New Yorkers have been hungry for a proper British pub and a plate of mushy peas for far too long. Enter Dean’s. It’s a British pub in the style of King (the team’s restaurant next door), which means the the $5 “bag of crisps” are actually parsnips and beets, fried in-house. Order the off-menu stargazy pie with a mackerel head and tail popping out of it, but don’t stress if it’s sold out—there are many good things to eat here. Like scotch eggs with quail eggs, fish and chips, and ginger pudding.

Start your evening at Bodega Nights, a new Brazilian-ish restaurant from the Baby Sips team. Get a carafe of draft natural wine ($22 if you get there at happy hour), and snack on some warm bread with lemony butter and bolinhos de bacalhao with fresno hot sauce. For a more substantial dinner, you won't go wrong with a steak that comes with potatoes and cauliflower—but we love the snacks here most, especially the croquettes and some charred cabbage with a creamy guajillo sauce.

This bakery, which opened earlier this winter, is one of an increasing number of Chinese chains expanding into NYC, and it’s an incredible operation. Equip yourself with a bright yellow basket, then wind around the pastry-lined room, grabbing packs of butter mochi and tiramisu egg tarts as you go. Everything is made in-house, in a kitchen behind a glass partition, including the signature crispy floss cakes. Pick up a few of those before heading out.

They don’t have any location-exclusive items here, just the same consistent, high-quality pizza we’ve come to expect at the Williamsburg original and the West Village location. There’s no seating, but there is enough counter space to stand around gnawing every last crumb of their perfectly charred crusts. When it's not busy, watch the actual making of the pies here as you wait for your burrata-topped L'Industrie slice, or a cup of soft-serve pistachio gelato.

Cô Lac in the East Village has a great casual fixed-price format. Head over for dinner with your couple-friends, and choose the $55 prix fixe. You can try all but one item on their excellent menu, which includes crisp mochi and tapioca dumplings that come as part of the Huế appetizer set, and a pho cheese melt. Don’t miss their shrimpy take on a scotch egg, and keep in mind the restaurant is BYOB until they get their license.

Da Toscano remains a destination for unique takes on familiar Italian dishes. The former Greenwich Village restaurant’s move to a Midtown hotel doesn’t help their cool cred. But fans of their octopus carpaccio (we count ourselves among them) should know the menu is almost exactly the same. If you want to celebrate an anniversary with several bowls of pasta that might ruin all future bowls of pasta, it’s a great choice. Especially if you’re seeing a show after.

Makina started out as a food truck, and a stall on Governors Island, where we’d get sambusas before picnicking. Now it’s also a blush pink dining room where you can pair sambusas with orange marmalade gin sours at the bar. With good cocktails and entree-style servings of excellent awaze tibs and berbere prawns, the small restaurant is perfect for a couple of friends on a weeknight.

This compact Japanese restaurant combines the seasonal precision of kaiseki with the more casual, a la carte ordering style of an izakaya. Here you can pick and choose from small dishes rarely seen outside a fine dining setting. It’s not exactly cheap eats, but a satisfying meal of dishes like dashi-marinated winter tomatoes, akami and chutoro sashimi, and braised wagyu beef tongue, plus a glass of sake, will run you no more than $100, even if it feels like it costs a lot more.

Receiving your coffee order at Bukas Cafe in Elmhurst isn’t the end of the transaction. After you get your Bukas Na latte made with muscovado syrup, or a Sweet & Salty with calamansi syrup, someone comes around to finish the drinks with a grating of tultul, or asin tubuok, both salts from the Philippines. That little savory touch makes the drinks pop. Pair that with a pimiento melt, dunked in condensed milk for another sweet-savory combo that works.

Or’esh, the Catch team's latest, serves Mediterranean food interpreted for a crowd that can only barely remember what it’s like to fly economy. You probably don’t need the potato pastels topped with caviar, but do get the honey-soaked halloumi encased in kataifi and Jerusalem bagel in a puddle of olive oil. The short rib, which shreds like pulled pork, is another good choice, even if it is $87.

There are many silly ways to spend $13. Spending it on a torta loaded with juicy carnitas at Beto’s? Downright scholarly. A former pop-up on the Queens brewery circuit, the casual restaurant does excellent steaming gorditas stuffed with chambarete in smoky morita, or chicken that's braised until its falling apart in a bright mole verde. For a quick snack at one of the high-tops, the freshly griddled tacos are compact two-biters.

This bi-level Punjabi spot is one part spectacle and two parts scene, with sheer curtains, paisley carpets, and silver platters of charcoal-grilled chicken chops. Reservations are a pain, obviously, but if you can get a table, come with a group, and sit downstairs. Right now, the subterranean room is the city’s top place to drink a scotch old fashioned poured from a five-liter bottle, and spend $48 on lamb biryani.

This Puerto Rican spot instantly feels like an East Harlem staple (and it kind of is—they had a stall at La Marqueta). Classic salsa tracks float through the tiny dining room, along with the smells of good, homey food cooking. The flaky, crispy bacalaito is a must-order (it's about the size of a steering wheel), and their tripleta sandwich is a masterpiece of pernil, steak, and chicken, spackled together with mayo-ketchup and garlic sauce.

When the restaurant originally opened in Industry City, we loved their weird and wonderful dishes like a prawn pot pie, or trout mousse on toast. Their relocation to a smaller Brooklyn Heights spot transforms Confidant into a warm, wood-lined setting. All the things we loved the first time around are still available, and they’ve got weeknight-friendly additions, like spaghetti topped with winter mushrooms, chili, and seaweed butter.

Golden Steer, Las Vegas’ oldest continually operating restaurant, has landed in NYC. Like at the original, the food won’t let you down, but how things taste is far less important than how they’re served. Go big on tableside presentation—the well-dressed Caesar to start, and the bananas foster with flames that leap nearly to the ceiling for dessert—plus a big, highly serviceable steak, and Vegas’ Largest Baked Potato.

Border Town’s pop-ups used to draw some of the longest lines in Brooklyn. Now, they’ve found a permanent home for their perfect, lard-laced tortillas. Start with a margarita or a chartreuse-spiked piña colada while you watch them roll out translucent tortillas, and then wrap them around velvety beans and cheese, or plate them with pork ribs in salsa verde. The corn tortillas are worth trying too, like a blue corn taco del dia stuffed with chunks of shrimp, peppers, onions, and melty cheese.

At Kelang, as at other great Malaysian restaurants, you can order some textbook-perfect Hainanese chicken rice, or a big plate of udon drowning in dark soy. But you can also eat rendang made with Haitian djon djon, or flaky paratha topped with a big dollop of creamy stracciatella—both unexpected combos that work really well. Get there on the early side if you want their popular chicken rice, and order at least one thing that involves buttery pastry, like the curry puffs or curry chicken pot pie.