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For many New Yorkers, rising prices mean that dining on a budget is more important than ever. Despite the pandemic and inflation, we have seen small, inexpensive, often immigrant-run restaurants continue to flourish. New to this edition: Patok by Rach, Pugsley Pizza, Mid-Atlantic Fish Store, El Catrin, Tamam, Hello!
This nifty Filipino restaurant located in Inwood on the way to the Bronx mounts a limited menu in the fast-casual style, with plenty of comfy seating and a view of Broadway. The menu offers classic breakfasts of green plantains, eggs, and longaniza, plus lumberjack pancakes and three-egg omelets, then moves on to lunches and dinners of well-seasoned rotisserie chicken, pork chops, kingfish or salmon, mofongo in several variations, meal-size soups like sancocho and mondongo, and pernil so good it might make you weep.
The chicken roll is fabled here. A spacious multilevel palace of Korean food in downtown Fort Lee, New Jersey, Myung Dong specializes in two types of noodles. The first is the wheat noodle known as kalguksu, served in mildly flavored soups, of which the most engaging throws them into a broth with ground beef and dumplings.
The second is naengmyeon, originating in North Korea and made from buckwheat or sweet potato and served cold with boiled egg and pickled vegetables: very refreshing. While this may have once been a Korean seafood market, it now has Dominican flourishes.
In addition to selling the freshest fish, it has a seafood prep counter and pleasant eating-in area. The fried fish sandwiches — pick porgy or flounder — are great and cheap, but why not consider the shrimp pastelitos, stuffed clams, or crab cakes?
Yes there are noodles galore, including laksa noodles and peanut satay noodles, but look to fritters, dumplings, and buns for smaller bites. The roti john sandwich is a unique delight, a hero of ground beef omelet with spicy ketchup and caramelized onions.
This branch of a Grand Concourse restaurant is a bit grander, with a dining room a few steps up from the steam table where a dozen or so Ghanaian dishes are displayed. Get sauces of fish, mutton, or chicken — or pick a mixed meat sauce that contains all of them — then choose a starch ball like white yam fufu to go with it.
Harlem has rarely seen a Jamaican steam-table restaurant with such a broad selection of island dishes. The restaurant is one of three locations. For a larger meal than the falafel sandwich, pick the falafel platter, which contains a dozen elements, including the spicy green relish zhoug.
Multiple forms of hummus and the eggplant-and-egg concoction sabich also available at this vegan spot that offers a cauliflower shawarma. There are still plenty of budget-friendly pasta mills around, a fad that peaked late in the last century and lingered thereafter.
These places encouraged you to pick a pasta and match it with a sauce. In a similar but simpler vein, Bigoi Venezia takes a single pasta — freshly made Venetian bigoi, tube-shaped spaghetti — and offers a choice of a dozen or so treatments, some particular to Venice, some not.
Turkey sauce or peas, ham, and cream are two top contenders. Step up the the gleaming steam table and load up your square ceramic plate with any combo of the two dozen dishes displayed.
Pay special attention to the ones called chicken roast smothered in onions , beef kala bhuna a very dark curry , and the daily assortment of bhortas mustard-oil-laced vegetable purees. Then sit in the sunny dining room and eat with your fingers.
The one featuring smoked milkfish is a favorite, also including garlic rice, fried eggs, eggplant, and a fresh salsa of onions and tomatoes.
This modest spot just south of the Queens County Farm Museum concentrates on Mumbai-style street snacks and is strictly vegetarian. One favorite is bun chole, a small round roll stuffed with chickpeas, potatoes, and onions sweetened with tamarind sauce, very much like Trinidadian doubles.
The menu also offers samosa chaats, vegetable curries, milk-based sweets, and snacks combining fried lentils, nuts, chips, and crunchy noodles.
Little Jakarta is a small neighborhood centered at Whitney Avenue and Broadway in Elmhurst, with groceries and small cafes a modest number of both to be sure radiating from that corner. It specializes in full-plate combinations that may contain rice, a coconut-laced composed salad, shrimp chips, and a satay or two, all halal.
The fruition of a decade-long series of films, TV shows, podcasts, and professorships from hamburger scholar, George Motz, this new spot in Soho channels the lunch counters of the past. Specimen regional burgers — currently in a smash burger vein — are offered, along with things like egg creams, french fries, icebox pies, and lemonade.
For hamburger deniers, there are PBJs and especially good and inexpensive egg salad sandwiches. This tiny cafe just south of Tompkins Square specializes in the street food of Bangkok with a limited menu of full meals that will make deciding what to eat easier.
The best dish on the menu is basil chicken, with ground poultry cooked down to a rich mixture served with rice, a poached egg, and boiled sweet potato. Relax is a great place to relax, tucked away on a side street in the northeastern part of Greenpoint, and made to look like a cottage in a fairy tale.
Wash everything down with Polish beers. Little Myanmar is quite simply the best Burmese restaurant the city has yet to see. The interior is bare bones and not particularly comfortable — though your ability to see into the kitchen is an advantage and a pleasure.
The item menu covers the vast sweep of the national cuisine, from the salads called athokes try the tea-leaf version to noodle soups, stir fries, and curries. This halal Turkish restaurant is successor to the long-closed Bereket, a late night favorite of clubgoers.
Lots of salads, dips, and kebabs at bargain prices, but my preferred choice is a doner kebab in Turkish bread other breads include pitas and flatbread wraps.
Three rotating cylinders of meat are available: lamb, chicken, and veal, each with its own attractions. The Lower East Side is home to many Hong Kong-styles cafes serving the hybrid Chinese-English cuisine called cha chaan tengs.
S Wan is a charming walk-down spot offering a full range of breakfasts designated by letters that might includes fried eggs, waffles smeared with peanut butter, Spam, toast with butter and honey, and pork chops, in addition to lots of noodle soups and stir fries. Hearty working-class Chinese fare at favorable prices is the forte of this bare-bones shop conveniently located on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills near the Kew Gardens subway station.
Noodles, dumplings, and soups make up most of the menu, with Sichuan dumplings and dan dan noodles available in memorably good renditions. This Jamaica Estates Afghan restaurant offers kebabs of chicken, beef, and lamb in various combinations — and little else.
The lamb chops, in particular, are superb, often cut to order from the rib cage you can hear the saw thrumming in the kitchen , smeared with a reddish spice rub, and grilled to complete succulence.
A few doors down from a mosque, this chandeliered restaurant occupies a lively corner location that was previously a diner. This place upholds diner principals, filling out its menu with Afghan kebab platters as well as Bangladeshi and Indian dishes, plus pizza and excellent hamburgers. The platter shown here features yogurt-marinated chicken and beef kofta with pulao rice, Afghan bread, and salad, with several sauces.
Sure, there are dozens of great, old-fashioned, mainly Pueblan taquerias within the borders of Bushwick, but this place opened early in with a zingier demeanor, including a brightly painted minibus on its exterior.
The lure is a humongous rotating trompo of pineapple-marinated pork al pastor, sliced and deposited on a rustic corn tortilla. Cactus, chicken, and carne asada fillings are also available. This small storefront in the wilds of Glendale specializes in Balkan bar food, an apparent branch of a place in Subotica, Serbia.
It concentrates on grilled meats and pastries, the former including the skinless sausages cevapi and the burger-like pljeskavica, which comes on a round bun that may be dressed with kaymak thick sour cream and ajvar a red pepper paste — plus the usual onions, tomatoes, and lettuce.
This relative newcomer to the Fresh Pond scene offers a revival of the Cuban cuisine that was common in the city 50 years ago, but now less so.
The list of roti is expansive, but I still prefer the bone-in goat, chicken, and conch. Mama Kitchen is a kosher Israeli restaurant that far exceeds expectations everything except the composed salads are cooked to order at a lower price than you might expect. Entrees include a full plate of food plus another plate from a salad bar with over a dozen selections.
The pizzas come out hot and fast and oozing cheese, and lines form to buy slices the line inside moves faster. Often identified as the national dish, the cou cou and flying fish consists of a cornmeal porridge shot with okra and said fish.
Jerk specialties and pastries are also available. Sandwiches available in three sizes, which is an economic and probably health-wise boon. Specializing in Chicago-style hot dogs, Dog Day Afternoon is named after an Al Pacino movie about a bank robbery that was partly shot on the same block of Windsor Terrace.
The hot dog boasts a couple of small innovations New York style pickles, for example, and sweet miniature plum tomatoes , but otherwise the genre remains intact. Located a short bus ride straight uphill from the Staten Island Ferry, New Asha, founded in , is a funky sort of place with excellent Sri Lankan food.
For classic and high-quality diner food, look no further than Steve's Place. Pictured above is their Homemade Corned Beef Hash with two eggs and toast. Steve's Place is one of the few places in the area that serves authentic corned beef hash. And the best part is, you can enjoy this and any of their other breakfast options all day.
With over 30 years of experience, Main Moon in Glens Falls serves some of the finest Chinese food in the area. Whether you're in the mood for lunch or dinner, the restaurant takes pride in making every dish flavorful and the best it can be.
Their vast menu features over items, many of which are budget friendly. Subs, appetizers, and specialty pizzas are offered as well.
Find cheap vegetables and meat on sale and eat it with your staple food item. It can be prepared quickly with inexpensive items, has decent 1–9: Vegetables · 1. Broccoli · 2. Onions · 3. Bagged spinach · 4. Russet potatoes · 5. Sweet potatoes · 6. Canned tomatoes · 7. Carrots · 8. Green cabbage Apples. Bananas. Beans. Brown rice. Chicken. Corn tortillas. Eggs. Flour. Frozen blueberries. Frozen vegetables. Ground beef or ground chuck
Tejas 
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