Best Food in NYC: Where New Yorkers Actually Eat

New York has over 27,000 restaurants. You could eat at a different one every day for 74 years. The tourist restaurants in Midtown and Times Square are obvious and overpriced. Here is where real New Yorkers eat.

The $1-5 Tier (Street Food & Cheap Eats)

Dollar pizza — Joe's Pizza (West Village), 2 Bros Pizza (multiple locations). A folded New York slice for $1-2 at 2am is a rite of passage.

Halal cart on 53rd & 6th — The most famous street food in NYC. Chicken and rice with white sauce. The line is long but worth it. Under $8.

Tacos from the Red Hook ball fields — Weekend-only taco vendors in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Run by actual Mexican and Central American families. Best tacos in the city, $3-4 each.

Xi'an Famous Foods — Hand-pulled noodles that will change your understanding of what noodles can be. Multiple locations. Under $12.

The $10-20 Tier (Where Locals Eat Daily)

Russ & Daughters — Smoked fish, bagels, and cream cheese since 1914. The appetizing store on the Lower East Side is a New York institution.

Los Tacos No. 1 (Chelsea Market) — Mexican street-style tacos. The adobada taco is perfection. Fast, cheap, no-nonsense.

Lucali (Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn) — Pizza so good Jay-Z orders it. Cash only, BYOB, long wait. Worth every minute.

Queens food crawl — Roosevelt Avenue from Jackson Heights to Flushing is the greatest food mile in America. Indian, Tibetan, Thai, Colombian, Chinese — all authentic, all cheap.

The Experiences

Chinatown dim sum — Nom Wah Tea Parlor (open since 1920) or any of the large banquet-style restaurants on Mott Street. Go on a weekend morning.

Smorgasburg — Saturday in Williamsburg, Sunday in Prospect Park. 100+ food vendors, all small-batch, all trying to make it in the most competitive food city on Earth.

Arthur Avenue, The Bronx — The real Little Italy. Better Italian food than anything in Manhattan's tourist Little Italy. Fresh mozzarella, pasta, pastries.

A Local Friend in New York knows which $1 pizza is actually good, which bodega makes the best chopped cheese, and which hole-in-the-wall in Queens serves the dish that would cost $45 in Manhattan.