Plan

An old bakery on the main strip under the elevated tracks, with glass cases of hazelnut meringues, rum balls, glazed brioche and the kind of oversized cream cake that gets bought whole for a birthday. There is coffee and a few seats. It opens at seven in the morning, earlier than anything else useful nearby.

Mon to Fri, 7am to 7pm. Weekend hours not confirmed

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

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

Coney Island USA runs the museum and the Circus Sideshow out of a 1917 building on Surf Avenue, and it is the only organization here that treats the neighborhood's own history as its subject. Upstairs holds banners, carousel animals and parts of rides that no longer exist. Downstairs a sword swallower and a fire eater work a continuous show you can walk into partway through.

Museum, Sat and Sun noon to 6pm. Circus Sideshow, Sat and Sun 1pm to 9pm. Weather dependent and quieter off season

The Wonder Wheel was built in 1920 and has been turning on the same spot ever since, with swinging cars on the inner ring and fixed ones on the outer. Entry to the park is free and you buy rides one at a time, so a single turn on the wheel is ten dollars and about four minutes. The Vourderis family has run it since 1983.

Opens late March for weekends, then daily from Memorial Day weekend to early September, roughly 11am to 10pm. Weekends into the fall. Shut from late autumn to March

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

A Russian grocery with a prepared-food counter at the front doing piroshki stuffed with cabbage or meat, smoked fish by the pound and sausage cut to order. Prices are written by hand and are low. It is the kind of shop where you buy lunch and also leave with a jar of something you did not plan on.

Daily, 9am to 8pm

The operating amusement park that took over the old Astroland footprint in 2010 and now runs most of the rides between West 10th and West 16th, including the Cyclone and the Thunderbolt. You buy credits at a kiosk or a wristband and walk on, and a single ride is cheap enough to do one thing and leave. The season runs from late March to the end of October and the schedule thins out sharply once school starts.

Seasonal. Daily 11am to 10pm in summer, later Fri and Sat. From mid September it is weekends only plus Halloween Harvest dates, with weekday opens as late as 4pm. Closed November to late March

The oldest continuously operating aquarium in the country, on Surf Avenue since 1957 after seventy-odd years in Castle Garden at the Battery. The walk-through shark building and the sea lion pool are the parts people come back for. It is the one indoor cultural stop in Coney Island that is open every day of the year, which matters in January.

Daily, 10am to 4:30pm. Free admission after 3pm on Wednesdays with a timed ticket

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

A line of city piers along Emmons Avenue where the party boats tie up, so at most hours of the day there is a crew hosing down a deck or a mate selling tickets for the next trip. The Ocean Avenue footbridge crosses the water to Manhattan Beach and reopened after its rebuild, which makes a short loop out of a walk that used to dead end. Benches face the boats and nobody asks you to buy anything to sit on one.

Open daily, dawn to 1am under Parks rules. Boat departures cluster around 7am mornings and 7pm evenings in season

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

Opened in 1927 at Surf Avenue and West 10th, a city landmark and on the National Register, and still built of wood. The ride is about a minute and three quarters and it is rough in a way modern coasters are not. It sits inside Luna Park but takes a single ticket, so you can ride it and leave without doing the rest of the park.

Late March to late October. Daily from Memorial Day weekend to early September, roughly 11am to 10pm. Weekends either side. Shut November to March

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

Two and a half miles of boardwalk opened in 1923, running from West 37th Street past Coney Island and Brighton Beach to Manhattan Beach. The beach below it is public and free and the water is open to swimmers when lifeguards are on duty in summer. Walking east from Coney Island to Brighton Beach Avenue takes about twenty-five minutes and the crowd changes completely about halfway.

Open all year, all hours. Beach swimming only when lifeguards are on duty, late May to early September, 10am to 6pm

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

Ruby's has been on the Riegelmann Boardwalk since 1934 and the walls are covered in framed photographs of Coney Island going back about that far. You drink at a long bar with the ocean on one side and the boardwalk crowd walking past on the other. It is beer and a shot and a burger rather than anything that needs explaining.

Daily, 11am to 9pm in season. Shut for the winter, roughly November to late March

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 thousand feet of pier straight out into the Atlantic at West 17th Street, rebuilt after Hurricane Sandy and reopened in 2013. People fish off the end at all hours and the lamps stay on. From the far end you get the whole Coney Island shorefront behind you, which is the one view that makes sense of the place.

Open all year. Gates generally open early morning to late evening, hours not formally posted

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

Next door to Nathan's on Surf Avenue and in business since 1941, with trays of candy apples in the window and marshmallow sticks rolled in caramel behind the glass. The candy apple is the thing to get and the fruit under the shell is better than it has any reason to be. It stays open later than almost anything else on this stretch and it is open in February.

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