New York City is known for many things like the Broadway lights, art and theatre, top-of-the-line shopping and even bottom-of-the-barrel knockoffs, as well as bustling streets, storefronts that never close and of course, food from all over the world in one little metropolitan block. Everyone wants a piece of the City that Never Sleeps which could be the reason that Manhattan real estate prices are through the roof into the stratosphere.
Surviving the NYC streets and staying nourished along the way is a combination of street-smarts, knowledge and a little bit of luck. You have to know which hot cart to go to and which pretzel vendor to stay away from. This comes from word-of-mouth and research on where to get the best cronut your lips have ever tasted and where the meat market is really the meat market.
The first thing you should seek out when you enter the city is an amazing bacon, egg and cheese sandwich, preferably a bagel sandwich, and preferably on an everything bagel. Some New Yorkers will tell you to stay away from the hipsters’ paradise of artisanal breakfast , farm-to-table places and go straight for the real-deal NYC which is a greasy bodega bacon, egg and cheese that is sold between mouse-traps and magazines. You can also hit up the Jewish communities to find some breakfast sandwiches that seem home cooked, but you may to hop around to find bacon in these areas.
Another must-try food in Manhattan would have to be pizza. And no this doesn’t mean the Sbarro’s in Newark Airport or a chain restaurant’s favorite pie. It means finding the hole-in-the-wall place that may be condemned next week and finding the actual best pizza in the city. Now, you might now be able to find the “best” pizza in the city, but to any New Yorker, the city has the best pizza. It was brought over by Italian immigrants who put in the wood burning ovens and the cheese, sauce, and thin dough was brought to life in the five boroughs. Everyone in the city will have a different preference but some of the most agreed upon places are Joe’s Pizza in Greenwich Village, Prince Street Pizza in Soho, and Baker’s Pizza in East Village. The bottom line is that if you are in NYC and are hungry for pizza, you are in the right place.
If you want to get a taste of the city, you should also try the creation of the Cornut. This was the pastry mash-up heard around the world from LA to NYC, and both places had storefronts with lines out into their streets so the hippest of the hip could get their hands on these delicious delicacies. The hype is and was real. Dominique Ansel Bakery in the city has a line that only a Comic-Con fan would know, but their croissant-meets-donut is a desert worth standing in a Disney-esque line for.
These suggestions of must try foods in Manhattan are just that, suggestions. You should really try anything that you are hungry for because in the City that Never Sleeps, you can have the best pasta, kielbasa, lamb over rice or Chinese food, around any corner. You don’t even need to look too hard.
