The chef Brooks Headley relocated his tiny veggie-burger joint to the larger East Village space that had housed the Odessa Restaurant for decades. The original joint offered just six dishes, plus specials and desserts. All of it was vegetarian; a lot was “accidentally vegan.” On recent visits, I was delighted to find that Headley is keeping the focus tight. New dishes are few but powerful, such as a stuffed cabbage, filled with sticky rice and mushrooms, draped in a sweet-and-sour tomato sauce.

On a summer evening at Laser Wolf, a woman zipped dutifully from table to table, pausing at each. “We clap for the sunset,” she announced. “Don’t panic.” For a moment, service seemed to halt. The rooftop patio offers an unimpeded view of the Manhattan skyline. With a vista like this, food and drink could easily be secondary. At Laser Wolf—an outpost of the beloved Philadelphia restaurant of the same name—it’s the setting that feels negligible.

This beloved Cantonese restaurant closed for a few months in 2022; when the gates were finally raised again, there was rejoicement. The food was as good as—if not better than—anyone remembered. The lo mein with ginger and scallion, a mass of thin, curly noodles, activated taste buds on the back of my tongue that I wouldn’t otherwise know were there. What a pleasure it was to be reunited with that sensation, and to be served a bowl of fragrant broth dense with wontons bobbing like jellyfish.

The most obvious thing to eat at JUQI is a Peking duck. First, a chef removes a strip of skin and cuts it into the size of postage stamps; each is placed atop steamed bread and finished with a pile of caviar. From what looks like a royal chest, a server pulls out hoisin, scallions, cucumbers, pickles, honeydew—then shares a technique for wrapping meat and garnishes into bing pancakes. My favorite iteration of the duck is when it's dunked in a savory soup, with silken tofu and tender greens.

Even in the best circumstances, a trip to Staten Island from any other borough is a commitment. For Zara Forest Grill, in Graniteville, it’s a commitment I’m willing to make. For breakfast, there is gozleme, a flatbread folded around potato, spinach and cheese, or ground meat. Lunch and dinner are best begun with the balon bread to swipe through meze, such as a labneh or aci ezme. Standouts among the entrées include the Iskender kebab, with shavings of perfectly seasoned lamb gyro.

Thai Diner’s menu is partly inspired by the way co-owner Ann Redding’s mother, who emigrated from Thailand, adapted her cooking to the U.S. Some of the dishes were transplanted from Uncle Boons, the couple’s first, more strictly Thai restaurant, that closed in 2020. I particularly enjoyed the superlative phat Thai (a.k.a. pad Thai), and a cut-crystal coupe of minced peanuts, dried shrimp, raw onion, and ginger, to be wrapped with toasted-coconut sauce in peppery betel leaves.

The restaurateurs behind gertrude’s pulled inspiration from N.Y.C. spots such as Prune, Diner, and Minetta Tavern, as well as from their own Jewish backgrounds. The result transcends expectations. The half chicken is brined in dill-pickle juice before it’s roasted. The excellent hamburger is sandwiched on a shiny braided challah roll. All entrées, including a whole trout—stuffed with lemon rounds and covered with chopped green olives and herbs—come with a choice of fries, greens, or latkes.

I can think of no better summer meal than naengmyeon, a cold Korean noodle soup traditionally eaten after a meal of barbecue. Noona Noodles, a stall run by a mother-daughter duo in a food court in Koreatown, offers two varieties: mul and bibim, rebranded as Icy and Icy Spicy. Both feature an intensely flavorful broth, made by boiling brisket with fresh pineapple, Asian pear, apple, lemon, and daikon, and are finished with big hunks of slushy ice, which soak up the sweet, sour, savory liquid.

Eric Finkelstein and Matt Ross, the sandwich experts behind Court Street Grocers, have taken over the restaurant formerly known as Eisenberg’s and proven themselves to be gifted preservationists and savvy restaurateurs. The menu has been pared down, but it still feels encyclopedic in the tradition of a short-order diner, featuring roughly 36 sandwiches. Some of my happiest moments have been spent marvelling at dishes I’ve taken for granted—like a half cantaloupe filled with cottage cheese.

If anyone objects to the union of two types of anchovies in the pintxo matrimonio al ajillo at Ernesto’s, a Basque-leaning restaurant on the Lower East Side, speak now and I will eat yours for you. The matrimony of a boqueron (plump, meaty, and white, pickled in wine vinegar and olive oil) and an anchoa (a dark, skinny, salt-cured umami bomb) is holy indeed, made holier by the kitchen’s decision to mount the pair on a rectangle of delicately crisp, buttery pastry.

At Dhamaka, my dining companions and I took turns dragging our spoons through a hot pot of gurda kapoora, searching for offal. Which morsels, we wondered, were the goat kidneys and which were the goat testicles? The one male in our group joked that, as someone in possession of both, he was uniquely qualified to tell. I preferred the testicle, meaty but mild; supple as sweetbread. The vehicle for both was an outstanding gravy to be spooned atop buttery slices of pao, a fluffy slider-size roll.

Golden Diner is not a trendy restaurant posturing as a diner—it’s a genuine catchall, in the mode of its forebears, but better. Just like at your local Athenian, you can order grapefruit; a side of bacon; a Diet Coke. Unlike your local Athenian, the diner tops its pancakes with salted honey-maple butter, in homage to a popular South Korean potato-chip flavor. Its chef is the Momofuku Ko alum Samuel Yoo, who grew up in Queens, and his menu tells an enchantingly personal story.

At Bonnie’s, the poached half chicken, Bak Cheet Gai, comes with teacups of Gai Tong, or chicken broth, redolent of ginger and white pepper. “Sip it as you eat or dunk it to take away the chill,” my server suggested. I used it as a palate cleanser between bites of long beans and bites of scorching-hot Cheung Fun, seared rolled rice noodles that were sticky on the outside and custardy within.

“I’m a chaat person,” Nowshin Ali told me. We were discussing the menu at the restaurant she co-owns with her business partner, Anurag Shrivastava, in Brooklyn’s Little Pakistan. Chaats, a signature dish of Lucknow, Ali’s home town, are defined on Jalsa’s menu as “crispy-crunchy-spicy-tangy Indian snacks.” Was I a chaat person before I tried Jalsa’s iterations? I’d always enjoyed them, but I don’t remember ever crowing in pleasure the way I did after taking a bite of Shrivastava’s palak chaat.

Kwame Onwuachi’s restaurant in Lincoln Center is a triumph in staying relevant while fitting into the category of performing arts: eating here is like watching Onwuachi deliver an electric autobiographical monologue. The menu traces a childhood spent in the Bronx and Nigeria and a career that began on an oil-spill-response vessel off the coast of Louisiana. The most obvious showpiece is the short-rib pastrami suya. I preferred a bowl of large and beefy braised oxtails with rice and peas.

Place des Fêtes, with its leather stools and whitewashed brick walls, would be perfect for a first date. The kitchen—overseen by the chef and co-owner Nico Russell—can make magic with whatever the season, or the pantry, presents. My favorite of the cocktails was the Vermut and Soda, which the bartender accurately described as “almost like a Dr. Pepper,” though it’s not as sweet, and gives the barest impression of smoke.

Chez Ma Tante doesn’t bill itself as Québécois or even Canadian, but it strikes me as a restaurant made in the image of Montreal’s dining scene. Its name, which translates to “At My Aunt’s House,” comes from a beloved hot-dog stand in Montreal, and one of the two owners spent time cooking there and at M. Wells, a Québécois bistro in Long Island City. The short menu shifts from season to season. When I visited, the chicken-liver pâté was as nutty and pungent as an aged cheddar.

Torrisi, located in the Puck Building, hints at a return to exceptional lavishness. My favorite course was the most excessive: dessert. The staff rightly pushes the affogato, a coupe layered with espresso granita, vanilla ice cream, mascarpone mousse, and hot fudge. But nothing beat the “frozen yogurt”: half a hollow grapefruit filled with soft-serve, swirled with grapefruit-Campari jam and olive oil.

At this Persian restaurant in Bushwick, I couldn’t help but steal sips of a friend’s orange-blossom Negroni, a cold and viscous concoction that lingered on my tongue and in my memory. I’m happy to report that the dynamite drinks portended dynamite food. Eyval was opened by Ali Saboor, a former chef at Sofreh. Saboor’s ghormeh sabzi is a showstopper, a braised veal shank crowned with a disk of herbed-rice tahdig and rising regally from a rich stew of tender kidney beans and melty greens.