Food in Upper East Side

A Czech beer hall on the ground floor of Bohemian National Hall, run by Vit Stuchl, who had restaurants in Prague before this one. Svíčková or goulash comes with steamed bread dumplings. Czech beer is on tap to go with them. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which in practice means the bill is ordinary and the cooking is not. You are already in the building, so there is no walk.

Mon, 5pm to 10pm. Tue to Fri, 5pm to 11pm. Sat, 11am to 3pm and 5pm to 11pm. Sun, 11am to 3pm and 5pm to 10pm

Andre Szilagyi opened this on Second Avenue in 2004 as Andre's Hungarian Bakery and later renamed it. It is the last Hungarian place left in a stretch of Yorkville that once had several, and the baking is still the reason to come in. Dobos torte, strudel made with poppy seed or apple, Hungarian crepes. There is a full kitchen behind the pastry case doing goulash and chicken paprikash if you want a meal instead.

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

An Alsatian bistro on Second Avenue at 88th, going on twenty years. Tarte flambee and choucroute garnie, which is the cooking of a border region and reads as much German as French. The draw beyond the food is a beer list of more than 130, kept by a cicerone on staff. Lunch, then a break, then dinner.

Mon, 11:30am to 3:30pm and 5pm to 9pm. Tue to Thu, 11:30am to 3:30pm and 5pm to 10pm. Fri, 11:30am to 3:30pm and 5pm to 10:30pm. Sat, 10am to 3:45pm and 5pm to 10:30pm. Sun, 10am to 3:45pm and 5pm to 9pm

A Lexington Avenue counter that sits between a diner and a coffee shop, running short-order eggs and omelets from seven in the morning. It does not dress any of it up.

Daily 7am to 5pm.

A Greek-run diner that spent more than forty years on East 86th Street and moved in March 2023 to a larger corner at Second and 85th. It is open twenty-four hours a day, every day, which makes it the only thing in this part of Manhattan that is certain to be serving whenever a show ends. The menu is the full diner one, pages of it. Eggs at two in the morning are the reason to know where it is.

Open 24 hours, daily

One of two German businesses left on the Second Avenue stretch that used to be full of them, open since 1939 and still run by a family. Schnitzel, sausage, potato pancakes and beer served in boot-shaped glasses if you ask for the big one. The dining side takes reservations but the front takes walk-ins. It is loud in a way that has nothing to do with a sound system.

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

A French brasserie on the Lexington corner at 75th, with the tile and the zinc and a wine list of about 225 bottles that leans French. Modern French cooking alongside the brasserie standards. It opens at noon on weekdays and 11:30am at weekends and runs straight through the afternoon, which is the part that matters here.

Mon to Fri, noon to 9:30pm. Sat, 11:30am to 9:30pm. Sun, 11:30am to 8:30pm

Constantine Poulos started selling tropical fruit drinks on this corner in 1932 and added hot dogs a few years later, and the pairing has been the whole menu ever since. The original storefront at 179 East 86th Street was sold to a condominium developer and closed in April 2023, and the business came back in July 2024 a block west at 206B, between Second and Third. You order at the counter and eat standing up at a narrow ledge. Two dogs and a papaya drink is still what almost everybody gets.

Daily, 9am to 11pm

A York Avenue diner that says it has been feeding the neighborhood since 1945 and opens at six in the morning, every day, until midnight. A long menu, booths, and breakfast served at any hour of that stretch.

Daily 6am to midnight