Food in New York

The deli that Abe Lebewohl opened on Second Avenue in 1954 and that his nephew moved to East 33rd Street in 2007 after the old lease went. Still glatt kosher, still cures its own pastrami, still puts a bowl of pickles and a dish of chopped liver on the table before you order. Matzo ball soup, kasha varnishkes, egg creams at the counter.

Daily, 11am to 8pm

A bright Hong Kong-style cafe that took over the old Sunway space and serves congee, sizzling platters and beef chow fun until four in the morning. The menu runs long and cheap in the way those cafes do, with steamed custard buns and hot and sour soup ordered off the same page as dim sum. Families finish dinner at one end while people who just got off work start at the other.

Daily, 11am to 4am

A bagel and pizza counter on Washington Avenue, feeding the warehouse trade that surrounds it. It opens at half past five in the morning and is finished by half past one in the afternoon, and it does not open at the weekend at all. When it is open it is the only thing you can reach from the door of Meadowlands Comedy Club without crossing anything.

Mon to Fri, 5:30am to 1:30pm. Closed Saturday and Sunday

Noel and Geeta Brown have been frying bara and filling it with curried chickpeas since 2002, first in a narrow storefront on Nostrand Avenue and since 2018 around the corner on Fulton with seats. You order doubles at the counter and say how much pepper you want. The James Beard Foundation gave the place an America's Classics award in 2019.

Mon, 6:30am to 4pm. Tue to Sat, 6:30am to 7pm. Closed Sunday. Listings disagree on the close, so go earlier rather than later

A pastry counter on the Little Egypt stretch of Steinway Street with trays of baklava and knafeh behind the glass and more of it stacked on the shelves. The knafeh is what people come for, shredded phyllo over sweet cheese with syrup poured over it at the counter. Ma'amoul and basboosa are in the same case. You point, they weigh, and you pay by the piece or by the pound.

Daily, 11am to 10:30pm

Open on Van Buren Avenue since 1993, with butchers on staff who cut the meat that goes on the charcoal grill. The menu runs through grilled fish and picanha alongside omelets and sandwiches, so lunch and dinner are the same counter. There is a bar and a takeout side.

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

Sesame semolina loaves cut to order and filled with prosciutto and fresh mozzarella, from the SoHo shop that opened on Sullivan Street in 1986. No substitutions, and they mean it.

Mon to Fri, 7am to 8pm. Sat and Sun, 10am to 4pm

A third-generation Guyanese bakery that has been on this stretch of Nostrand Avenue for more than sixty years, directly across from Bar Bayeux. Pine tarts, currant rolls, cheese straws and black cake go across the counter in a paper bag, and there is a small cafe next door at 1107 if you want to sit with a coffee. Everything is priced in single dollars and the line moves at the speed of the register.

Tue to Sat, 7:30am to 7:30pm. Sun, 7:30am to 6:30pm. Closed Monday for walk-in

A small Brazilian lanches counter further up Ferry Street that never closes. The trade is burgers built the Brazilian way, with egg and corn and potato sticks on them, plus salgadinhos and coffee. The name means late hours.

Open 24 hours, seven days a week

One of the Italian holdovers from the Flushing that existed before 1970, on a side street off Northern Boulevard north of downtown. Tight quarters, a greasy menu board, juice in plastic dispensers, and a slice that regulars have been eating for decades. The answer to what kind of food is simply pizza.

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

Carl Redding opened this on Mother's Day 1999 and named it for his grandmother Amy Ruth Moore Bass, who taught him to cook in Alabama. The chicken and waffle platters are named after people, and the one carrying Al Sharpton's name is there because Redding worked at his National Action Network.

Monday to Thursday 11:30am to 9:30pm, Friday and Saturday 11am to 10:30pm, Sunday 11am to 9:30pm

The New York outpost of a Chennai group that started in 1964, cooking Chettinad food, which means black pepper and curry leaf and a good deal more heat than the dosa places up the street. Pepper chicken and mutton chukka off the board, biryani by the plate. This is the one on Lexington where the tables are full of people speaking Tamil.

Mon to Fri, 11:30am to 3pm and 5:30pm to 10pm. Sat and Sun, noon to 4pm and 5:30pm to 11pm

A Dominican kitchen on Bay Street two minutes from the Stapleton waterfront, doing yaroa, quipes, empanadas, patacón and homestyle plates. It opens at ten in the morning and runs to ten at night, midnight on Friday and Saturday, which on this stretch of Bay Street is the longest day anyone keeps. It is counter food eaten at a handful of tables.

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

María Piedad Cano was a judge in Colombia before she came to New York and spent years selling arepas off a griddle cart on Roosevelt Avenue. Her son Alejandro Osorio runs the 37th Avenue storefront now and the arepa de choclo is still the thing to order, a thin sweet-corn cake folded over cheese like an omelette. It is a counter with tables, cash and card, no booking.

Mon, Tue and Thu, noon to 10pm. Wed, noon to midnight. Fri, noon to 11pm. Sat, 11am to 11pm. Sun, 11am to 10pm

A narrow Venezuelan place on 36th Avenue that has been griddling arepas on this block since the late 2000s. You order at the counter from a board of about twenty fillings and the reina pepiada is the one most people come back for. There are a dozen or so tables and the turnover is quick. It sits directly across 36th Avenue from Melrose Ballroom's door.

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

The covered market Fiorello La Guardia built in 1940 to get the pushcarts off Arthur Avenue, still running as a row of independent stalls under one roof. Mike's Deli is the big one, with mozzarella, sandwiches and a counter you eat at. There are butchers, a produce stall, a cigar roller and a pasta maker in there too.

Mon to Sat, 9am to 5pm. Closed Sunday. Mike's Deli inside runs Mon to Thu 7:30am to 6pm, Fri to 7pm, Sat 7am to 8pm, closed Sunday

Arturo Giunta opened this in 1957 on MacDougal Street and moved it to the corner of Houston and Thompson in the early sixties. His children Lisa and Scott run it now. The oven is coal-fired, pizza is sold only by the whole pie, and there is live jazz at the bar from seven every evening.

Daily, 5pm to 11pm. Live jazz nightly, 7pm to 11pm

A kosher dairy counter that opened on Second Avenue in 1938, when this block was the Yiddish theater district. Soup comes with challah baked on the premises. There are about a dozen stools along the counter and no table service.

Tue to Sun, 7am to 11pm. Closed Monday

A small storefront on Third Avenue doing pierogies from the owner's grandmother's recipes, boiled or fried, by the half dozen. There are a handful of tables and a short menu that does not pretend to be anything else. It is the cheapest full plate of food within a few blocks of Littlefield.

Mon, 11:30am to 9:30pm. Tue, closed. Wed to Sun, 11:30am to 9:30pm

Keith McNally opened this brasserie on Spring Street in April 1997 and it has run a French menu from breakfast through to midnight ever since. The distressed brass mirrors and the tin ceiling were built that way at the start rather than acquired with age. Bread and pastry are baked daily at the bakery on the same address.

Mon to Fri, 8am to midnight. Sat and Sun, 9am to midnight. Service runs without a break through the afternoon

Open at 32 Withers Street since 1900 and run by Anthony Bamonte since the late 1960s, with his daughters working it now. Waiters in jackets, a payphone nook by the door, veal parmigiana and linguine with clam sauce. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Wed and Thu noon to 10pm. Fri and Sat noon to 11pm. Sun 1pm to 10pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday

Smoked fish sliced to order at a counter that has been on Amsterdam Avenue since 1929, under a business that started in Harlem in 1908. The dining area behind the counter kept its old wallpaper and formica tables. Order eggs and onions with lox and pay cash.

Restaurant Tue to Fri, 8:30am to 4pm. Sat and Sun, 8:30am to 5pm. Retail counter Tue to Sun, 8am to 5pm. Closed Monday

Soon tofu arrives at the table still boiling in a stone pot, and you crack a raw egg into it yourself while it is spitting. A bowl of purple rice comes with a dozen banchan. The bill stays short. The 32nd Street branch opens at half past ten in the morning and runs to five on a weekend night.

Sun to Thu, 10:30am to 1am. Fri and Sat, 10:30am to 5am

A small place on Atlantic near Bond with a brick oven by the door that turns out pita to order, which is the reason to go. Lamb and chicken off the grill, hummus and baba ghanoush, and a back garden with a few tables under a canopy. The bread arrives hot and the bill stays low, and it is open from 11am to 10pm every day of the week.

Every day, 11am to 10pm

A full Queens diner on 21st Street with a counter, booths and a menu that runs from eggs to souvlaki to a slice of pie. It opens at five in the morning and closes at two most nights, which makes it the default answer in this part of Astoria at an hour when everything else has shut. In warm months the parking lot has been used for rooftop film nights and drive-in screenings.

Sun to Sat, 5am to 2am, except Monday, when it closes at midnight

A counter with no seating at the western end of Brighton Beach Avenue, turning out khachapuri in several shapes along with a chocolate and walnut cake stacked absurdly high. The savory pastry to ask for is the bacon twist with tarragon and dill baked into the layers. Know what you want before you reach the front, because the regulars behind you do.

Daily, 9:30am to 9pm

Frank Pinello opened this in 2010 in a former bakery on Havemeyer Street and bakes in the wood-burning oven that was already there. The white slice is what to order. Wood benches, paper plates, a few dollars a slice.

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

Zachary Golper's bakery on lower Smith Street, open since 2011 and built around long-fermented sourdough and the dark bake the name refers to. The case holds croissants, kouign-amann and morning buns alongside the loaves, there is coffee at the counter and a handful of seats along the wall. It opens at 7am seven days, which is earlier than anything else near Roulette.

Every day, 7am to 7pm

A small corner bakery on Ninth Avenue near 21st, going since the early 2000s, with layer cakes and banana pudding in the case and a few seats in the window. Everything is baked on the premises and sold by the slice. It stays open to eleven at the end of the week, which is unusual for a bakery anywhere in Chelsea.

Mon, 9am to 9pm. Tue and Wed, 9am to 10pm. Thu to Sat, 9am to 11pm. Sun, 9am to 9pm

A truck parked on Roosevelt Avenue near 78th Street that started in 2019 and is the reason Tijuana-style birria is now everywhere in New York. You order quesatacos at the window and they come with a cup of consommé for dipping. People eat standing on the sidewalk under the elevated 7. It runs to 1am on weeknights and 2am on Friday and Saturday.

Mon to Thu, 5pm to 1am. Fri, 5pm to 2am. Sat, noon to 2am. Sun, noon to 1am

A corner slice window on Seventh Avenue South where the Nonna Maria, a grandma slice with fresh mozzarella and basil, is what people actually come for. It runs later than anything else on the block, to five in the morning on weekends. You order at the counter and eat standing.

Mon to Wed and Sun, 10am to 2am. Thu, 10am to 4am. Fri and Sat, 10am to 5am

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

Rodízio service on Monroe Street, where waiters carry skewers of picanha and sausage to the table until you turn the card over. One fixed price covers the meat and the hot table. The dining floor is loud and the turnover is quick, so a party of four walking in at 9pm gets sat.

Mon to Sat, 11:30am to 11pm. Sun, noon to 10pm

Daniel Boulud's brasserie across Broadway from Lincoln Center, opening on September 17, 2026 in the combined space that held Bar Boulud, Boulud Sud and Épicerie Boulud until they closed in July 2025. Two floors and more than ten thousand square feet, designed by the Rockwell Group, with express menus planned around curtain times.

Not yet published. The restaurant opens September 17, 2026

Open on Nostrand Avenue since 1938, selling a roast beef sandwich that gets dunked in the drippings before it reaches you, with a cup of the same broth on the side. The building looks like a roadhouse dropped into Sheepshead Bay and the interior is dark wood and booths. You can eat at the counter in ten minutes or sit down with a beer.

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

Trays of baklava in the window, cut into squares and diamonds and rolled into cylinders with pistachio packed end to end. You order by the piece or by weight at the counter and there is tea and Turkish coffee if you want to stay. It sits on the Turkish and Central Asian stretch of Brighton Beach Avenue rather than the Russian one.

Daily, 11am to 7pm. Listings disagree and some post 7am to 7pm

A bagel counter on Eighth Avenue at 24th, kettle-boiling and hand-rolling its own and keeping about two dozen cream cheeses in a refrigerated case behind the glass. You take a ticket, say what you want and watch it get built. It opens at half past six on a weekday, which is early enough to be the first thing open on this stretch of Eighth Avenue, and it shuts at three every day without exception.

Mon to Fri, 6:30am to 3pm. Sat and Sun, 7am to 3pm

A 1920s apothecary on Henry Street that sat empty for years and reopened in 2010 as a working soda fountain, with the original tin ceiling and tile floor still in it. Egg creams, sundaes and a short savory menu, ordered at the counter or at the marble bar. All ages, all afternoon.

Mon to Fri, 2pm to 10pm. Sat and Sun, 1pm 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

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

Plant-based Ethiopian cooking served on injera for the table to share, going since 2011. There is a full bar and they put on music some nights. It is built for a group of four to eat off one platter, which is rarer than it should be near a venue.

Monday, Wednesday and Thursday noon to 10pm. Friday noon to 11pm. Tuesday 5pm to 10pm. Saturday and Sunday noon to 4pm then 5pm to 10pm, 11pm on Saturday

A small Forest Avenue counter selling burek, the coiled pastry filled with meat, cheese or spinach, with house-made yoghurt to go with it. The name says pizza and there is no pizza. It has been a Forest Avenue fixture for years and it is only open in the middle of the day.

Daily 11am to 3pm. The narrow window is real, so check before you walk over

The burger that hid behind a curtain in a Midtown hotel lobby for twenty years, now at a counter in the food hall. Cheeseburger and fries. The line moves.

Daily, 9am to 10pm

Open every hour of the week on the far eastern end of the Northern Boulevard Korean stretch, serving sundaeguk, the blood sausage soup that Koreans eat to undo a long night. It arrives with salted shrimp and pickled onion to season it yourself. The dining floor is plain and the turnover at three in the morning is the same as at noon.

Open 24 hours, seven days

A family has run this on Dyckman Street since 2008, griddling cachapas, which are sweet corn pancakes folded over cheese. Tequeños, empanadas and patacones come off the same counter and the juices are pressed to order. It stays open until five in the morning on weekends.

Mon to Wed, 9am to 2am. Thu, 9am to 3am. Fri and Sat, 9am to 5am. Sun, 9am to 3am

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 dark narrow French café on lower Smith Street, open since the late 1990s, with a zinc-look bar and small marble tables. A back garden is behind them. The pancakes are what it is known for and they come out thick with a crisp edge, but it also does steak frites and a croque monsieur all day. It is cash only, which catches people out, and there is an ATM up the street.

Every day, 9am to 10pm

A Brazilian bakery and cafeteria on Ferry Street that opens at four in the morning and does not shut at all between Friday and Sunday. The case holds coxinhas, empanadas, brigadeiros and the cheese bread it is named for, all baked on site, and there is a plate of the day and a soup as well. Orders go over a counter and most people eat standing or take a bag away.

Mon to Thu, 4am to midnight. Fri and Sat, open 24 hours. Sun, open all day to 11pm

On the corner of Seventh Avenue and 17th since 1998, open around the clock, with white banquettes and a menu that does not change between three in the afternoon and three in the morning. Mac and cheese, fried chicken, breakfast served until five in the evening. It is loud and it is always busy and you can still walk in and sit down.

Open 24 hours, every day

A Levittown pizzeria and sit-down Italian place in the plaza west of the club, known locally for a spinach and artichoke pie it puts on its own masthead. Slices and whole pies at the front, tables and a full menu behind. There are two other Calda locations, at Hicksville and Massapequa, and this is one of the three rather than a chain built out of it.

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

Reopening on September 15, 2026 at 834 Seventh Avenue, the address that held the Stage Deli until 2012. Sarri Harper, whose grandfather Milton Parker bought Carnegie in 1976, is the third generation to run it. Around 110 seats, walk-in only, with the wood panelling and the Wall of Fame restored.

Daily 11am to 10pm

Adela Vargas opened this counter on Avenue C in 1976 and her family runs it now. Rotisserie chicken with rice is the order and very little on the menu goes past twenty dollars. Cash only, and you bring your own drink.

Daily, 11am to 9pm

Juan Jose Aurre opened this in 1976 on a quiet corner of Elm Street, off the main Ironbound drag, and it still cooks Basque coastal food with a long list of fish. Portions are large and the dining side fills with families rather than anyone passing through. It is the nearest of the Ironbound places to downtown.

Mon and Wed to Sat, 11am to 10pm. Sun, 11am to 10pm. Closed Tue

Charles Gabriel has been cooking this chicken in Harlem since the 1990s, and it is pan-fried in a cast-iron skillet rather than dropped in a fryer. The 72nd Street store opened in 2022. You order at the counter, there are no reservations, and it runs to 10pm on a weeknight.

Sunday to Thursday 11am to 10pm, Friday and Saturday 11am to 11pm

A family-run gelateria on the East Meadow stretch of Hempstead Turnpike, making small batches on the premises and pouring locally roasted coffee and Long Island tea alongside it. Scoops, pints, quarts, cakes and a twelve-flavor sampler, ordered at the counter. The owner, Bob Fryer, is usually the one behind it.

Tue and Wed, 3pm to 9pm. Thu to Sun, 12pm to 9pm. Closed Monday

The National Biscuit Company baked Oreos in this block-long brick building, and the ground floor is now a concourse of counters you walk through rather than sit down in. The building is open from seven in the morning until ten at night, though the stalls set their own hours inside that and the coffee and bread counters are the first ones up. It is crowded most of the day and the crowd moves. You order standing up and eat standing up, or you carry it across Tenth Avenue to the High Line.

Mon to Sun, 7am to 10pm. Individual vendors set their own hours inside that window and most close earlier

A papaya-drink hot dog window on West 23rd just east of Seventh Avenue, in the same line of descent as Papaya King and Gray's Papaya. All-beef dogs come off the griddle with a fruit drink in a waxed cup. Eat at the narrow rail along the window. It never shuts, so at two in the morning the person ahead of you is as likely to be coming off a shift as off a show.

Open 24 hours, every day

A corner diner on West 23rd near Ninth that trades every hour of the week. Booths along the windows, a counter with stools, laminated menus and pancakes available at four in the morning. Nothing in the fit-out has been updated in a long time and the turnover of staff looks about as slow. It is the nearest all-night table to the gallery blocks.

Open 24 hours, every day

A ramen shop on Vanderbilt Avenue opened by cooks who came out of Morimoto's kitchen, doing four or five broths and a plate of kale salad that people order out of habit. No bookings. You give your name and stand outside or at the counter until a stool opens.

Mon, 5:30pm to 9pm. Tue, closed. Wed, Thu and Sun, 5:30pm to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 5:30pm to 10pm

Sebastino Circo opened this bakery on Knickerbocker in 1945 and the oven built into the kitchen then is the one still in use. Cannoli get filled to order off the same recipe. It is a counter, not a cafe, so you take it with you.

Monday 9:30am to 6pm, Tuesday to Saturday 8am to 7pm, Sunday 8am to 6pm

A corner diner at Clark and Henry with a counter, vinyl booths and a laminated menu that runs from eggs to a hot open turkey sandwich. Service is quick and nobody minds if you order coffee and a bowl of soup at three in the afternoon. The 8am open and the 8pm close make it one of the few places on this side of Brooklyn Heights that covers a matinee and an early door on the same day.

Mon to Sat, 8am to 8pm. Sun, 8am to 3pm

A full Long Island diner out on the East Meadow stretch of Hempstead Turnpike, with a breakfast menu, a lunch menu, a dinner menu and an all-day menu kept as four separate things. It opens at eight in the morning and runs to one in the morning most nights and three on Friday and Saturday. It is the only sit-down kitchen within reach of the club that is reliably still serving after a late show.

Sun to Thu, 8am to 1am. Fri and Sat, 8am to 3am

A Pan-Latin luncheonette on West 14th just off Eighth Avenue, open every hour of every day, with a Cuban leaning to the menu. Counter seats along the window and booths behind. A roast pork sandwich at two in the morning and eggs at eight, with the same menu either way.

Open 24 hours, every day

Adenah Bayoh and Zadie B. Smith opened the first Cornbread in Maplewood in 2017 and brought it to the ground floor of 915 Broad Street in February 2021. You order fried chicken, collards, mac and cheese and a square of cornbread at the counter and carry the tray. Bayoh co-developed the building it sits in, which is unusual for a restaurant on this street.

Daily, 11am to 10pm

A cash-only bar at West 4th and Jane where the burger comes on a paper plate and the beer is cheap. There are no reservations and no table service beyond someone shouting your order. It runs to 4am Thursday through Saturday, so it is one of the few places in the West Village still cooking when a late set lets out.

Sun to Wed, 10am to 2am. Thu to Sat, 10am to 4am

Tacos and fried catfish with frozen margaritas, in a small corner spot decorated with plastic seahorses. The kitchen runs a separate late-night menu after dinner service ends, which almost nothing else around the Seaport does. It opens at 11:30am on weekdays, so it also works as a plate before an early show.

Monday to Friday, 11:30am until late. Saturday and Sunday, 11am until late. Happy hour weekdays 3pm to 6pm

A 1947 Mountain View diner car parked on West Park Place since 1941, run since the 1960s by two Greek sisters, Maria Aposporos and Eleni Begetis. When the city's redevelopment commission moved to condemn the building around 1999, they fought it to the Connecticut Supreme Court and won in 2002, and the diner is still on its original corner because of that. The menu runs all day from eggs and a burger to souvlaki, and the counter is the same counter.

Sun to Thu, 6am to 2am. Fri and Sat, 6am to 4am

A small bakery two doors east of Sahadi's that has been baking pita and Levantine pastry on Atlantic Avenue since the 1930s. The case holds spinach and meat pies. Baklava and kanafeh sit beside them, and the bread comes out warm in stacks. You order at the counter, pay cash or card, and leave with more than you meant to buy.

Mon to Sat, 7am to 7pm. Sun, 8am to 7pm

Forty counters in the basement of City Point, including Katz's Delicatessen's only Brooklyn outpost and Fletcher's for burnt ends and cornbread. You order at whichever window you want and eat at the communal tables in the middle. It is open to 10pm every day, which makes it the widest set of options within three minutes of Brooklyn Paramount.

Every day, 11am to 10pm. Breakfast counters open at 8am, a few at 7am

Cooking from Minas Gerais served the way Brazil serves it, off a hot buffet you either pay a flat price for or put on the scale and pay by the kilo. Feijão tropeiro, frango com quiabo and rice and beans sit alongside a grill, and the bar runs separately from the food line. On Friday and Saturday it is still going at half past two in the morning.

Mon to Thu, 11am to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 2:30am. Sun, noon to 10pm

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

Named for the truck-stop canteens of the Grand Trunk Road and built around a tandoor, on the Curry Hill stretch of Lexington. Heavier and more northern than its neighbors, with kebabs off the skewer and a lunch service that runs straight into dinner at 3pm. The kitchen stays on until half eleven every night of the week, which almost nothing else on this block does.

Daily, 11am to 11:30pm

Domenico DeMarco opened this on the corner of Avenue J and East 15th in 1965 and made the pies himself, one at a time, for more than fifty years. He died in 2022 and it has kept going. San Marzano tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, basil cut over the top as the pie comes out of an 800-degree oven. Fifteen seats, so most people eat standing or take it away.

Tuesday to Sunday, noon to 8pm. Closed Monday

The Brooklyn branch of the barbecue business John Stage started from a motorcycle-rally pit in Syracuse in 1988. It is a big loud space on Union Street with long tables, a full bar and ribs by the rack or the quarter. You can put your name down and drink while you wait, or eat at the bar on your own.

Mon to Wed, 4pm to 9pm. Thu, noon to 9pm. Fri, noon to 11pm. Sat, 11am to 11pm. Sun, 11am to 9pm

Dominick's opened as a bar in 1962 and still works the way it worked then. There is no printed menu and no printed bill, both of which arrive spoken, the seating is long communal tables and it is cash only. The cooking is Italian-American standards done plainly and in quantity. You will very likely wait on the sidewalk, because nobody takes a reservation, and the wait moves.

Thu to Sat, noon to 9pm. Sun, noon to 8pm. Closed Monday to Wednesday. Cash only

A red-sauce place on Lefferts Boulevard by the Aqueduct that has been doing the same thing for decades. Linguine with white clam sauce, veal, and garlic bread that arrives whether you ask or not, served family style at long tables by waiters who have worked there a long time. No reservations and cash only. You give your name, stand in the entrance and wait your turn.

Tue to Sat, noon to 9pm. Sun, 1pm to 7:30pm. Closed Mon

The original Dortoni, open on Hempstead Turnpike since 1976 and still the bakery the rest of the Long Island locations came out of. Cases of Italian pastry, European tortes, American cakes, fresh bread and a savory counter, sold by the piece to whoever is standing there. It opens at seven in the morning and stays open to eight at night, seven days a week.

Daily, 7am to 8pm

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.

The newest of Flushing's basement courts, opened in December 2025 under the 99 Ranch Market on Main Street with more than twenty counters across twelve thousand square feet. Robert Sietsema singled out Noodle Time here for a twelve dollar spicy chicken soup of soft wheat noodles, boneless thigh meat and scallions slicked with chile oil and scattered with peanuts. Tables have outlets and free wifi, which tells you who eats here.

Daily, 7:30am to 9:30pm

A soda fountain on Metropolitan Avenue in the same fittings it has had since the 1920s, with a marble counter, wooden stools and a tin ceiling. The ice cream is made on site and the whipped cream is whipped to order. It takes cash. It does not open until three in the afternoon, and it is closed Monday and Tuesday, so the schedule needs checking against a showtime.

Wed, Thu and Sun, 3pm to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 3pm to 11pm. Closed Mon and Tue

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

Eileen Avezzano tested her family cheesecake recipe out of her apartment and moved the business onto this corner in 1975, when the police headquarters up Centre Street had emptied out and the block was not on most maps. She called it her lucky corner. Retail started because people knocked on the door, so they bought a case.

Sun to Thu, 11am to 7pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 8pm

Open every hour of every day since 1995, two doors up Broadway from the United Palace. The Dominican breakfast of mangu or yuca runs a little over seven dollars and the pressed hero sandwiches a little over nine. Meal-sized soups come down in price at lunch.

Open 24 hours, every day

A Dominican restaurant on Broadway under the 1 train that calls itself the king of roasted chicken and is mostly taken at its word. Rotisserie chicken, mofongo and rice and beans, served fast, in a plain dining area with a takeout counter at the front. It opens at nine in the morning and runs to ten at night, later on Friday and Saturday. This is a family operation with a handful of locations rather than a chain.

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

A Dominican and Puerto Rican kitchen on the square itself, open from seven in the morning to half past eight at night every day of the week. Oxtail stew, pernil, mofongo and rice, with a steam table for anyone in a hurry and tables for anyone who is not. The breakfast trade is as real as the dinner trade, which is what the seven o'clock opening is for.

Daily, 7am to 8:30pm

An Italian butcher on Graham Avenue run by the Aliperti family since 1974, making its own fresh sausage and dried soppressata behind the counter. Sandwiches are built to order. It closes at 6:30pm and is shut Sunday and Monday.

Tuesday to Saturday 9am to 6:30pm. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Forty kinds of empanada and a full arepa list, open well past when the rest of Ninth shuts. Start with the viuda.

Daily, 11am to 2am

The chrome diner car on the corner of Tenth Avenue and 22nd, across from the gallery blocks, which has been photographed more than most buildings in Chelsea and has changed hands several times. It trades daily from nine in the morning until eleven at night under the Cafeteria group now. Booths, counter, and a full menu all day rather than a separate brunch and dinner.

Mon to Sun, 9am to 11pm

The city opened this market in January 1940 to move the pushcart peddlers off the Lower East Side streets, and it crossed Delancey into a new building in 2019. Around thirty independent vendors sell under one roof. You can eat for very little or buy groceries and leave.

Mon to Wed, 8am to 8pm. Thu to Sat, 8am to 9pm. Sun, 10am to 6pm

A butcher counter and sandwich operation that has been on Bleecker Street since the start of the last century. The thing to order is the Italian special hero or a rice ball from the fried case by the register. It is takeout, so plan to eat it on a bench rather than at a table.

Closed Mon. Tue to Sat, 9am to 6pm. Sun, 9am to 2pm. Sunday close is reported as 2pm or 3pm depending on the listing

A narrow slice counter on Henry Street with a case of plain and Sicilian and a couple of stools against the wall. It has been on this block since the 1970s and the operation has not been redesigned since. Bring cash and the slice is reheated properly rather than waved at the oven.

Tue to Sat, 11am to 9pm. Closed Sunday and Monday

Separate counters fill three floors behind one door on 32nd Street. You order at whichever stall you want, take a number and sit at a shared table, so a group can eat Korean fried chicken and knife-cut noodles and a bowl of shaved ice at the same time without anybody compromising. Trays, plastic water cups, nobody hovering.

Daily, 11am to 11pm

Fornos sits at the downtown end of Ferry Street, where the Ironbound starts, and it has been the neighborhood's Spanish dining anchor for decades. Paella and seafood come out in quantities built for a table of six. Walk-ins get seated on a weeknight without much waiting because the place is enormous.

Mon to Fri, 11:30am to 10pm. Sat and Sun, noon to 10pm

Three brothers from Italy opened this pasticceria on Manhattan Avenue in October 1976 and the family still runs it. Cannoli, gelato and espresso at a marble counter with seating at the back. It stays open to 11pm on weeknights and midnight on Friday and Saturday.

Sunday to Thursday 8am to 11pm. Friday and Saturday 8am to midnight.

Twenty-four hour Koreatown standby. Order the ggomtang, the beef broth they have been pulling since 1978.

Open 24 hours

A Northeastern Chinese barbecue place on 39th Avenue that does not open until four in the afternoon and then runs to two in the morning. You order skewers by the stick off a checklist, lamb and chicken hearts and enoki mushrooms, and they come off a charcoal grill with cumin and chili. The crab is the other half of the name and comes by the pound. It is loud and the beer is cold.

Mon to Fri, 4pm to 2am. Sat and Sun, noon to 2am

A Neapolitan dining hall that the Gargiulo family opened on West 15th Street in 1907 and the Russo family has run since 1965, two doors up the same block from Paradise Coney Island. Waiters in jackets, clam sauce and veal, and a nightly wheel spin that can knock the bill down to nothing. It is a sit-down meal in a part of Coney Island where almost everything else is a window.

Mon, Wed and Thu, noon to 9:30pm. Fri and Sat, noon to 10:30pm. Sun, noon to 9pm. Closed Tuesday

One dish, gamjatang, the pork neck bone soup that Koreans eat to undo a long night. It comes plain or with dried cabbage, with pickled napa, in a curry version or with seafood added, and the pot lands in the middle of the table for however many of you there are. You work the meat off the bones with your hands and the bowl of rice on the side is not optional. The dining area is plain and the people at the next table are mostly eating the same thing you are.

Mon to Thu, 10:30am to 11pm. Fri, 10:30am to midnight. Weekend hours not confirmed

A family-run Italian restaurant at the top of Washington Avenue doing pasta, veal and seafood, set up for big tables and used to them. It serves until ten Monday through Friday, which makes it one of very few kitchens near Meadowlands Comedy Club still going after an evening show. The weekend starts later, at three on Saturday and two on Sunday.

Mon to Fri, 11:30am to 10pm. Sat, 3pm to 10pm. Sun, 2pm to 9pm

Down a flight of stairs from Main Street, opposite the Flushing library, this is where Xi'an Famous Foods started as one stall in 2005 before it became a dozen shops around the city. The basement shut for four years and came back in 2023 with eleven stalls, brighter light and real seating, still trading in one region at a time rather than one menu. Order at whichever counter you like and pay that counter.

Daily, roughly 10am to 9pm, and individual stalls keep their own hours

Jerk chicken, oxtail, curry goat and ribs sold off a counter on Amstel Boulevard, one block from the cinema. Plates come with rice and peas and a side, most of the trade walks out with a foil tray, and there are a few seats if you want them. The Rockaway Film Festival's own neighborhood guide names it as the West Indian food to get on the peninsula and points out that it is around the corner from the Arverne Cinema. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Tue to Sat, 11am to 8:30pm. Closed Sunday and Monday

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

Open on the lower level of the terminal since 1913, under Guastavino tile vaults that carry sound in odd directions. Sit at the curved counter rather than in the dining hall and you get the same pan roast cooked in front of you in a steam-jacketed kettle. The Saloon along the side is the cheaper end of the same kitchen.

Mon to Sat, 11:30am to 9:30pm. Closed Sunday

A standing counter on the corner of 72nd and Broadway selling a recession special of two dogs and a drink. Nicholas Gray opened it in 1973 after leaving Papaya King, and this is the last of the shops he ran. You eat at the window shelf looking out at the street.

The shop's own site posts open 24 hours. Current third-party listings instead post 8am to 10pm Sunday to Wednesday and 8am to 11pm Thursday to Saturday, so treat very late as unconfirmed

Cantonese cooking at the corner of Bowery and Bayard since 1981, with roast meats hanging in the window. Salt-baked squid and the noodle soups are what most tables order. Cash only, and nothing about the place has been prettied up.

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

The Front Street pizzeria under the Brooklyn Bridge that took the Grimaldi's name when Patsy Grimaldi sold it, and the original of what is now a chain across several states. Coal oven, whole pies only, with no slices. It takes no reservations, and the line forms on the sidewalk outside. The hours are wider than its neighbor Juliana's, running to 11pm every night and midnight on weekends.

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

A Polish counter on Fresh Pond Road that opens at five in the morning for the tradesmen, selling smoked meat, kielbasa and prepared food to take away. This is the Polish Maspeth that has been here far longer than anything on Flushing Avenue.

Monday to Wednesday and Saturday 5am to 7pm, Thursday and Friday 5am to 8pm, Sunday 8am to 4pm

A yakiniku house on the mall's main level with grills set into the tables, where the meat arrives raw and you cook it yourself. The all-you-can-eat menu runs in tiers, and the top one carries A5 wagyu the chef cuts by hand. Sushi and sake come off the same order sheet. This is the only Gyuzo.

Sun to Thu, 12pm to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 12pm to 10pm

Pakistani food ordered off a board at the counter on the Curry Hill block of Lexington, with the tandoor visible from the sidewalk and goat karahi on the steam table. Seats are plastic and shared, the bill is small, and the place has fed cab drivers on this corner for years.

Mon to Fri, 11am to 2:30pm and 5pm to 10pm. Sat and Sun, 11am to 10pm

A walled yard on the corner of Fulton and South Portland with picnic tables, a solar-powered kitchen, a bike-powered blender and a converted Airstream serving corn on the cob and Cuban sandwiches. It is the outdoor sibling of Cafe Habana in Manhattan and it runs as a seasonal operation, roughly April into October, shutting for the winter. Order at the window, find a table, and on a Sunday there is usually a flea market in the yard.

Seasonal, roughly April to October. Mon to Thu, 10am to 11pm. Fri and Sat, 10am to midnight. Sun, 10am to 11pm. Closed for the winter

The house dish is black pork belly grilled at the table and wrapped in lettuce, and it comes with enough banchan to cover the rest of the surface. It took a Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2010 and has kept the same large dining floor and the same all-night schedule since. Walk in at three in the morning on a Saturday and the grills are still going.

Open 24 hours Mon through Sat. Sun, 1am to 10pm

Sul lung tang around the clock, the milky ox bone broth you salt yourself at the table. Ten minutes from the Garden and it has never closed.

Open 24 hours

A Vietnamese sandwich and pho counter on Smith Street, moved up from its original Bergen Street shop, with banh mi built on a crisp roll and bubble tea in a case behind the register. You order at the counter and there are a dozen seats if you want them. A sandwich is under ten dollars and it comes out in about four minutes.

Mon to Sat, 11:30am to 9pm. Sun, noon to 7:30pm

A grill counter at the top of Easton Avenue that serves breakfast from nine in the morning and keeps going until three on the weekend. The sandwiches are built to order, the fries come in a paper boat and the line moves because everybody in it already knows what they want. This is the New Brunswick answer to the question of where to eat at one in the morning.

Sun to Wed, 9am to midnight. Thu to Sat, 9am to 3am

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

Nicolas Kalcanides opened this in August 1968 and named it for his daughter. It sits on the stretch of Newark Avenue that was closed to cars and turned into a walking plaza, so the outside tables are in the middle of the street. Slices come over the counter, and there are calzones and sandwiches if you want more than a slice.

Mon to Sat, 11am to 11pm. Sun, noon to 10:15pm

A basement shop on 41st Avenue with no English sign, where the cook pulls the noodles where you can watch and nothing on the menu clears twelve dollars. Henan hui mian is the dish, a wide hand-pulled noodle in a long-simmered lamb or beef broth. Bring cash and ask for the English menu.

Daily, 10am to 10pm

Homestyle Korean on 31st, a block southeast of the 32nd Street crush, built around set meals that arrive as a tray of banchan, a soup, rice and a main. It opened around 2015 and made its name feeding office workers at lunch. Makgeolli comes in a brass bowl and there is a short soju list behind the bar.

Lunch Mon to Fri, noon to 3pm. Brunch Sat and Sun, noon to 3pm. Dinner Sun to Thu, 5pm to 11pm. Fri and Sat, 5pm to midnight

Open on Roosevelt Avenue since 2004 and by its own account the first Nepali restaurant in New York. The kitchen cooks across the Himalayan belt, so Nepali dal bhat tarkari sits on the same menu as Tibetan hand-pulled noodles and Bhutanese ema datshi, which is long green chilies in cheese sauce. Steamed momos and wai wai sandeko, crisp instant noodles tossed with chili and herbs, are what most tables order. It is a sit-down place with waiter service and it stays open to midnight.

Sun to Thu, noon to midnight. Fri and Sat, noon to 1am

A surf-shack taco place on New Dorp Plaza by the railway station, the New Dorp branch of a small Staten Island group that started on Forest Avenue. Tacos, burritos and frozen margaritas, ordered at the counter or at a table. Loud, bright, and nobody minds how long you sit.

Mon and Tue, 11:30am to 9pm. Wed to Sat, 11:30am to 10pm. Sun, 11:30am to 9pm

A deli on Branford Place run by Marc and Michael Brummer, whose father Sam is in the photograph on the wall. The counter does pastrami and corned beef sandwiches built the old way, with pickles brought to the table. It keeps lunch hours and nothing else, which is a downtown-Newark habit rather than a quirk.

Mon to Fri, 8am to 2:30pm. Sat, 11am to 2:30pm. Closed Sun

A slice-and-pasta place on Bedford Park Boulevard East, right under the elevated 4 at Jerome Avenue. Slices, pies, baked dishes and a short list of beer and wine. It is a counter with tables, the kind of place students and hospital staff eat at on the way somewhere else.

Daily, 10am to 10pm

A burger counter on First Avenue that started in the 1950s and has been run since the late seventies by Mahmoud Mostafa, who goes by Jim, alongside his son Abe. Three tables, twenty-three burgers on the board, and the most adventurous topping is blue cheese. The grease of several decades is part of the air.

Monday to Friday 7am to 8:30pm. Saturday 8am to 5:30pm.

Brick walls hung with posters from shows that flopped. Cast and crew eat here after curtain and the burger never left the menu.

Daily, noon to midnight. Later on weekends

Joe Pozzuoli opened this in 1975 and it has been on the Carmine Street corner ever since, aside from one forced move a few doors down and back. The plain slice is the whole argument. There are no tables worth the name, you eat standing at the counter or on the sidewalk, and the line moves as fast as the oven does.

Mon to Thu and Sun, 10am to 3am. Fri and Sat, 10am to 4am

Joe Rong steams cheung fun to order from rice he grinds on site, so the sheet comes off the tray soft and still wet rather than cut from a cold tray. The signature has shrimp, egg and dried shrimp rolled in and runs about ten dollars. Order at the window in the Landmark Quest Mall arcade and eat at one of the handful of stools.

Daily, 10am to 8:30pm

John Sasso moved his coal oven here in 1929 and the same oven is still the only one they use. They sell whole pies and nothing by the slice, which they will tell you at the door. The wooden booths are carved half through with initials going back decades and nobody has ever sanded them.

Mon to Thu and Sun, 11:30am to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 11:30am to 11pm

Up a staircase to the second floor of 22 West 32nd, where the extraction hoods come down over the grill at your table and someone else does the cooking and the cutting. Thick-cut pork belly and marinated short rib go on the grill. Banchan is refilled without asking. The kitchen runs to midnight on a weekday. Walk-in parties sit at the counter along the side.

Sun to Thu, 11:30am to midnight. Fri and Sat, 11:30am to 1am

Patsy Grimaldi came out of retirement in 2012 and opened Juliana's in the Old Fulton Street space where he had run Grimaldi's for decades, naming it after his mother. Coal oven, whole pies only, no slices and no reservations. The kitchen shuts between 3:15 and 4 in the afternoon, and the line outside moves because the oven turns a pie in minutes.

Every day, 11:30am to 3:15pm and 4pm to 9pm

Harry Rosen opened Junior's on the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb in 1950 and his family still runs it. The front is a bakery counter selling cheesecake by the slice and the whole, and the back is a large dining area of orange booths with waiters and a menu that goes from a brisket sandwich to a full dinner. It opens at 7am and runs to 11pm, and on a weeknight you are seated as soon as you walk in.

Mon to Thu, 7am to 11pm. Fri and Sat, 7am to midnight. Sun, 7am to 11pm

Ali El-Sayed opened this on Steinway Street in 1989 and it was the first Egyptian restaurant on the block. It seats about twenty and the menu changes with whatever he found at the market that morning, so what is written up and what is available are rarely the same thing. Vegetables get as much attention as the lamb. He cooks it himself and he will tell you what to order if you ask.

Tue to Sun, 1pm to 9pm. Closed Mon

A halal kitchen on the corner of Diversity Plaza with a steam table of curries and a grill turning out seekh kebab, nihari and haleem. You order at the counter, take a tray upstairs or sit at one of the tables on the ground floor, and the chai comes in a paper cup. It is open from seven in the morning and the place is busiest at one in the morning when the plaza is still full.

Daily, 7am to 2am

Pierogi, bigos and potato pancakes served off a wooden-beamed interior meant to read as a country inn, with the grilled kielbasa platter as the thing to order. Portions are large and the bill is small. The kitchen runs to 10:30pm on a weeknight and 11:30pm on weekends.

Mon to Thu noon to 10:30pm. Fri and Sat noon to 11:30pm. Sun noon to 10pm

Uyghur cooking at the eastern end of Brighton Beach Avenue, which means hand-pulled laghman noodles and lamb off a skewer rather than anything Russian. The lagman arrives in a bowl of broth with the noodles still tightening. It is a small plain place and it stays open later than most of the strip.

Mon to Thu, 10am to 10pm. Fri, 10am to 11pm. Sat and Sun, 10am to 11:45pm

Cutters have been hand-slicing pastrami behind this counter since 1888 and the ticket handed to you at the door is still the system. Order at the counter, tip the cutter, and you eat sooner than a table would let you. It runs straight through Friday and Saturday nights.

Mon to Thu, 8am to 11pm. Open continuously from Friday 8am until Sunday 11pm

Churchill's clay pipe hangs from the ceiling with about ninety thousand others. Skip the dining side and eat the mutton chop or the pub burger at the bar.

Daily from 11:30am. Bar menu all afternoon

A diner that has sat on the corner of Metropolitan and Union since 1928 and reopened in September 2024 under Louis Skibar with chef Jackie Carnesi. It runs around the clock, which makes it the one certainty at 3am in this part of Brooklyn. Diner standards with a Texas accent.

Open 24 hours, daily.

A bar and pizza kitchen at Norman and Kingsland that also puts on punk and metal shows in the back. The menu is pizza-led with pasta and tacos around it. It sits on the last commercial block before east Greenpoint turns to warehouses.

Hours not verified. Serves brunch, lunch and dinner daily by its own description

Ludovico Barbati started selling pizza off a horse cart in 1939 and the family has been on this corner of 86th Street ever since. The Sicilian square goes sauce on top of the cheese, which is the reason people come, and the spumoni comes out of a separate window next door in chocolate, pistachio and vanilla. There is a sit-down side and a counter side, and picnic tables out front that stay in use until the 11:30pm close.

Daily, 11am to 11:30pm

A patisserie on Ninth Avenue opened in May 1998 by the pastry chef Stephane Willemin and Romain Lamaze, with a long curved case of tarts and croissants at the front and tables behind it. You can stand at the case, point, and take a croissant away for a few dollars, or you can sit down for eggs. It opens at seven in the morning and keeps going until ten at night, which no other bakery on this avenue does.

Mon to Sat, 7am to 10pm. Sun, 7am to 9pm

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 counter on Myrtle with a long row of chafing dishes and one of the last Puerto Rican kitchens left on this stretch. You point at what you want and it comes on a plate for very little money. Pernil, alcapurrias, rice and beans.

Reported as roughly 9:30am until around 12:30am, though listings disagree and one has it open 24 hours. Call before a very late visit

Colombian empanadas made to order on East Tremont Avenue, along with arepas, bandeja paisa and a short list of cocktails. It runs 10.30 in the morning to nine at night seven days a week, which covers most of what a performance schedule can throw at it. The Morris Park Avenue branch has shut, so this is the one that is still trading.

Daily, 10:30am to 9pm

The Saavedra family's Oaxacan restaurant on Willis Avenue, where the moles are made from scratch and there is a lending library of several hundred books in the dining area. The family are undocumented and have been open about it for years, and the place ran a free kitchen through the pandemic that fed tens of thousands of people. It is a small storefront with a handwritten feel.

Tue to Sat, 10am to 5pm. Closed Sunday and Monday

A Colombian grill on Metropolitan doing paisa platters, arepas and grilled meat, with a bar attached. It opens at 9am and runs to 11pm. On this stretch of Metropolitan that combination does not exist anywhere else.

Sunday to Thursday 9am to 11pm, Friday and Saturday 9am to 11:30pm

Mexico City street food on Berry Street since 2008, with tacos al pastor cut off the spit and tostadas de tinga at a few dollars each. It is cash-friendly, small, and does not take a reservation. Closed Tuesdays.

Mon, Wed and Sun 3pm to 11pm. Thu to Sat 3pm to midnight. Closed Tuesday

A Sri Lankan dining hall on Bay Street fitted out with carved wood, brass and statuary that the family brought over themselves, which makes the inside look nothing like the block it sits on. The weekend buffet runs from half twelve to half nine and is served on a banana leaf. On weekdays it is a menu operation with a lunch and a dinner service and a break in the middle.

Tue to Fri, noon to 3pm and 5pm to 9pm. Sat and Sun, 12:30pm to 9:30pm. Closed Monday

One stall of the thirty-odd in the basement food court under New World Mall, with the dough pulled and slapped against the counter in front of you while you wait. The beef noodle soup is the order, clear broth with sliced shank and coriander, and there is a stir-fried version and a rou jia mo sandwich on the board as well. You pay at the stall, take a number and find a seat in the shared hall, which is the part that takes longer than the cooking.

Daily, 10am to 9pm

Another named stall in the New World Mall basement, a few steps from the noodle counter. You take a basin and tongs and load it with whatever you want out of the chilled cases, hand it over to be weighed, and it comes back either as a numbing broth or stir-fried dry with no soup at all. You pick the heat level and the mild is not mild. Paying by weight means a large bowl and a small one cost what they should.

Daily, 10am to 9pm

A family-run Mexico City kitchen on Seneca doing quesadillas on thick corn tortillas pressed in-house. Full table service rather than a counter, and it runs to 10pm most nights.

Tuesday to Saturday noon to 10pm, Sunday noon to 9pm. Closed Monday

A long deli on Montague with a sandwich counter down one side, prepared food in the case and a bakery section by the register. You order at the counter and eat at one of the small tables or take it five blocks west to the Promenade. It opens at 7am and stays open to 9pm on weekdays, which is wider than almost anything else on the street.

Mon to Fri, 7am to 9pm. Sat and Sun, 7am to 8pm

Up a flight of stairs on West 38th to a thin square pie cut into rectangles, sold by the slab. Half the tables are people from the buildings around it on their lunch hour.

Mon to Fri, 11:30am to 9pm. Sat, noon to 10pm. Sun, noon to 8pm

Alvin Lee Smalls found a rugelach recipe while working the bakery at New York-Presbyterian in 1964 and spent six months getting his own version right. He has been selling it in Harlem ever since and he is still the one baking. The sweet potato pie is worth the walk on its own.

Limited and irregular. Listings show Wednesday 11am to 7pm and Sunday noon to 5pm, and the other days could not be confirmed. Call before you walk over

A tavern on a residential corner in Dongan Hills with no sign worth speaking of, known on this island for a thin bar pie with the cheese laid under the sauce. The clam pie and the pepperoni are what people order, and the rest of the menu is tavern food. Most of the trade is at the bar with whatever game is on.

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

A Cross Bay Boulevard seafood place open since 1974 and into its second family generation. Baked clams, fried calamari, shrimp oreganata and linguini with clams are the spine of the menu, with a raw bar for oysters. It is a large dining space with a bar at the front, which is where you end up if you arrive without booking. It is the nearest thing to Resorts World that is still serving at eleven at night.

Daily, 11am to midnight

The Frederick Douglass Boulevard branch of the cookie bakery Connie McDonald and Pam Weekes started on the Upper West Side in 1995. The cookies come out of the oven the size of a fist and are sold warm at the counter. There is a line most of the day and it clears at the pace of the register.

Mon to Wed, 7am to 9pm. Thu to Sun, 7am to 10pm

You get to this one by walking into the one-story building at 37-50 74th Street, turning right, and following a fluorescent-lit corridor past a cell phone counter to a small kitchen at the back. The menu is about twenty items and the beef and chive momos are what to order, with the housemade hot sauce that sits in squeeze bottles on the tables. Cold beef noodles and beef thanthuk are the other two things people come for.

Daily, 11am to 10pm

Joe Liebman opened this on West 235th at Johnson Avenue in 1953 and it is the last kosher deli left in the Bronx. Pastrami and corned beef cut by hand, matzo ball soup, a counter and a row of booths. Open seven days from eleven in the morning until nine at night.

Daily, 11am to 9pm for dine-in and takeout. Delivery noon to 8pm

A corner building from the 1850s at Washington and Morris, restored in 2002 with the oak floors, pressed-tin ceiling and tall windows left in place. It was a speakeasy during Prohibition. The name comes from Henry Lee III, who led the Battle of Paulus Hook a few streets from here in 1779. There is a short tavern menu between lunch and dinner if you only want a plate and a drink.

Tue to Fri, lunch 11:30am to 4pm, tavern menu 4pm to 5pm, dinner 5pm to 10pm, bar to midnight. Thu and Fri, dinner to 11pm and bar to 12:30am. Sat, brunch 10:30am to 3:30pm, dinner 5pm to 11pm, bar to 1am. Sun, brunch 10:30am to 3:30pm, dinner 5pm to 10pm, bar to 11:30pm. Closed Mon

Frank Prisinzano opened this wood-oven pizzeria in January 2002, after Frank on Second Avenue, and later took the space next door. There is a garden out back. East Village Radio broadcasts from a street-level studio at number 21, the same owner and the next door along, with the DJs visible through the window.

Sun to Thu, 11am to 2am. Fri and Sat, 11am to 4am

A slice window on the corner of 33rd and Fifth that runs to four in the morning, and five on weekends. Plain slices are held under the counter lamp and reheated. A Sicilian square waits beside them with a stack of paper plates. You eat standing at the shelf along the window.

Sun to Thu, 9am to 4am. Fri and Sat, 9am to 5am

Lloyd Adams opened this on Broadway in 1985 to sell one cake. He and his wife Betty have both died and their family runs it now, still selling carrot cake by the slice and whole from a counter with no tables. The pineapple coconut and the red velvet are the other two things they make.

Mon to Fri, 9am to 7pm. Sat, 10am to 6pm. Closed Sunday

Catherine and Francois Louy took a Clinton Hill pharmacy that had traded since 1894 and turned it into a Tuscan restaurant in January 2001, keeping the original wood fittings and the apothecary drawers. The kitchen makes its own pasta. This is a sit-down dinner rather than something you grab.

Daily, noon to 3pm and 5pm to 10pm

A family pizzeria a couple of doors up Hylan Boulevard from the Colonnade, turning out plain slices, calzones, heroes and baked pastas. Prices are low and the crust is the old-fashioned kind rather than anything reworked. Most people take it out, and there are a few tables if you want to sit.

Daily, 11am to 8:45pm

A standing counter inside Chelsea Market with a trompo of pork turning in the window and tortillas pressed a few feet from where you order. There are no tables, just a rail along the wall. The line is usually long and it is also usually fast, because three people work the griddle at once.

Mon to Sun, 11am to 10pm

A corner pizzeria on Crosby Avenue that has been going for more than sixty-five years, known for a thin sausage pie and for a white pie with fresh garlic on it. You order at the counter, you wait, and there are a handful of tables plus a patio when the weather allows. It closes at half past eight, which is the only thing about it that requires any planning.

Daily, 11am to 8:30pm

Lucien Bahaj came from Morocco and opened this French bistro on First Avenue in 1998. He died in 2019 and his son Zac runs it now. The menu holds escargots de bourgogne, moules mariniere and a Marseille-style bouillabaisse. Jonas Mekas and Dash Snow were among the regulars over the years.

Daily to midnight, and to 1am Thursday to Saturday. Listings post a 10am open and the operator's own page still says noon, so treat the morning as unconfirmed

An Italian pastry shop on Ridge Road with cannoli, sfogliatelle and cookie trays in the case and cake orders taken at the back. It opens at seven in the morning and stays open to eight at night, which is a longer day than anything else on foot from the Renaissance Meadowlands. Hours move with the season and shorten in the run-up to a holiday.

Daily, 7am to 8pm. Shorter around holidays and in some seasons

The original 1996 shop on the Bleecker and West 11th corner, small enough that the line goes out onto the sidewalk most evenings. The banana pudding is what the counter is built around and it is sold by the cup to go. You order, you pay, you leave with it.

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

This opened on the corner at 175th Street in 1987 and was one of the first Dominican restaurants in Washington Heights. The rotisserie chicken is what everyone orders and it comes with rice, beans and the garlic sauce. It faces the United Palace across Broadway.

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

A narrow counter on MacDougal that has been selling falafel sandwiches since 1971. You order at the register, take it to one of the few stools or eat it walking. The hot sauce is the part people come back for and it is served from a squeeze bottle, not a ramekin.

Mon to Wed, 11am to 2am. Thu, 11am to 3am. Fri and Sat, 11am to 4am. Sun, 11am to 1am

A family pizzeria that has been on Mamaroneck Avenue for more than twenty-five years, working from recipes the family describes as four generations deep. The dough is made in-house every morning and the pizza comes out of a wood-fired oven. There is a proper dining area behind the counter, so you can sit down with a plate of pasta rather than eat a slice standing up.

Daily, 11am to 11pm

The ground floor of Building 77 inside the Navy Yard, turned into a 40,000 square foot food hall that anyone can walk into from Flushing Avenue. Russ & Daughters anchors it with an appetizing counter and its production bakery. Jalapa Jar and She Wolf Bakery have counters in there too. It was built for the people who work in the Yard and it is priced and paced for them.

Counters mostly run weekday daytime hours. Russ & Daughters is open daily, 8am to 4pm

A working diner on Grand Avenue with a counter, booths and the full three-meal menu. It opens at seven in the morning every day and closes at seven in the evening, which is the opposite shape of most diners and the thing to know before you plan around it. Mondays it shuts at four. It is the plainest option in Maspeth and also the only one open at breakfast.

Sun and Tue to Sat, 7am to 7pm. Mon, 7am to 4pm

An Italian market and sandwich counter on Park Avenue, with the prepared-food case along one side and the deli slicer at the back. Sandwiches are built to order and most of the trade is people carrying them out. It opens at nine and closes at six on weekdays, earlier at the weekend.

Mon to Fri, 9am to 6pm. Sat, 9am to 4pm. Sun, 9am to 3pm

A diner on the Route 17 frontage in Carlstadt running the standard Jersey card of breakfast all day, burgers and platters. It used to stay open around the clock and no longer does, so the evening close is the thing to check before you count on it. Seven in the morning is the open every day of the week.

Mon to Sat, 7am to 7:30pm. Sun, 7am to 5:30pm. Some listings post a later close

Puglian cooking in a narrow storefront near the Port Authority. Orecchiette and a glass of Negroamaro, and the check stays sane.

Daily, 11:30am to midnight

Chef Ivan Garcia's Mexico City cooking on Graham Avenue, with a bar at the front and tables behind it. Weekend service starts at noon, which covers a day show. Weeknights it opens at 5pm.

Monday to Thursday 5pm to 10pm. Friday 5pm to 11pm. Saturday noon to 11pm. Sunday noon to 10pm.

A taqueria on the Jackson Avenue corner that runs from nine in the morning until eleven at night, carnitas being the thing people come for. There is a mezcal list alongside the tacos and a proper sit-down dining area rather than a counter. It has been on this corner long enough to be the default Mexican place in this part of the South Bronx.

Mon to Thu and Sun, 9am to 11pm. Fri and Sat, 9am to 11:45pm

The slice place at the corner of East 187th Street and Arthur Avenue, open under the name Full Moon Pizza from 1976 until a change of owner renamed it in 2023. New York slices, Sicilian squares, rice balls and potato croquettes over a counter, with tables at the back. It is where people on Arthur Avenue eat when they are not sitting down to a meal.

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

A Colombian bakery counter with a kitchen behind it on Elmora Avenue, the stretch of Elizabeth where the Colombian trade is concentrated. The case has bread and pastries and Colombian coffee in the morning. The kitchen does bandeja paisa, empanadas and sancocho through the day and stays on until half past nine.

Daily, 9:30am to 9:30pm

A kosher burger counter on the fourth level of Palisades Center, near the Target entrance, under OU Glatt supervision. Burgers come piled with toppings, and the rest of the board runs to fries and shakes. Rockland County has a large observant population and this counter serves it, which is why it is closed all day Friday and Saturday.

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

Christina Tosi opened the first Milk Bar in the East Village in 2008 and this Mott Street shop is one of five the company still runs in the city. The Compost Cookie and the Milk Bar Pie, which was called Crack Pie until 2019, are what people come for. You order at a case and carry it out.

Daily, noon to 11pm

A tavern on the corner of Minetta Lane that opened in 1937, named for the brook that ran under this block down to the Hudson. Hemingway, Ezra Pound and Dylan Thomas all drank here. Keith McNally took it over in 2008 and reopened it the following year as a French bistro built around dry-aged beef.

Dinner daily, 5pm to midnight. Lunch Wed to Fri, noon to 3:30pm. Brunch Sat and Sun, 11am to 3:30pm

A Portuguese kitchen on East Jersey Street named for the Minho, the province in the far north of Portugal. It cooks coastal Portuguese plates and Brazilian top sirloin, with a full bar and a patio out the side. The place is casual enough to walk into in what you are already wearing.

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

Three floors of grills on the south side of 32nd Street, running around the clock every day of the week. Each floor has its own character and the top one is quieter than the street suggests. Charcoal under the grate rather than gas, and the banchan keeps coming.

Open 24 hours, daily

Japanese small plates and sushi at communal tables on Bogart Street, a door from the L entrance. The menu carries a large vegan and vegetarian section rather than treating it as an afterthought. Dinner only, and the kitchen stops at 10pm.

Tuesday to Sunday 5pm to 10pm. Closed Monday.

A small kitchen on Targee Street run by Mona with her granddaughter helping, cooking West African food alongside Jamaican plates. Jerk chicken and oxtail are on the menu. So are rice and beans. Fried plantain with smoked turkey and spinach comes in portions that feel closer to a home kitchen than a restaurant. It opens at half twelve and closes at six, Tuesday to Saturday, and there are only a few seats.

Tue to Sat, 12:30pm to 6pm. Closed Sunday and Monday

A North Indian kitchen tucked off Route 59 on Ingalls Street, with a lunch service and a separate dinner service that starts at 4:45. It draws from across Rockland and southern Westchester, and weekend evenings are worth booking.

Tue to Thu, 11:30am to 3pm then 4:45pm to 9:30pm. Fri and Sat, 11:30am to 3pm then 4:45pm to 11pm. Sun, 11:30am to 3pm then 4:45pm to 10pm. Closed Mon

Opened on Prince Street in 2006 and still the first name anyone in Flushing gives for xiao long bao. Nine kinds come out of the kitchen, the pork and the pork with crab roe being the two to order, and they arrive in a bamboo steamer hot enough to need the spoon. It is walk-in only, no reservations taken, and the turnover is fast enough that a wait on the sidewalk is measured in minutes.

Daily, 8am to 11:30pm. Fri and Sat until 12:30am

A kosher dairy counter on Main Street that has been feeding this part of Kew Gardens Hills since 1970. Slices, falafel, knishes and blintzes, ordered at the register and eaten at one of the tables in the back. It closes early on Friday for Shabbat and reopens late on Saturday night, which is a schedule you have to know rather than guess. Prices are low and the turnover is quick.

Sun to Thu, 11am to 9pm. Fri, 11am to 3:30pm. Sat, 7:30pm to midnight

Nathan Handwerker opened this stand at Surf and Stillwell in 1916 after leaving a job slicing rolls at a competitor up the block, and the corner has never been anything else. You order at a window under the yellow and green signs and eat standing at a rail or walking. A dog with mustard and sauerkraut and an order of crinkle fries is the whole transaction.

Daily, 10am to 11pm. Fri and Sat to midnight. Open year round

A counter on Victory Boulevard where you point at the trays of curries behind the glass and they build a plate. It opened in 1999 and is a fixture among the Sri Lankan places in Tompkinsville, which holds the largest Sri Lankan community in the United States. There are a handful of tables, no license and no ceremony.

Mon, 10am to 8pm. Wed to Sun, 10am to 8pm. Closed Tuesday

A pizzeria on Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach, run by the same family since 1956, known for a thin crust with a scorched underside from the deck oven. You order at the counter and eat at a table or take the slices out. It is a few minutes past the Aqueduct end of Rockaway Boulevard and it stays open to midnight every night. Bring cash.

Daily, 11am to midnight

Trading on this block since 1993 and still burning real charcoal under the grate rather than the electric plates most of its neighbors moved to. You cook your own meat at the table, the banchan arrives without being asked for, and the kitchen stays on until five in the morning. Two floors, the upper one quieter.

Daily, 10am to 5am

Thirty-odd stalls two blocks west of the 7 terminus, divided up by region so one counter does Shanghai and the next does Beijing. Sietsema wrote it up in March 2025 and picked out stall twelve for pork soup dumplings, lion's mane meatballs and fish-fragrant eggplant, noting how hard it is to spend more than ten dollars. Bring cash, because the counters do not all take cards.

Daily, 10am to 9pm

A sit-down pizzeria on Ascan Avenue that does thin-crust pies to order rather than slices, with a wood-panelled dining space and a cannoli case by the register. It is cash only, which catches people out. The pies come out blistered and whole, so this is a sit-down twenty minutes rather than something to eat on the way. It has been the Forest Hills answer to this question for a long time.

Mon to Thu, 4pm to 9pm. Fri to Sun, noon to 9pm

A Bainbridge Avenue coffee shop that serves breakfast all day and stays on until eight at night, which almost no diner up here does. Booths, a counter, and a menu that runs from eggs to burgers to a dinner special. It sits on the old Little Belfast strip, most of which has turned over to other things.

Mon to Sat, 7am to 8pm. Sun, 7am to 4pm

Salvatore Riggio opened this counter in 1964 and his son Joe runs it now, out of a building the family still owns. Order the plain slice first. For twenty-four years that was the only slice they would sell you.

Daily, 10:30am to midnight

An old-school diner on Route 59 that opens at six in the morning and runs the same long menu of American plates all day. Portions are generous and the prices have not moved much. It is a booth-and-counter operation rather than a revival of one.

Daily, 6am to 9pm

A bagel counter on Route 59 that opens at five in the morning and runs a deli alongside the boards, egg sandwiches early and hero sandwiches through lunch. Most of the trade is takeout and the line moves. There are a handful of tables if you want to stay.

Daily, 5am to 4pm

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

Rocco Generoso has been filling cannoli to order at 243 Bleecker since 1974, in the storefront he took over from the previous bakery. There are cafe tables at the back and a full counter of Italian pastry at the front. It stays open until midnight on Friday and Saturday, which is unusual for a bakery.

Mon to Wed, 7am to 10pm. Thu, 7am to 11pm. Fri and Sat, 7am to midnight. Sun, 7am to 10pm

Hand-cut pastrami on rye from the deli that started in Kew Gardens in 1956. The sandwich arrives the size it has always been and one of them will do two people.

Daily, 9am to 9pm

A boardwalk stand that has been in the same family for more than sixty years, under a hand-painted sign of a giant hot dog and a corn cob. The counter runs corn dogs and clams on the half shell. Knishes and funnel cake come next. Get the soft serve and eat it standing up or on the rail. Nothing here takes more than a few minutes.

Daily in season, roughly 11am to 8pm. Opens with the Coney Island season in late March and shuts for the winter

Craig Samuel and Ben Grossman opened this on the Lewis and MacDonough corner in 2008 and it became the part of Bed-Stuy where people sit for a long time. The kitchen runs Lowcountry shrimp and grits and a Louisiana gumbo, and the hot chicken is the other reason people come. It is a full sit-down dinner rather than a quick stop.

Mon to Thu, 11am to 10pm. Fri, 11am to 11pm. Sat, 11am to 4pm then 5pm to 11pm. Sun, 10am to 4pm then 5pm to 10pm

Jerk chicken off the drum with rice and peas and festival, ordered at a counter on Flatbush Avenue near Parkside and handed over in foil. The smoke is the first thing you notice from the sidewalk. It sits between Kings Theatre and Bar Bayeux, which makes it the one kitchen that covers both anchors on foot.

Daily, 11am to 11pm. The Flatbush Avenue listing claims 24 hours and older listings say 9pm, so the middle figure is written here

An Italian restaurant and bar that opened on Central Park Avenue in 1977 and is still working the same recipes. Miguel Mejia, who started there in 1985 under the original owners, bought it with his family in 2019 and redid the bar. Happy hour runs from three in the afternoon to eight in the evening six days a week, with small plates alongside the drink specials.

Mon to Thu, 11am to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 11pm. Sun, 11:30am to 10pm. Happy hour Sun to Fri, 3pm to 8pm

On Lexington since 1996, South Indian, entirely vegetarian and kosher certified, which is an unusual combination anywhere and a normal one on this block. Dosas, uttapam, idli, and a thali that arrives as a tray of small steel bowls. The vegan items are marked on the menu rather than guessed at.

Sun to Thu, noon to 9:30pm. Fri and Sat, noon to 10pm

A Greek bakery that still rolls its own phyllo by hand. Spanakopita and galaktoboureko from a family that has worked the counter since 1923.

Tue to Sat, 10am to 6pm. Closed Sunday and Monday

A Cantonese dim sum parlor on New Dorp Lane with a large dining floor and a menu that runs all day rather than only at lunch. Dumplings and buns come off a printed order sheet you tick and hand over. It opens at ten in the morning and holds until ten at night, seven days.

Daily, 10am to 10pm

A counter on East 1st Street that has fed cab drivers for more than twenty years, ladling a few vegetarian dishes over rice for a handful of dollars. You point at what you want. It shut for several weeks over a plumbing problem and reopened in January 2026.

Daily, 8am to 10pm

A Dominican kitchen on the same block of North Broad Street as the venue, serving mofongo, stewed meat over rice and beans, and a Dominican breakfast from a quarter past eight. Plates are large and priced off a board rather than a menu card. You order at the counter and sit down where there is space.

Mon to Sat, 8:15am to 7pm. Sun, 8:15am to 5:45pm

A long narrow diner on Seventh Avenue with a counter down one side and booths down the other, doing eggs all day and a dinner menu nobody orders from at breakfast. The prices sit below everything else on the avenue. It opens at eight every morning and runs to ten on weekdays, which almost nothing else in Park Slope does.

Mon to Fri, 8am to 10pm. Sat, 8am to 9pm. Sun, 8am to 4pm

A cafeteria-style counter on Nassau Avenue where you point at what you want and carry it to a table. Soups, pierogi, schnitzel and stuffed cabbage, cash only. Robert Sietsema calls it one of the best remaining old Polish lunchrooms in the city.

Mon to Sat 11am to 8pm. Sunday hours vary and some listings show it closed

A Saturday evening market in the parking lot behind the Hall of Science with about a hundred vendors, most of them cooking food from a country that has a community in Queens. Nearly everything is capped at a low fixed price. You walk the rows, buy a plate at a time and eat standing. It runs from April into the autumn with a break for the US Open.

Saturdays only, 4pm to midnight. The 2026 season ran April 18 to August 22, then September 19 to October 31, closed August 23 to September 18 for the US Open

Long communal tables under a retractable roof, with a grill going at the back turning out sausage and pork chops. There is live music most nights and it costs nothing to sit through it. The grill runs later than the kitchen, so a late arrival still eats.

Kitchen Mon to Thu noon to 11pm, Fri noon to midnight, Sat 11am to midnight, Sun 11am to 11pm. Grill runs to midnight on weeknights and 2am Friday and Saturday. Bar closes 2am Sunday to Thursday and 3am Friday and Saturday

A narrow takeout counter on East 17th run by a Syrian family for about three decades, selling a falafel sandwich for a few dollars. The owner opened a candy store on the block in 1989 and worked his way to this. There is nowhere to sit, so take it into Union Square.

Mon to Sat, 11am to 8pm. Closed Sunday

The New Dorp branch of the Port Richmond ice stand, a walk-up window on Hylan Boulevard with the same long list of flavors scrawled above it. You order at the window and eat standing on the sidewalk or in the car. It runs to half past ten at night in season, later than almost anything else on this stretch.

Daily, noon to 10:30pm in season. Closed through the winter months

A family-run breakfast and lunch cafe in a house dating to the late 1700s, on Strawtown Road a few doors from 1840 Tavern. It opened in 2017 and cooks continental plates from family recipes. Beer and wine now come out alongside the coffee. It closes at three in the afternoon.

Tue to Sun, 8am to 3pm. Closed Mon

A Sheepshead Bay fixture on Emmons Avenue facing the fishing boats, run by the Randazzo family since the 1950s after decades in the fish business before that. Clams on the half shell, fried calamari and linguine under the red sauce they bottle and sell. There is a bar you can sit at and eat a dozen without committing to dinner.

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

Ray Alvarez has run this storefront across from Tompkins Square Park since 1974. It is a few feet deep, the egg creams and the beignets are what to order, and it does not close.

Open 24 hours

A brick-oven pizzeria that opened on lower Bedford Street in 2006 and has been the default downtown slice-and-a-pint ever since. The oven does thin, blistered pies and the rest of the menu is Italian-American at prices that have not chased the neighborhood's new towers. There is a counter for a slice and tables at the back if you want to sit with the pie.

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

A 1970s fast-food operation on Emmons Avenue that never updated anything, including brown tile and swivel stools bolted to the floor. The jingle still promises cheez on anything you please. You order roast beef on a seeded roll at the counter, get a number, and carry it to a table yourself. It runs to 1am on weeknights and 2am on weekends, which makes it the latest thing in Sheepshead Bay that is not a bar.

Mon to Thu and Sun, 11am to 1am. Fri and Sat, 11am to 2am

A sandwich counter on Hylan Boulevard between Grant City and New Dorp, open from seven in the morning on a weekday. Heroes are built to order at the case, there is a short list of daily specials on the board, and breakfast runs early. A handful of tables inside, most of the trade walking out with a paper bag.

Mon to Fri, 7am to 7pm. Sat, 8am to 4pm. Sun, 9am to 3pm

An Italian bakery on Hylan Boulevard with the ovens going from six in the morning and a kitchen attached that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. The bread is the reason to come, semolina and lard bread and the rest, and the heroes are built on it. The bakery counter stays open to ten at night.

Tue to Sat, 6am to 10pm. Sun, 6am to 9pm. Closed Monday. The kitchen runs 8am to 9pm

A bakery at the front and a restaurant behind it, on the stretch of Third Avenue that runs past the Bell House. The bread and pastry are baked on site with whole grain flour, and the same counter sells a croissant in the morning and a plate of pasta at night. It opened in 2012 and has kept the same two functions since.

Mon, 7:30am to 6pm. Tue to Thu, 7:30am to 9pm. Fri, 7:30am to 10pm. Sat, 8am to 10pm. Sun, 8am to 6pm

Joel Russ moved his appetizing shop to this corner of Houston Street in 1920 and the fourth generation of the family runs it now. Smoked fish is sliced to order behind a counter you take a number for. There is nowhere to sit.

Daily, 8am to 4pm

A breakfast and lunch house at the top of Park Avenue, open from seven thirty in the morning until three in the afternoon every day of the week. The menu is pancakes, eggs and omelets, and the turnover is quick enough that a table usually comes free. Nothing here runs past mid-afternoon, so it is strictly a before.

Daily, 7:30am to 3pm

A roadside stand on River Road since 1928, where the hot dogs go into the fryer until the casing splits and the result is called a ripper. You can order it barely fried, well done or charred black, and the mustard relish is the other half of the reason people drive here. There is a counter on one side and a bar with table service on the other, and it is open from eight in the morning until ten at night.

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

The old Eisenberg's counter at 174 Fifth Avenue, reopened under new ownership in 2022 with the original exterior signage left up. It is still a row of stools facing a griddle, and the tuna melt is still the order. The kitchen runs to 8pm, later than the shop ever managed as Eisenberg's.

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

A Colombian kitchen and bar on Hempstead Turnpike, four minutes up the block from the club, doing bandeja, whole fried mojarra, breaded filete and arepas with eggs. There is a projector going for soccer and the place gets loud on a weekend, which nobody there treats as a problem. It opens at eleven in the morning every day and runs to two on Friday and Saturday nights.

Sun to Thu, 11am to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 2am

A narrow slice counter that has been on the same Broadway corner since the late 1950s, run by the Mangano family. The pizza is thin and heavy on the cheese, sold across a counter with a few stools against the wall. There is no table service and no menu beyond what is in the window.

Mon and Sun, noon to 9pm. Tue to Sat, noon to 10pm

A tiny luncheonette on Woodward done out in mid-century fittings, doing sandwiches and desserts made in-house. Five seats and a counter. It is shut Tuesday and Wednesday.

Thursday to Monday 11:30am to 7pm. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday

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

A Korean barbecue house that has been on Union Street since 2000, a five minute walk from Flushing Town Hall. Staff do the grilling at your table rather than leaving you to it, which is the difference between eating and managing a fire. Galbi is the order and the banchan keeps arriving whether you ask or not. The name comes from an old phrase for an idyllic stretch of Korean mountain country, which the place says plainly on its own site.

Daily, 10am to 10pm

A Neapolitan pizzeria on the Halsey and Lewis corner, fitted out with salvaged furniture and mismatched chairs. It opened in 2009, before this stretch had much else on it, and the wood oven is still the point. There is a garden at the back when the weather allows.

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

South Indian vegetarian on the Curry Hill stretch of Lexington, open from nine in the morning for idli and a coffee. The paper dosa comes a good deal longer than the plate and they bring sambar and three chutneys with it. Entirely vegetarian and it always has been.

Sun to Thu, 9am to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 9am to 10:30pm

Abe Katz was a police sergeant when he opened this on Third Avenue in 1964, and the family still runs it. Pastrami cured on the premises, hand-cut, piled on rye. A fire gutted the place in 2012 and they rebuilt it and reopened rather than taking the insurance and going.

Daily, 10am to 10pm

Scarr Pimentel opened this in 2016 after learning to make pizza at Lombardi's, and the kitchen mills part of its own wheat and blends it with flour from upstate New York. In June 2023 it crossed Orchard Street into a bigger space at number 35. Order a plain slice at the counter and take a booth.

Mon to Wed, 11:30am to 11pm. Thu, 11:30am to midnight. Fri and Sat, 11:30am to 2am. Sun, 11:30am to 11pm

A Greek seafood place at the lower end of New Dorp Lane, cooking whole fish, grilled octopus and the usual spreads, served family style. There is free parking behind the building, which on this stretch of the island is the thing people mention first. Noon to ten or eleven, seven days.

Mon to Fri, noon to 10pm. Sat, noon to 11pm. Sun, noon to 10pm

Open since 1989 on Madison Street, a block off Ferry, and the kitchen is built around grilled octopus and whole fish. Orders arrive on platters meant to be shared and the bread and olives land before you have decided anything. Service runs to midnight every night of the week.

Daily, 11am to midnight

A Spanish kitchen on the north stretch of Washington Avenue doing tapas, paella and plancha seafood, with a bar you can eat at and a happy hour on the board. It opens at noon every day, which is unusual out here, and runs to half past ten on Friday and Saturday. This is the nearest sit-down meal to Meadowlands Comedy Club that is not the building the club is in.

Mon, noon to 9pm. Tue to Thu, noon to 9:30pm. Fri and Sat, noon to 10:30pm. Sun, noon to 9pm

A family restaurant on Prospect Avenue whose name means six neighbors, for the Central American countries and Mexico that the menu draws on. Pupusas from El Salvador and baleadas from Honduras sit alongside Mexican plates, and the prices are neighborhood prices. It serves from ten in the morning until midnight seven days a week, which almost nothing else in the South Bronx does. There is a dining area and outdoor seating rather than a counter.

Daily, 10am to midnight, for dine-in and takeout

A soondubu house on the Korean stretch of Northern Boulevard, past the point where Main Street's crowds thin out. The stew arrives at the table still boiling in a stone bowl, you crack a raw egg into it, and rice comes in a covered pot with black grains mixed through. There is galbi and a seafood pancake if soup is not the point of the evening. The 9am open makes it one of the few places out here that will feed you properly before an afternoon program.

Daily, 9am to 11pm

A black-lacquer dining hall on 65th Street with gold dragons running the length of the ceiling, opened in the early 1980s and barely touched since. The attached Shun Lee Cafe does dim sum. It has been the answer to where to eat before a Lincoln Center curtain for forty years and the menu has not chased anything.

Daily, noon to 10pm

A family-run West Indian kitchen on Liberty Avenue since 1990, doing Trinidadian-style roti with curry chicken, goat or channa folded into it. Doubles and aloo pie are the things to eat standing up, and saltfish and bake is the morning order, which is why the doors open at five in the morning. There is a bar attached. You order at the counter and pay before you sit.

Daily, 5am to 8:45pm

A hot dog truck that has stood on this stretch of Hylan Boulevard since 1962, now parked beside Last Chance Pond. Sabrett franks out of the water, topped with a bright red chili made on the truck, about three dollars. Dawn runs it, the chili runs out, and there is nowhere to sit.

Mon to Sat, 11am to 4pm. Closed Sunday. Chili often sells out before the close

A carved bear stands outside the door on Brighton Beach Avenue, which is how people find it. The name means frying pan and a lot of the menu arrives in one, still sputtering. The pelmeni are the reliable order and there is live music on weekends, played loud, mostly for the tables rather than at them.

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

A full Greek diner menu two blocks from Hammerstein. Take a booth and nobody hurries you once the plates are cleared.

Daily, 6am to 11:30pm. Older listings still claim 24 hours

A corner slice shop at Seventh Avenue and 8th Street that sells plain, Sicilian and grandma by the slice out of the case. There are a few tables and a counter you eat standing at. It is open past midnight every night of the week, which in Park Slope is rarer than it should be.

Mon to Thu, 11am to 12:30am. Fri and Sat, 11am to 1:30am. Sun, noon to 11pm

A tortilleria with a restaurant attached on Harrison Place, a block from the Morgan Avenue L entrance. They nixtamalize heirloom corn on site and sell tortillas by the bag as well as cooking with them. Dinner starts at 6pm and Sunday service runs in the afternoon.

Tuesday to Saturday 6pm to 10pm, to 11pm on the weekend. Sunday 1pm to 8pm. Closed Monday.

The Rutherford branch of the Neapolitan pizzeria that started on West Houston Street, working a wood oven and a short list of pies. It runs continuously from noon, with a break in the early evening only on Mondays, and it has a bar and tables on the sidewalk. Tuesday is pasta night and Wednesday is pizza night at a fixed price.

Mon, noon to 3pm and 4pm to 8pm. Tue to Thu, noon to 3pm and 4pm to 9pm. Fri and Sat, noon to 9:30pm. Sun, noon to 9pm

A wood-fired Neapolitan place on Atlantic between Smith and Hoyt, open since 2012, with a brick oven at the back and a short list of pies. The margherita and the marinara are the point and the crust comes out blistered and soft rather than crisp. It is small and plain and a table on a weeknight is not a problem.

Mon to Thu, 5pm to 10pm. Fri, 5pm to 11pm. Sat, noon to 11pm. Sun, noon to 10pm

An Indian kitchen and bar two minutes down Division Avenue from the club, in the low brick strip the club shares. Breads, seafood, appetizers and full plates, with a bar at the front. It is open from eleven in the morning to nine thirty at night every day of the week, which on this stretch of Long Island is the widest window anything independent keeps.

Daily, 11am to 9:30pm

A narrow Henan kitchen on Forsyth Street, open since 2010 and built around one dish. Big tray chicken arrives bone-in with potatoes in a chili-oil broth deep enough to take hand-pulled noodles, and a tray feeds three or four people. Cash only, no reservations, and you can carry your own beer in.

Reported open from late morning until late evening daily, though listings disagree

A dining car parked on the triangle where Leonard Street meets West Broadway, which by its own account has served Tribeca for over a hundred years. Counter stools along one side and booths along the other. Eggs are on all day and the check comes to diner money.

Monday and Tuesday, 8am to 4pm. Wednesday to Friday, 8am to 9pm. Saturday, 8am to 7pm. Sunday, 8am to 6pm

A vegetarian South Indian place on the India Square stretch of Newark Avenue, where the menu runs to more than a hundred kinds of dosa. The griddle is at the front and the plates come out fast. This is the upper end of Newark Avenue, a mile and a half from the downtown plaza and a different neighborhood entirely.

Daily, 10:30am to 10pm

Pierogi made on the premises since 1991 and sold over the counter, with around fifteen fillings on any given day. They supply shops around Queens and the retail counter is the same product. It is takeout, not a place to sit.

Monday to Friday 9am to 6pm, Saturday 9am to 3pm. Closed Sunday

A Parkchester fixture of more than forty years on Metropolitan Avenue, doing Caribbean and American cooking with a full bar attached and music on weekends. It opens at noon at weekends and one in the afternoon on weekdays, and it runs to eleven most nights and midnight on Friday. Parkchester's commercial strip is the closest thing to a real high street on this bench, so it is worth the walk even without the food.

Mon to Thu, 1pm to 11pm. Fri, 1pm to midnight. Sat and Sun, noon to 11pm

Open on Easton Avenue since 1977, selling stromboli by the half or the full nine inches and a beer list that got long before long beer lists were normal. You order at the counter or sit at one of the wooden tables and it arrives fast. Rutgers students have been eating here for close to fifty years and the prices still read that way.

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

A fully vegan bake shop that opened on Park Avenue in 2007, back when almost nowhere in Bergen County was doing it. Cupcakes are the core of the case, with cake truffles and cookies beside them, and there are gluten-free and soy-free versions of most of it. It sits at the far end of the Park Avenue shops, a walk past the main cluster.

Tue to Sat, 10am to 5:30pm. Closed Sunday and Monday

Sylvia Woods opened this on Lenox Avenue in 1962 and her family still runs it. Smothered chicken and candied yams come out of the same kitchen they always have. A band plays through the Saturday jazz brunch and the Sunday gospel brunch, from half past twelve to four.

Mon, Tue and Sun, 11am to 8pm. Wed to Sat, 11am to 10pm

A taqueria at the Nyack end of Route 59 making tacos and burritos to order, open eleven to ten every day of the week. Most of the trade is takeout and the counter moves quickly. Prices are low and the portions are not small.

Daily, 11am to 10pm

Started as a truck parked on Fifth Avenue and grew into a sit-down place on Fourth, with the truck still working the street. Tacos with cilantro and onion, cabeza and lengua alongside the safer fillings, and a salsa bar you help yourself from. The dining area is fluorescent and plain and the kitchen runs to 1am on weeknights.

Mon to Thu and Sun, 11am to 1am. Fri and Sat, 11am to 2am

A narrow storefront on Grove Street below the Van Vorst blocks, doing tacos and tamales and tortas with the kitchen in plain view. It has been here long enough to open a second branch further up the same street. Order at the counter, sit at one of the few tables, and pay less than the newer places on the plaza charge.

Daily, 11am to 10:45pm

A halal Uzbek supermarket whose hot bar runs the length of the back, with plov, manti and stewed lamb sold by weight. The samsa comes out of the oven in batches all day and the lamb one is the one to get. It opens at six in the morning and closes at eleven at night, which makes it the most useful set of hours in Brighton Beach.

Daily, 6am to 11pm. Closed Friday between 1pm and 2pm for prayer

On the bend of Doyers Street, with the dough being pulled in an open kitchen a few feet from the tables. Bowls start around five dollars. The knife-cut noodles pan-fried are the better order over the thin hand-pulled ones. Cash only, and tables get shared once it fills.

Reported daily 10:30am to 10pm, not confirmed by the operator

The one sit-down restaurant directly on the Brighton Beach boardwalk, with tables put out facing the water in season. Most of the week you walk in and order off a Russian menu. On a Saturday night it turns into a prix-fixe dinner with a cabaret act and dancing, which is a different evening entirely and wants booking ahead.

Mon to Thu, 11am to 9pm. Fri, 11am to 11pm. Sat, 11am to 2am. Sun, 11am to 11pm

A Paterson Avenue diner in the Carlton Hill part of East Rutherford, open from seven in the morning to eleven at night, seven days a week. It runs the full diner card with breakfast served all day, and the booths turn over fast enough that a wait is short. This is the latest kitchen in the batch.

Daily, 7am to 11pm

A 1950 diner on Orient Way in Lyndhurst, renovated but still built around the counter and the booths. It opens at seven every morning and the kitchen runs the standard diner card from breakfast through to dinner. This is the nearest sit-down to the Renaissance Meadowlands that is not inside a hotel or a highway plaza.

Mon, 7am to 4pm. Tue to Thu, 7am to 9pm. Fri, 7am to 10pm. Sat and Sun, 7am to 9pm

A full-size Staten Island diner at the Old Town Road end of Hylan Boulevard, with the long laminated menu, the pastry case at the door and the banquet hall attached round the back. Breakfast runs all day. It is the building The Looney Bin sets up in, so the comedy is upstairs from the eggs.

Daily, 7am to 10pm

Fried chicken and honey-butter biscuits out of a bar kitchen on Metropolitan Avenue, served until 4am seven nights. The drinks are tiki-adjacent and cheap. Wood panelling, vinyl booths, nothing about it staged.

Mon to Fri 4pm to 4am. Sat and Sun 11am to 4am

A counter and a row of stools on West 14th at Seventh Avenue, going since 1964 and open around the clock. Cake doughnuts, crullers, black and white cookies and coffee in a paper cup. You stand or you take a stool, and at three in the morning there is usually somebody in every one of them.

Open 24 hours, every day

The cart that started the New York halal platter, trading on this corner since 1990. Chicken or gyro over yellow rice, lettuce and pita, with the white sauce and a red sauce you should ask about before using. It opens at ten in the morning and is still going at four, so it covers a matinee and a late set equally well.

Daily, 10am to 4am. Until 5am on Friday and Saturday nights

A halal grill a hundred yards down North Broad, cooking chicken and lamb over rice, fried fish and burgers to order. It is built for takeout with a short counter to stand at. On Friday and Saturday it runs to two in the morning, which is later than anything else in sight of the venue.

Mon to Thu, 11am to midnight. Fri and Sat, 11am to 2am. Sun, 2pm to 11pm

A West 32nd standby that opens at nine in the morning and does not stop until one, or until six on a weekend. Order the budae jjigae and let the table share it.

Sun to Thu, 9am to 1am. Fri and Sat, 9am to 6am

A corner window on 108th Street that has sold Italian ice since 1944, founded by Nicola Benfaremo and run from the same spot ever since. You read the flavors off the board above the window, order, and they hand you a cup. There is no seating and no indoors to speak of, so people eat on the benches in the park triangle across the street. It is cash and it closes for the winter.

Daily, 11am to 10pm in season, roughly March to October. Closed for the winter

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

A family-run diner on Memorial Plaza opposite the train station, with booths and a menu that runs breakfast all day into burgers, sandwiches and dinner plates. It opens at seven in the morning and serves until eleven at night, seven days a week, which in this village is unusual. Nothing to book and no wait worth calling one.

Daily, 7am to 11pm

A counter-and-booths diner on Flushing Avenue that opens at half past three in the morning. It has been feeding this stretch for decades and has been in the same family for over forty years. Eggs, and also tacos and burritos.

Daily 3:30am to 4pm

The boardwalk outpost of the Tom's on Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights, which has been a family luncheonette since 1936. This one does eggs, pancakes, burgers and lime rickeys at a counter and at tables facing the water. Breakfast runs all day, which is the reason to know about it.

Daily, 11am to 8pm in season. Open about nine months a year and shut in deep winter

The corner diner at 112th and Broadway, founded by Tom Glikas in the 1940s and run since by the Zoulis family. The exterior is the one from the Seinfeld titles and the inside is a normal Columbia diner with booths and a counter. Breakfast runs all day.

Daily, 7am to 10:30pm

A service window in the ground floor of a corner house in Peterstown, selling the Italian hot dog, which is a fried dog or sausage packed into bread with peppers, onions and thin fried potatoes. There is no seating and no table. It is cash only with an ATM on the wall, and you eat standing on Second Avenue.

Daily, 11am to 7pm

Opened in 1997 and built around a tone, the clay Georgian oven that bread gets slapped onto the wall of. The khachapuri comes in five shapes and the adjaruli, the boat with the egg on top, is the one to order if you have not had it. There is a small dining area and a separate bakery counter next door for cakes and pastry.

Daily, 9am to 9pm

A family-run scoop shop on Erie Street going since 1968. Everything is made on the premises and the flavor list runs long, with a lot of tropical fruit on it. The name is short for todo rico. You order at the counter and eat it on the street.

Daily, 11am to 11pm

A working tortilla plant with a few tables pushed up against the machinery, so you eat tacos made from tortillas that came off the line a minute earlier. Bags of tortillas go out the door at wholesale prices all day. Cash only, and you bring your own beer.

Monday to Thursday 11am to 10pm, Friday to Sunday 11am to about 11:30pm

Antonio Pero, who had worked the oven at Lombardi's, opened this on Neptune Avenue in 1924 and his family still runs it. There is one coal oven, there are no slices, and the pies come out blistered and uneven. Two things you need to know before you walk over: it is open only on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and the dining area is no longer set up for sitting, so plan on taking the pie with you.

Sat and Sun, noon to 5:30pm. Closed Mon to Fri

Flame-grilled chicken on Halsey Street, done with peri-peri sauces made on site, drawing on Portuguese, Mozambican, South African and Southeast Asian cooking. You order a quarter or a half at the counter with rice and a sauce and sit down with a tray. The meat is halal and there is a full set of vegan plates alongside it.

Mon to Sat, 11am to 8pm. Closed Sun

A Morris Avenue diner that has been on the corner for over fifty years and runs around the clock. The 2008 renovation put murals and painted palm trees on the walls, which is where the name comes from. There is a bakery case at the front and a diner menu that covers breakfast at any hour.

Open 24 hours, daily

Inside the Ukrainian National Home on Second Avenue, in a building that traces back to around 1830 and has been a private house, a YMCA and the Stuyvesant Casino along the way. Pierogi, stuffed cabbage, borscht and roast pork, run largely unchanged for more than fifty years.

Monday to Friday 4pm to 10pm, Saturday and Sunday noon to 10pm

Uzbek and Central Asian cooking on Rockaway Beach Boulevard, open since 2013 and run by the same family since. Plov, lamb samsa, manti and skewers off the grill, with a long tea list. It is open every day of the year from noon to ten, which on this peninsula is the thing that matters most: almost nothing else near the beach keeps that schedule in February.

Daily, noon to 10pm, year round

Hainanese chicken rice from the chef who ran Lou Yau Kee before it closed. A counter operation that opens at four and sells out some nights.

Daily from 4pm, until sold out

Vincent and Tony Curcurato opened V&T in 1945 at 122nd Street after coming back from the war, and moved it to this block of Amsterdam Avenue in 1951. The crust is thin because the brothers learned to make it in an East Harlem bakery. Red booths sit under checked tablecloths. Baked ziti comes alongside the pizza.

Daily, 11:30am to 11pm

A Portuguese house on Monroe Avenue, open since 1989 and large enough to seat four hundred. The kitchen does grilled fish, paella and a steak brought to the table on a hot stone you finish yourself. There is free valet out front, which is unusual for Elizabeth and tells you what kind of evening the place expects.

Tue to Sat, 9am to midnight. Closed Sun and Mon

A German bake shop that has been in the same Park Avenue storefront since the building went up, still working a brick oven that is more than a century old and a mixer nearly as old. Crumb cake, black and white cookies and rye come out of it. There is no seating, so it is a counter you stop at rather than somewhere you sit, and it is only open Thursday through Sunday.

Thu to Sat, 6am to 6pm. Sun, 6am to 2pm. Closed Monday to Wednesday

One price, no menu, and they keep bringing Gujarati food until you tell them to stop. The dining area is built as a village set with banyan trees and low seating behind screens, which sounds worse than it is and has not changed in decades. Entirely vegetarian.

Sun to Thu, 5pm to 9:30pm. Fri and Sat, 5pm to 10pm

An Italian bakery and café on Hackensack Street in the older part of Carlstadt, family-run for more than twenty years, doing cannoli, biscotti, custom cakes and espresso. It is on the borough's own main street rather than out in the warehouse grid, so there are other storefronts on either side of it. It closes at five and does not open on Monday.

Tue to Sat, 8am to 5pm. Sun, 8am to 2pm. Closed Monday

A counter on the main concourse of Chelsea Market where the dough is pulled and slapped against the bench in front of you before it goes in the water. Biang biang noodles wide as a belt, dumplings, and a chili oil that is the reason most people are in line. You order, they call your name, and you eat at the shared tables in the middle of the concourse. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes including the wait.

Mon to Sat, 11am to 8pm. Sun, 11am to 6pm

A Ukrainian counter and restaurant on Second Avenue since 1954, run by the third generation of the same family. Pierogi and borscht go out all day and the kitchen runs through the night again on weekends. It brought back round-the-clock Friday and Saturday service in April 2026.

Mon to Thu, 9am to midnight. Sun, 8am to 11pm. Around the clock on Friday and Saturday

A small restaurant on a cobbled stretch of Hudson Avenue in Vinegar Hill, open since 2008, with a wood-burning oven, a pressed-tin ceiling and a garden out the back. The cast-iron chicken and the red wattle pork chop have been on the menu for most of that time and the rest changes. It takes bookings but keeps seats at the bar for walk-ins, which on a weeknight is the easier way in.

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

A Bedford Avenue slice counter open since the 1980s, with hand-lettered signs covering most of the wall and a vegan slice that predates the trend by a decade. Slices go over the counter until 2am on Friday and Saturday. You eat standing up.

Sun to Wed 11:30am to 11pm. Thu 11:30am to midnight. Fri and Sat 11:30am to 2am

A corner place on DeKalb at Cumberland with windows on two sides, a bar along one wall and a menu of burgers, roast chicken and a few pastas. The kitchen runs straight through from 11am, so there is no dead hour in the middle of the afternoon when most of Fort Greene is shut. Happy hour is four to six Monday through Thursday and weekend brunch starts at 9am.

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

A corner diner at Sixth Avenue and Waverly Place with vinyl booths and a counter, and a menu long enough to cover breakfast at any hour. Triple-decker sandwiches and burger platters are what it is known for. It has spent years advertising itself as a 24-hour diner, though current listings post a late-evening close instead.

Listings updated September 2026 post 7am to 11pm Sunday through Wednesday and 7am to midnight Thursday through Saturday. Older listings and the NYC Tourism entry still describe it as open 24 hours, so check before a very late walk

A working Ninth Avenue diner where Seinfeld wrote. Breakfast runs all day and the counter turns over fast.

Daily, 6am to 11pm

A narrow takeout counter under the 7 tracks where the thing to say is "number six." That is twelve pork and vegetable wontons in chili oil with pickled mustard green on top, about ten dollars, handed over in a plastic container with a wooden fork. There are four or five seats and most people eat standing or carry it out to a bench.

Daily, 10am to 7pm

A round stainless building on Tonnelle Avenue, built by Paramount Diners and first used as a pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows before being moved here and reassembled in 1946. It was sold as the diner of the future, with a circular counter so the cook can reach the grill, the soda station and the register without taking three steps. Small burgers, cooked in front of you, cash only.

Daily, 8am to 11pm

A bagel shop on Jersey Avenue that has been boiling and baking here for more than thirty-five years, with a deli counter alongside for egg sandwiches. There are other branches on Central and Bergen, and this is the downtown one. It is a morning and early-afternoon business and it closes when that is done.

Mon to Fri, 6am to 3pm. Weekend hours not confirmed

Pay-by-weight Korean steam table with a cold case of kimbap and banchan next to it. Ten dollars gets you dinner and you are back out in fifteen minutes.

Daily, roughly 7am to 11pm

Large round tables under bright light on East Broadway, doing Cantonese roast meats, Peking duck and whole fried crab. The roast suckling pig has to be ordered ahead. There is no corkage at all, so people carry their own bottles in. It took over the old Wing Shoon storefront in 2016.

Reported open from early morning until late evening daily, though listings disagree

The Bayard Street store opened in 2017 to take the overflow from the older one down the block. Hand-ripped biang-biang noodles under cumin lamb, and cold liang pi skin noodles for anyone who wants the chili without a hot bowl. You order at the register and then find a seat.

Daily 11am to 9pm

A plain storefront on the south side of Atlantic with lamb haneeth, fahsa in a stone bowl and rounds of bread brought to the table without being ordered. Portions are large and the bill is small. The dining area is bright and functional and you walk in off the street at almost any hour it is open.

Mon to Thu, 10am to 11pm. Fri, 2pm to 11pm. Sat and Sun, 10am to 11pm

Yonah Schimmel sold knishes off a pushcart before taking this Houston Street storefront in 1910. The counter still sells one thing seriously, a baked knish, potato or kasha. You eat it standing or you take it away.

Daily, 10:30am to 6pm

A tong sui shop on Prince Street doing the Hong Kong sweet soups, served warm or cold depending on what you order. Ginger milk pudding is the one to get, set by the ginger itself rather than by gelatin, and there is mango pomelo sago and taro mochi paste for anyone who wants something colder. Nothing on the menu is a cake and nothing is built to be photographed. It stays open to eleven every night, which in this neighborhood is where dessert actually happens.

Daily, noon to 11pm