I’ve always wanted to write a city guide like one of Andrew Kim’s from Minimally Minimal. Beautiful pictures, fancy restaurants, tasteful commentary. That sort of thing.
I’m copying that a little bit here, but really, this is just a laundry list of my favorite foods, places, and memories from New York. I hope you can check them out.
Part one is all about food.
Her Name is Han
★★★★ / $$ / Midtown
A homey yet modern Korean restaurant in Midtown. Great service, great decor, and of course, great food. Get the tofu with black sesame sauce and tempura onions. I also really liked their shishito peppers with garlic and Kurobata sausages. Oh and the Sowuju!—one hundred day aged soju infused with kiwi or grapefruit.
For Pulkit and I, we split one entree, three appetizers, and two drinks.
They are cash only for weekday lunches.
Num Pang
★★★★ / $ / NYC chain
Num Pang serves these Cambodian banh mi-style sandwiches. So freaking good. My favorite is the five spiced pork belly sandwich. I’ve had the bowls too. They’re good, but the sandwiches are so so good.
I also really like their charred broccoli side. Comes with this sauce on it that’s amazing.
Chelsea Market
★★★ / $-$$ / Chelsea
Lots of restaurants and small shops here. It’s a bit too crowded for me most of the time though. Good place to bring friends who are visiting before going on a walk down the High Line at sunset!
If you’re into food halls, you can also checkout Broadway Bites and Urbanspace Vanderbilt. Plus Brooklyn’s Smorgasbord.
Lady M
★★★★ / $ / Bryant Park
Their crepe cake is amazing. I recommend the matcha or the original. I tried one of their special passionfruit flavors once—not as good.
Lady M is all over NYC, including one shop in Hong Kong. But, for me, the true Lady M experience is eating your cake at a table in Bryant Park while journaling or chatting with a friend.
Birch Coffee
★★★★ / $ / NYC Chain
I haven’t tried that many coffee places in NYC, but so far, Birch is my favorite. Partly because I just love their logo, partly because I also like their coffee. Cold brew is good. Latte is good. Cafe au lait is good. I don’t think I’ve actually had their drip yet, but it’s probably good too.
Grace Street
★★★★ / $ / K-town
Grace Street is a really large coffee shop. If it’s really hot out, I’ll go there for bingsu. I also like their bubble tea—it’s a bit more expensive than Gong Cha or Kung Fu Tea a few stores down, but they have the chewiest boba ever.
Katz’s Delicatessen
★★★ / $$ / Lower East Side
A New York City classic accompanied with a chaotic ordering system. Their pastrami sandwich and pickles are delicious. But, they’re also $26, and I’m cheap. You do get a huge portion—half a sandwich can definitely be a meal for one—so come with a friend and split. (3 stars for value if you can split, 2 stars if you’re solo).
I personally enjoyed Katz more than Second Avenue Deli.
Gong Cha
★★★★ / $ / K-town
The summer I lived in New York, I probably went here once or twice a week. You gotta get the Earl Grey 3 J’s—it comes with boba, grass jelly, and mango jelly. Such a good deal.
They also take credit card. As of 2017 summer (lol), Kung Fu Tea across the street was cash only for purchases under $5.
Mission Chinese Food
★★ / $$$ / K-town
Okay, so I was really excited to eat here. I’ve watched the Mission Chinese Food season of Mind of a Chef three or four times through now.
But they use way too much salt! Mapo tofu had amazing flavor, but was way too salty. Thrice cooked bacon had good flavor, but was way too salty, and they added bitter melon (苦瓜) for some reason, which just left this awful funk in your mouth. The chongqing chicken wings were good though, as was the Taiwanese eggplant.
Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was definitely disappointed. I would personally recommend Cafe China (below) instead if you’re looking for awesome sit-down Chinese food.
Cafe China
★★★★ / $$ / Midtown
Cafe China has to be one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in the US. They have this dark 1920s Shanghai ambiance, and really good food. Has a Michelin star too, if you’re into that.
Raclette
★★★ / $$ / Lower East Side
Swiss restaurant that does the scrape-gooey-cheese-onto-everything sort of thing. I had a stomach ache the day we went, so I just got mac and cheese while my friends got the gooey cheese stuff. Regrets.
BBQ Olive Chicken
★★★★ / $ / K-town
Good memories here. The summer I lived here, Pulkit and I would go here (almost) every Sunday to buy fried chicken, take it my office, and watch Game of Thrones in a conference room.
Also, I love that the TV above the cash register just plays episodes of the K-drama Goblin non-stop since they sponsored the show.
Shake Shack
★★★★ / $ / Midtown
Make sure you go to the original in Madison Square Park. I don’t normally like lines or hyped up things, but the OG Shack Shack definitely lived up to the hype for me.
My friend Pulkit recommends getting the chicken sandwich topped with a shroom burger (mushroom stuffed with cheese). I usually just get a single or double cheeseburger. All are good.
Black Seed
★★★★ / $ / Nolita
Black Seed makes my favorite sausage-egg-and-cheese bagel sandwich. Gooey cheese, good quality sausage, and a perfect wood-fired bagel.
Like any other Manhattan bagel place, it’s not cheap, and Black Seed is definitely one of the priciest. My sandwich was $10! (Still worth it though.)
There’s usually a line, so you can try ordering ahead or visiting the roomier East Village location. Don’t go to the stand in Brookfield Place—my bagel was stale and Pulkit’s had unmelted cheese.
While you’re in the area, check out all the cool shops in Nolita (way cooler than stuck up Soho in my opinion).
Ess-a-Bagel
★★★★ / $ / Midtown-ish
A more traditional oversized NYC bagel (Black Seed is a bit of a hybrid with Montreal style, since it’s wood-fired). I would go to Ess-a-Bagel for cream cheese bagels or fish ones, and Black Seed for sausage (or bacon) egg and cheese.
Dominique Ansel Bakery
★★★ / $ / Soho
This is the Cronut place. No more lines though (thank goodness). The Cronuts can actually be really good, but it depends entirely on the flavor (they do one flavor per day). The first one I tried was really good. Then when I came back with my sister, it was some weird chocolate pineapple thing. Not so good.
Meet Fresh
★★★★ / $ / Cooper’s Union
Meet Fresh is a Taiwanese dessert chain that kinda just appeared out of nowhere. I’ve been here once, and to the Chapel Hill (North Carolina) location maybe three or four times now?
You can get their drinks, but what you should really be getting is the shaved ice. Michelle and I have settled on the “Icy grass jelly no. 6” as our favorite (grass jelly flavored shaved ice, boba, melon jelly, jelly noodles, and grass jelly). Note that you can always sub out toppings for others.
To compare to Korean bingsu, I would say bingsu generally has smoother ice texture, but I prefer the Taiwanese toppings. (Grace Street, somewhere on this giant list, has great bingsu in Manhattan, but for the best bingsu ever, you have to go to Mealtop in Seoul!)
Cha Chan Tang
★★★ / $ / Chinatown
The name literally refers to the Hong Kong diner cafe combos scattered all over Kowloon and Central. You can get your pineapple bun with a thick slab of butter, your silk stocking milk tea, and your instant noodles with satay beef.
Wah Fung Fast Food
★★★★ / $ / Chinatown
My friend Jared calls this place, “the best deal in Manhattan.” It definitely is. $4–6 for a styrofoam box of steamed white rice, bok choy, and then your choice of absolutely delicious Cantonese BBQ: soy sauce chicken, roast duck, roast goose, roast pork belly, char siu, or any combination of those.
Like most places in Chinatown, it’s cash only.
Abiko Curry
★★★ / $-$$ / K-town
Japanese style curry from a Korean restaurant. There’s curry noodles and some other things available, but I would recommend the katsu curry rice with whatever spice level you can handle. My friend Pulkit met his match here.
Ippudo Ramen
★★ / $$ / East Village
This place gets a lot of hype and a lot of lines. I had to get the buns, and (of course), I had to get the ramen. Buns were good, but not amazing. Ramen was good, but also, not amazing.
My favorite ramen spot in the U.S. still is M Kokko in Durham, North Carolina. Damn, that place is good.
Woorijip
★★★ / $ / K-town
Cafeteria style Korean restaurant. You can either get stuff from the hot bar by the pound, or pick from pre-packaged meals.
The Kati Roll Company
★★★ / $ / Washington Square
Kati rolls wrapped in either paratha (yummy) or roti (healthy). The NYU location was definitely better than the one in Midtown. Not a fan of the extra charge for chutney.
Spot Dessert Bar
★★★ / $ / St. Mark’s Place
The place to go for photogenic desserts. Their matcha lava cake is really good, though in my opinion, some of the others look better than they taste. There’s two Spot locations a few shops down from each other in St. Mark’s. I feel like they have better quality than the location in K-town on the second floor of the Kung Fu Tea food hall.
Xian Famous Foods
★ / $ / NYC Chain
I’m probably the only person that doesn’t like this place, but their noodles are so damn oily, their flavors don’t work for me, and it’s not actually as cheap as people make it out to be.
Spreads
★★★★ / $ / Midtown
Standard sandwich shop, except their turkey sandwich with bacon is actually one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had in my life.
Lung Moon
★★★★ / $ / Chinatown
My second-favorite Chinese bakery in the United States (after Chiu Quon in Chicago, of course). I like getting their sweet dinner rolls—$2 for a pack fo 6—and then just eating those while walking around with a box of Vitasoy.
Halal Guys
★★★ / $ / Midtown-ish
Great snack before or after going to MoMA. Go to the actual cart with a really long line, not the brick-and-mortar shop near Union Square. The cart is both cheaper and better. The red sauce is really spicy.
You should also try random halal carts around Manhattan. Those will definitely be cheaper and some might even be better.
