab drivers, and club crowds for fifty years, and it still runs on the same simple formula: hot falafel, fresh bread, sauce with actual heat. Late night New York runs on places like this.

Go see them:WebsiteInstagram @mamounsfalafel

Order: Adobada tacos, one carne asada, salsa verde on everything.

Los Tacos No. 1 built its name inside Chelsea Market and the lines followed it to more locations. The adobada comes off the trompo, the tortillas get pressed to order, and you eat standing at the counter the way tacos taste best. New York's taco game is real, and this is where locals prove it to visiting Californians.

Go see them:WebsiteInstagram @lostacos1

Angel's Share helped start the modern speakeasy era in New York: no sign worth mentioning, a small room, and Japanese precision behind the bar. The Village Voice's cocktail coverage puts it among the bars that taught this city how to make a serious drink again. Rules run quiet here: small groups, low voices, cocktails built like watch movements. The room came back after a closure scare, which makes every drink there taste a little like a second chance.

Go see them:WebsiteInstagram @angelssharenyc

Attaboy sits behind an unmarked door on Eldridge Street, in the room where Milk & Honey rewrote American cocktails, and there is no menu. You tell the bartender what you like and a drink shows up built for you. No reservations game, no velvet rope attitude, just a dark little room and bartenders who treat a stranger's taste like a puzzle worth solving. Order by mood and trust the result.

Go see them:WebsiteInstagram @attaboy134

A cable car that glides over the East River next to the Queensboro Bridge, and you pay for it with the same MetroCard swipe as the subway. Transit Freak's New York coverage nails why it works: it is a postcard view priced like public transit. Ride it at dusk, walk the island's quiet waterfront, and look back at Manhattan like you own a piece of it.

Go see them:WebsiteInstagram @rooseveltislandny

A museum inside a freight elevator in a Tribeca alley, open basically on weekends, showing tiny exhibits of strange and overlooked objects behind little windows. Thrillist's New York coverage calls it thought provoking, and it is the smallest big idea in the city: a museum that treats a single odd object like a masterpiece. Ten minutes, total wonder, zero gift shop pressure.

Go see them:WebsiteInstagram @mmuseumm

A 478 acre cemetery in Brooklyn that was a bigger tourist draw than Niagara Falls in the 1860s, and locals still use it like a great green park. Famous graves, a skyline view from Battle Hill, and rolling hills that forget you are in Brooklyn at all. It sounds like a strange pick until you stand on that hill at golden hour. Then it makes complete sense.

Go see them:WebsiteInstagram @historicgreenwood