10 Great Cheap Eats Destinations in NYC, Volume 4
Noodles, falafel, burek, and more
This monthly column features cheap eats worth a trip from any corner of the city. Note that seating may be rudimentary or almost non-existent. Since food is constantly getting more expensive, our definition of cheap is now $20 or less, sometimes much less. Check out the first, second, and third editions of this column.
Yunnan Rice Noodle House
53 Bayard Street, Chinatown
There was a fad for Yunnan rice noodles eight years ago that saw the soft, thin, and white noodles dispersed around the city at places like South of the Clouds in the Village — though they made their debut 20 years earlier in Sunset Park. Now the be-all and end-all of rice noodles has appeared. Yunnan Rice Noodle House has taken the classic recipe, called crossing the bridge noodles, and morphed it into eight versions, some spicy, some sour, some vegetarian. Go for the “golden pickled pepper” ($13), quite beautiful to look at, and both sour and spicy. Mix in the accompanying ingredients to your liking.
Sea & Sea
60 West 116th Street, Harlem
Harlem is the best neighborhood for inexpensive seafood. Its sandwiches of whiting, porgy, and catfish have become legendary. The breaded filets are fried to order, so the sandwich is served warm, and as it’s handed over the counter, you’re given the chance to squirt on tartar, Tabasco, and several more sauces. I was given a whopping four filets on my catfish sandwich ($8).
Balkan Grind
5 Withers Street, Williamsburg
While a burek is usually a big filo pie the size of a spare tire, here the bureks ($14 each) — baked in-house at this nifty Albanian coffee bar — are tubular and sized for individual consumption. Flavors on a recent afternoon included beef, potato mushroom, chicken pot pie, and, the one I chose, spinach and feta, flaky and delicious, especially dipped in the red pepper paste called ajvar. Wash it down with Turkish coffee: a cup comes with an extra potful, encouraging you to relax and linger after your meal.
Mamoun’s Falafel
119 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, other locations
Ever since Mamoun’s debuted on MacDougal Street in 1971, making the fritters tasting faintly of cumin popular citywide, it has remained a stalwart bastion of cheap eats: its signature falafel sandwich is only $6.50. The falafels are fried to crunchiness and then smashed in a pita with salad stuff and tahina. Add harissa at your discretion.
El Gallo Negro
41-34 Crescent Street, Long Island City
This local chain has a more comprehensive list of $5 tacos than comparable establishments. Take a walk on the wild side with headcheese, tongue, or ear, or go for a classic taco Arabe — pork shawarma wrapped in a pita-like flour tortilla with caramelized onions, chipotle salsa, and cilantro, a type of taco that originated in Lebanon before being brought to Puebla a century ago.
Tropical
3771 Broadway, Washington Heights
For a real bargain, go for the meal-size soups at this Dominican lunchroom, with a steam table on one side and additional seating in the adjacent storefront. The crew behind the counter is jolly and accommodating, and every day there are soups priced at $6 for what is described as a small serving, but is actually big enough you may have trouble finishing it. Pressed sandwiches and Dominican breakfasts are equally good deals.
Masa Madre Bakery
47-55 46th St, Sunnyside
This intriguing Mexican bakery deploys sourdough, along with other modern notions about commercial baking, turning out a fascinating roster. There are plenty of sweet pastries rarely seen in the city, including aguacatas (cheese-stuffed sweet rolls) and banderillas (flaky tubular pastries). But on the savory side, three or four tamales are provided per day, fit for a meal. The chicken Guatemalan tamale ($5), in particular, is huge and comes wrapped in a banana leaf. Eat it with a spoon.
Stage Door Deli
26 Vesey Street, City Hall
This place allegedly founded in the late 1960s in the vicinity of Rockefeller Center has a menu that’s all over the place, with bagels, wraps, sandwiches, pizzas and pastas, gyro platters, meal-size salads, etc. There is seating, the ambiance is pure NY deli, and the food is generally a good deal — especially a hot pastrami sandwich of modest size served with chips and a pickle ($15.50). OK, it’s not up to Katz’s level, but the pastrami is tasty.
Hong Kong Dim Sum
777 60th Street, Sunset Park
This narrow stall with a shelf for eating has been around forever and is picturesque as hell, very much the way Sunset Park’s Chinatown once was. Its specialty is rice noodle rolls, priced $3.25 to $4. These are free form, steamed on the spot, and two make a meal: a mass of fluffy white noodle material dotted with pork, ham and egg, or salted chicken.
Sumatera
8620 Whitney Avenue, Elmhurst
Tea leaf salad is a classic in Myanmar, and a similar collection of crunchy vegetables and beans is also found in Sumatra, where it is known as daun teh hijau ($11). At Sumatera, the tea leaves are fermented, giving the salad a unique funky flavor, bolstered by toasted soybeans, tomatoes, cabbage, and chiles — a more refreshing chilled summer salad has never been invented.
Including Mamouns gets an A+
Such great falafel
The Indonesian and Yunnan joints are both in my hood, clearly I need to get out more.