🦪 The snack: Fried oysters. "I went with my friend and we looked around the room and realized that we were, by about 40 years, older than anybody else in the place. But those fried oysters are perfect. They were briny little clouds—crisp on the outside and still really hot. And when we liked them so much, I said, 'Oh, we have to have more. Bring us some more!' They came out in two minutes."

🌭 The snack: Hot dogs. "I like mine with just the onion sauce and mustard on it. And I actually do drink that papaya drink, which I know is all chemicals. But I think if you're a New Yorker, you love that taste. I'll sometimes just walk over to the Hudson and walk up, eating my hot dogs and drinking my ridiculous papaya drink. I really do love that place."

🐙 The snack: Octopus wasabi salad. "I love everything about this dish. I used to go to Ippudo and that was the thing I wanted there. Then they took it off their menu... I have discovered that you can go to [the Korean grocery store] H Mart and they sell them. I literally always have them in my refrigerator because it is a combination of that texture of the octopus, which is really crisp and kind of crunchy, and the wasabi. It's just, to me, a perfect flavor combination."

🍕 The snack: Pizza. "Nancy Silverton was in town, and said, 'You have to go. I'm sending all my chefs. Their dough is so fantastic.' Nancy makes pizza. If she tells you, 'You've got to go eat this pizza,' you go eat the pizza... I'm so happy that they've opened in Manhattan now, because if Nancy had said, 'You have to go to Brooklyn,' I'm not sure I would have gotten there so quickly. But when she said, 'Look, it's right there. It's down in the Village,' I was on the subway the next day."

🍮 The snack: Dou fu fa. "It's got a sort of sweet ginger syrup on top of it. And I love it. Fong On is one of those venerable Chinatown institutions. They make their own tofu. The difference between really good tofu that's homemade and the stuff that you buy in the supermarket is enormous. I used to go down to Chinatown and there was a guy who sold the dou fu fa out of a stairway on Elizabeth Street and it was 50 cents."

🫔 The snack: Masala dosa. "Dosa batter is complicated. It is not something you really are gonna do at home. It is so wonderful. I love texture... And then you have the chilies in there. It's great. Plus, [Thiru Kumar, the owner], he's just a lovely man. I grew up playing in Washington Square Park where the only food you could buy was the Good Humor man, Tippy. So we always went hungry, knowing we were gonna get ice cream, and now I go and get masala dosa."

🍚 The snack: Rice rolls. "There are rice rolls all over the city. Jing Fong, which is on the Upper West Side, if you sit at the counter there and you watch that man make those rice rolls, he doesn't have a machine. It is beautiful to watch. It is such an art. The way he knows exactly when to cover it...I go there just to watch that particular ballet. I happen to love the rice rolls, too. But for me, it's more about just watching someone who has one thing down perfectly."

🧀 The snack: Mozzarella. "I will find any excuse I can to go to Di Palo. Their food is wonderful. Their prices are ridiculous. They own the building and if you're buying mozzarella anyplace else, you're an idiot. I lived on Rivington Street in the Bowery in '70s and it was my go-to place. That was when all the old Italian moms still lived in the neighborhood. You'd go in there and people would be trading recipes.... You go for the food, but you also just go to be there."

🦪 The snack: Oyster pan roast. "There's no reason to go to the Oyster Bar and sit anywhere but at the counter. And mostly what you want to eat at the oyster bar are things involving oysters or clams. I happen to love clams. I prefer them to oysters. So I will go and just order a bunch of clams and sit there very happily eating them. But I love to watch those guys make the pan roasts and I love the smell of the pan roast. It's the smell of my childhood."

🍳 The snack: Breakfast gougères. "That breakfast gougère is just genius. I have a gougère recipe in my first cookbook, which I wrote in 1972, because they're magical and easy to make. But the idea of filling them with warm scrambled eggs with a little bit of cheese in it is such a genius notion. The gougère itself is basically eggs and a little water that you're mixing up and then making into, basically, a popover. But at Daily Provisions, it's eggs made into completely different textures"

🥟The snack: Dumplings. "This is something that I am never without in my freezer. You can buy bags of 50. It's one of the great bargains in New York. When I'm there to pick up my bags, of course I have to get some that are just made. You can get pork and chive dumplings all over the place. Maybe it's just that I've been eating these for so long, but they taste better to me than anybody else's pork and chive dumplings. And [fellow journalist] Bud Trillin was the person who introduced me to them."

🦪 The snack: Oysters Manhatta. "I don't understand why people aren't crazier about Manhatta. The food is delicious. It's an incredible view. If somebody comes to New York and I want to really show them 'New York' I will take them there at sunset. What could be better than oysters and uni and sabayon sauce? And there's Manhattan at your feet. It's one of the most beautiful views of the city where you don't also have to pay for an arm and a leg. They don't have to have good food, but they do."

🍙The snack: Onigiri. "I love onigiri and I love Sunrise Mart, too. It's another great resource in this city. You can go there and get the makings for sushi and sashimi at home. But I'm surprised that onigiri haven't gotten bigger. It's one of my favorite snacks in the entire world. It was one of my favorite things to eat when I was an assistant in media, when I only had five minutes or pennies in my pocket. It's basically a healthy snack. Nothing in it is bad for you."

🥪 The snack: Pastrami sandwich. "This is another place I've been going my whole life. When we lived on Rivington Street, New York in 1970 was really rough. The city was bankrupt. We were dirt poor, and we would go to Katz's and we couldn't afford the pastrami. ... Now it's such a thrill for me, I can afford to have a pastrami sandwich. I can ask them to make sure that it's fat, not lean, because there is no point in going and getting a pastrami sandwich if you're not gonna get the fat."