All-day café · $$
The café the neighbourhood's nickname comes from. Dimes opened in 2013 in a small room at 143 Division Street, outgrew it and moved to Canal Street, and the original room is now its deli. It cooks food you could eat every day: a breakfast burrito with mango salsa and sweet potato, salmon toast with dill, chia pudding, grain bowls and fresh juices, with Counter Culture coffee, from breakfast through dinner seven days a week. The kitchen closes between 4pm and 5pm, and the outdoor tables are first come, first served, with no waiting list.
Walk in49 Canal Street
Northern Mexican, one MICHELIN star · $$$$
Fidel Caballero, raised between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, cooks what he calls Progressive Mexican, rooted in the food of northern Mexico and changed with the farmers' market, and the restaurant earned its MICHELIN star within its first year. There are two ways in: a tasting menu of 10 to 13 courses at $140 a head, or the à la carte served alongside it, where the order is the sourdough flour tortilla with recado negro butter. Sotol runs through the cocktail list. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 5.30pm to 10pm; book ahead, and email about allergies, which the kitchen mostly cannot accommodate.
Book well ahead: tables go weeks out3 Allen Street
Spanish and Portuguese seafood, Bib Gourmand · $$$
A cramped, tiled room on the same stretch of Canal Street, cooking the seafood of the Spanish and Portuguese coasts since 2017, with a wine list from the same shores, vermouth by the glass and manzanilla on draught. It holds a Bib Gourmand. Order the crispy shrimp heads, cockles with vinho verde and sea bream from the plancha, and the lamb burger for anyone who does not eat fish. Open every night from 5.30pm to 11pm. Indoor tables take reservations, and from April to October the tables outside on Canal Street are walk-in only.
Reserve ahead43 Canal Street
New York slice counter · $
The New York slice, done properly, just up Orchard Street. Scarr Pimentel opened it on the Chinatown and Lower East Side border in 2016, and the pizzas are made with organic stone-milled flour. A plain slice is $4.50 and the Hotboi, with beef pepperoni, jalapeños and hot honey, $7.50; slices come from the counter, while the dining room serves 12-inch pies, meatballs and parms and takes reservations. Open from 11.30am every day, until 11pm from Sunday to Wednesday, midnight on Thursday and 2am on Friday and Saturday, which makes it the answer after the Swan Room.
Walk in35 Orchard Street
Chinese, Bib Gourmand · $$
Ron Yan's Chinese restaurant faces Seward Park, with an open kitchen, vintage furniture and a list of more than 300 wines chosen by Parcelle, heavy on natural producers. It holds a Bib Gourmand. The dish to share is the sweet and sour crispy fish at $45; around it, salt and pepper tofu, Hong Kong prawn toast and a lap cheong carbonara with Sichuan peppercorns. Dinner starts at 5pm and runs to 9.30pm from Sunday to Wednesday and 10pm from Thursday to Saturday, with a happy hour from 5pm to 7pm Sunday to Thursday. Book through its own site.
Reserve ahead28 Canal Street
Dim sum parlour, since 1920 · $
Nom Wah opened on the bend of Doyers Street, the old Bloody Angle, in 1920 as a bakery and tea parlour, and has served dim sum there ever since. Wally Tang, who started working there in the 1950s, bought it in 1974, and his nephew Wilson took it over in 2010. Order the house special roast pork bun, the shrimp siu mai and the Original egg roll, fried in an egg crêpe; most dim sum plates are under $7. Open 11am to 9pm every day; pairs walk in, and groups of three to five can book from Monday to Thursday.
Walk in13 Doyers Street
Smoked fish and bagels, Bib Gourmand · $$
Joel Russ opened his shop on Orchard Street in 1914, and his great-grandchildren opened this sit-down café up the same street for its centenary in 2014; it holds a Bib Gourmand. Its trade is appetizing, the New York Jewish tradition of smoked fish, cured salmon and cream cheese, and the order is a bagel with Gaspe nova at $24, lox, eggs and onions, or the Super Heebster, with whitefish and baked salmon salad; the chocolate babka French toast is $18. Open from 8.30am every day, with last seating at 2.30pm from Monday to Thursday and 3.30pm from Friday to Sunday. No reservations and no takeaway.
Walk in127 Orchard Street
Cocktail bar
The bar of Sam Ross and Michael McIlroy, who between them created two modern classics: the Penicillin, which Ross invented, and the Greenpoint, McIlroy's Manhattan made with Chartreuse. Ask for either, or tell the bartender what you like. It is open from 5pm to 3am every day, for over-21s carrying a physical, government-issued ID, in parties of six at most. A few tables can be booked; everything else is first come, first served, and the bar's own instruction for getting in is to knock.
Walk in134 Eldridge Street
Breakfast is Corner Bar's, in the tavern on the Allen Street corner: 7am to 11am on weekdays and 7am to 10am at weekends, when brunch takes over until 3pm. It is not included in the standard room rate. The Nine Orchard Breakfast, two eggs with bacon or chicken apple sausage, hash browns and sourdough toast, with Devoción coffee or tea and fresh juice, is $35 and the continental $25, with bagels and lox, challah French toast and eggs Benedict à la carte and coffee at $5. The best outside option is Russ & Daughters Cafe, eight minutes up Orchard Street from 8.30am, for smoked fish and bagels at a table; for something quicker, Dimes is a minute away.
Golden Diner, seven minutes south under the Manhattan Bridge, at weekend brunch without a booking. A queue forms an hour before it opens, by 11am the wait averages two hours and can pass four, and when the list runs to four or five hours it stops taking names for an hour or two. Its honey butter pancakes are served all day, every day, so go on a weekday, or book on its site, where tables open 30 days ahead at midnight.
