Good eats in NYC
 

Headed to NYC for my first "tourist" trip, and I'm looking for good, reasonable eats. Most the places in my guidebook look pretty pricey. While I'm not averse to eating well at dinner, I'm looking for more affordable lunch options.

Street vendors? Ethnic food? Delis? What are your picks?

Would also love to hear your pre-theatre favorites!

On my last trip one of the best lunches I had was at a place called Tahini on 3rd Ave between St. Mark's Place and 9th St. This is in the East Village, which has lots of interesting shops & other restaurants. It's a felafel place, and they have excellent felafel sandwiches, good scwharma too. And cheap! Also, if you go from that location down St. Mark's toward 2nd Ave, then turn right, you'll find Pommes Frites, which serves excellent Belgian style french fries, with a selection of about 20 or 30 different sauces to dip them.

The East Village is by and large an area with lots of very reasonably priced restaurants and a great ethnic and cuisine variety. Aduchamp is the maven on where to eat in the E.V. In midtown - although quite west (11th AVe.) - Daisy Mae's Bar B Q - great value for great bbq. Pain Quotidien - with several locations - also gives good value, good food, nice ambience - and you can sit at a huge wood table and chat with other visitors.

Re pre-theatre picks:

Roberto Passon
Benoit
Marseille
Maria Cara
Maria Pia
Scarletto

Suggest you log onto www.opentable.com where you may
designate area & then view restaurants' menus, etc. And
for further clarification, try www.menupages.com. Both
sites are gratis. And Bon Apetit.

Won't you just eat lunch whereever you happen to be, or are you planning to go out of your way?

What do you like and will you be in the East Village?

If all you want is "eats" you can find lunch anyplace in the city. Just look around and you will find several delis, fast food places or local ethnic restaurants that will let you have lunch (sandwich or lunch special or whatever, beverage tax and tip for $10-$15).

When you're uptown try Gray's Papaya at Broadway & 72nd for a couple of dogs that are a true New York experience.

For dinners you need to give us a budget and what type of food you like. You will get many more inexpenisve choices by heading to residential areas that have a ton of good choices- of almost any ethnicity - many with outdoor cafes - on the upper est side, in the Village, or east village. Midtown tends to be much more expensive (except for 9th ave in the 40's) and few have sidewalk cafes.

for pretheater, i really recommend casellula. affordable, tasty, and not touristy. http://cherrypatter.com/2009/05/case...nd-to-theater/

there was just a great article on the blog midtown lunch highlighting his street cart picks so that might be a good place to start with the carts. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/di...er=rss&emc=rss another good site for some cart review is serious eats ny at http://newyork.seriouseats.com/

other good relatively affordable food in manhattan includes porchetta in the east village (the greatest pork sandwiches), amy's bread in chelsea market has excellent cheddar sandwiches, and there are lots of dumpling spots in chinatown. the place i would try though i have not yet tried it is fried dumpling at 99 allen (it's supposed to be good). and new york also has some great ramen now though not so cheap. you can try ippudo with just got a high ranking from the nyt food critic, or momofuku noodle bar (not too cheap though). an excellent falafel place is rainbow felafel on 17th street between broadway and 5th avenue.

if you do like food, i would definitely spend a little time researching this as you should be able to find great food for not too much money. but i am not really a fan of just trying whatever outdoor cafe looks good. there are many many poor or mediocre ones. other sites to help you would be time out new york, chowhound (though it can be a bit specific) and new york magazine (try to look at its cheap eats section).

have a great time.