Food in Port Richmond

A charcoal-chicken and steam-table place at the Forest Avenue end of Port Richmond, four doors from Mother Pugs. You order half or whole chicken with rice and beans. Tortillas come with it, or point at the trays and have a plate built. It opens at nine in the morning and runs to eleven at night, every day, which on this stretch of Forest Avenue is the widest window there is.

Daily, 9am to 11pm

A tavern that opened on Port Richmond Avenue in 1937 and started putting pizza out of the oven in 1951. It is a 150-seat place with a bar down one side, families at the tables and thin sixteen-inch pies coming out fast. There is no table booking and there never has been.

Daily, 11am to 11pm

A sit-down ice cream parlor on Forest Avenue with a counter, booths and egg creams, still making its own ice cream and its own Igloo cakes. It runs to nine most nights, half nine on weekends, which is later than any other dessert on this stretch. The Clarke Avenue branch has shut but this one is the original and it is busy.

Sun to Thu, 11am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 9:30pm

A bright taqueria directly across Forest Avenue from Mother Pugs, doing tacos, tortas, cemitas and birria from eleven in the morning. It is a counter-and-tables operation rather than a bar with food, so you eat and go. Portions are large and the birria is what the block orders.

Mon to Thu, 11am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 10pm. Sun, 11am to 8pm

A Pueblan bakery and kitchen on Port Richmond Avenue, open from eight in the morning until ten at night. The front is trays of conchas and sweet bread that you take with tongs, and behind it is a kitchen cooking the food of Puebla rather than a generic menu. Port Richmond Avenue is the center of Staten Island's Mexican community and this is one of the places it eats.

Daily, 8am to 10pm