The 5 Restaurants I Always Take Friends To When They Visit NYC

It is almost impossible to have a single favorite restaurant in New York City. Visiting a high cadence of restaurants as a journalist covering the New York City hospitality industry for nearly two decades (and as your everyday culinary devotee) only makes things more complicated. I have favorite restaurants for certain occasions, particular moods, and highly specific configurations of guests. I have favorites that opened in certain decades and favorites by the borough. I even have a favorite for martinis and red sauce, and favorites I love to hate. 

Curating restaurants for out of towners requires its own proprietary algorithm. I want to present the best of New York City. I want the food and drinks to be good. I want the place to be aesthetically satisfying, whether it's classically beautiful or imbued with dive-y charm — no fakes. I always want to make it seem like living here is at least 30% better, easier, or just a little more magical than it actually is. Eighteen years reviewing so-called hot spots, surfacing lesser known gems, covering notable openings and confounding closures — not to mention simply seeking the five boroughs' finest on my own time and dime for even longer — certainly has helped to narrow the field. 

These five locales each deliver some combination of these expectations, to a degree that achieves an inimitable New York City quality my visitors just can't replicate elsewhere. Many of my other kinds of favorites don't even appear here, nor do some more granular tourist picks, including where I bring my friend Caitlin from London when the weather's nice. However, these five restaurants are the most broadly pleasing for the vast majority of my friends (and probably yours, too).

I was among the first to write about Ingas Bar when it opened in 2022, and I've been going back while off the clock ever since. It does not need any more press or social attention, but I'm duty bound to be honest here: Ingas has managed the infrequent triumph of occupying its idyllic Brooklyn Heights space as a destination kind of place and as a real deal neighborhood charmer.

It's darling without feeling like a doll house, its burgers, roast chicken, and short rib are tops (the menu is occasionally edited), and however crowded it seems to be, I always manage to nab a spot at the bar. This combination of buzzy but accessible qualities creates a more hopeful tableau that Instagram and TikTok favorites are sometimes as good as the internet wants you to believe, while also remaining approachable on a day-to-day basis. In reality, this overlap is pretty rare elsewhere — but I'm trying to lend my friends rose-colored lenses while they're around. You should make a reservation to be safe, whether you're the traveler or just shepherding one. I can come back any time should they not have a seat for me, but your stakes might be higher, and Inga's is just about as popular as anywhere can be.

Ingas Bar is located at 66 Hicks Street in Brooklyn.

The stakes are higher here, even for me. This half-century old waterside seafood spot is located in the nautical hamlet of City Island in the Bronx. It's not convenient to anywhere else I frequent, so it's kind of a pain to reach. However, City Island is such a surprising delight, with swaths of picnic tables at Johnny's Reef reading like our little slice of the Cape, that I make the many public transit transfers to get here. There just aren't a ton of other places across New York City's 300 square miles where you can show your friend a good time via fried seafood, frozen drinks, and, on a good day, the clear blue sky and lapping Long Island Sound.

Inside, you order cafeteria-style from a huge selection of fried goods, such as lobster tails, frog legs, shrimp, and soft-shell crabs, or mix and match with steamed clams and crab legs to crack with an icy Henny colada. Outside, bask in the warm sun and gentle sounds of the sea, perhaps disbelieving, for a moment, that this is even NYC — but it wouldn't be the same anywhere else.

Johnny's Reef is located at 2 City Island Avenue in the Bronx. It closes from late November to March.

Almost everyone loves to find little out-of-the-way spots that nobody else seems to know about. Balthazar is the opposite of that. This restaurant is exactly what people picture when they think of a splashy Manhattan restaurant, and the best way you can be a friend sometimes is to simply meet an expectation. It's big to the point of sweeping, with soaring ceilings and polished excitement, all awash in honeyed light. It's honestly so perfect that it verges on annoying, but it gets brought back down to earth by the sometimes cartoonishly New Yorkie characters populating the dining room amid everyone else's friends from out of town.

Now, SoHo is not quite as glamorous as it was back in 1997 when Balthazar first opened. However, this is still a prime perch for people watching, and not just the largely anonym-ish rich folks looking to be seen. Remember when James Corden kept getting banned and unbanned and banned again for bad behavior? That was here! Balthazar's french fries are also a favorite of Bobby Flay, so the restaurant is a fair bet when you're entertaining some erstwhile sorority sister who wants a glimpse of someone who might make Page Six on a quiet day. But it's mostly just a great place for French-leaning plates and cinematic seafood towers that make any stop here seem like a celebration.

Balthazar is located at 80 Spring Street in Manhattan.

Queens probably has the greatest array of cuisine across the five boroughs, so it can be hard to winnow the bounty. However, Szechuan Mountain House's encyclopedic Southwestern Chinese menu has enough options to slake the taste of each of your vacationing buddies when they insist on roving in a pack. These choices can be a challenge to narrow, but I love the mapo tofu, the double-cooked pork, and the pepper beef tongue. I also love the la-zi chicken here, which is crispy and hot with chilis and peppercorns for the mala quality you might crave, should that further help you decide.

The first of three NYC Szechuan Mountain House locations, the Flushing original is my favorite. The space is suitable for groups in an array of options. It's split between big, cozy wooden booths that feel just intimate enough on one side, closer-packed seats on the other side, and tables with benches down the center. The iPad menus take a little getting used to, but the restaurant does let you choose at your own pace.

Szechuan Mountain House is located at 3916 Prince Street in Queens.

It seems as though Unapologetic Foods, the restaurant group behind Dhamaka, has a new hit out every year. This was the hit of 2021. It was almost impossible to get into for months and months after opening, but it settled into more tolerable availability. The menu has changed, but the wonderfully hot gurda kapoora (goat kidney and testicles served with a pillow of pao) is still on offer, along with an array of prawn, chicken, and plant-based plates that aim to celebrate "the forgotten side of India," per the restaurant's website. The kitchen is famed for its liberal use of palate-prickling spice, so maybe skip this one if you're dining with a truly heat-averse friend.

That so much appeal comes from Dhamaka's relatively petite but colorful bar is among its most impressive attributes. The cocktails, such as the ghee whiz made with ghee-washed Indian rum and whiskey, spiced jaggery, and smoked applewood, are unlike a lot of other drinks you can sip anywhere in town — not to mention wherever your buddies are bound to return before too long.

Dhamaka is located at 119 Delancey Street.