San Antonio natives Krystiana Rizo and husband Dave Rizo (a Superiority Burger vet) opened Yellow Rose late last year, pandemic be damned. Their laser focus is on Central Texas with bean-and-cheese tacos served on flour tortillas made on the premises, chili con queso, and some rare pastries. Another favorite is the meaty and juicy carne guisado taco shown here. The interior is plastered with historic photos and posters, some recalling the area’s hippie era. Texas boutique grocery items are also stocked, including blue cornmeal from Barton Springs Mill and Rancho Gordo beans.

One surprise during the pandemic has been the opening of new Thai restaurants, many with menus that stretched the public idea of the country’s cuisine. Food of the Chinese community within Bangkok was one example, as also seen at Noods ‘N Chill in Williamsburg and Tong in Bushwick. Soothr offers koong karee, a delicious dish featuring shrimp in egg sauce. Other highlights of the menu involve food from Central Thailand’s Sukothai, where two of the owners come from: Kittiya Mokkarat and Supatta Banklouy. A third owner, Chidensee Watthanawongwat, hails from Isan.

Channeling a roadside snack shack in the Punjab, Veeray da Dhaba is the brainchild of Indian fine-dining veterans Sonny Solomon, Hemant Mathur, and Binder Saini. The restaurant offers what is usually displayed on steam tables at area Indian buffets hiked up a notch or two. Goat biryani is one highlight, and so is a saag paneer made with cheese made in-house, a fish fry from Amritsar, and a ramped-up tandoori chicken not simply smeared with bottled red paste.

Filipino cuisine once had a huge presence in the East Village; it’s more limited now, and often in more modernized versions, such as Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad’s gastropub Jeepney. It’s most known for its Kamayan feasts — prix fixe group dinners that cover a table with a bountiful meal meant to be eaten by hand — but a regular meal of whole fish with escabeche sauce or beef and pork lumpia is recommended, too.

Marco Canora’s longtime Italian restaurant is a neighborhood mainstay that in recent years has a healthier focus to reflect the chef’s lifestyle change spurred by a gout diagnosis. The menu is full of Italian-American items such as chicory with anchovies, parmesan, and balsamic or a New York strip with greens, gorgonzola, and cherry peppers. It’s a lovely date and brunch spot, and Canora’s broth to-go counter Brodo, which is largely responsible for the trendiness of people drinking soup in coffee cups, is also quite popular. Get the apple cider doughnuts.

Opened by Bon Yagi — called the godfather of the East Village’s Little Tokyo — in 1984, Hasaki is the last of the neighborhood’s earliest sushi bars left standing. Known for its bargain omakase menu of traditional nigiri sushi, the fish assortment in the glass case often holds a few surprises. A kitchen at the rear of this handsome semi-subterranean space offers the usual Japanese apps, mains, and side dishes, including teriyakis, soy-marinated fried chicken, tofu in kelp broth. and chawanmushi.

Sang Jien Ben, who grew up in the Tibetan town of Rebgong, is the operator of Lhasa Tibetan Restaurant. Occupying the former corner space of Little Tong, it’s a spin off of a pocket-size Jackson Heights establishment immortalized by Anthony Bourdain. A “greatest hits” of Himalayan cuisine is present here, from colorful momo dumplings, puckered at the top, to dishes — both meatless and meaty — featuring homemade noodles. Vegetarians, in particular, will find much to admire here.

Modern Vietnamese restaurants are growing in numbers, and deeply flavored dishes such as fish sauce chicken wings, caramelized pork ribs, fried rice with prawns and pork sausage, and a huge and distinguished beef pho with a deeply flavored broth and firmer than usual rice noodles make Madame Vo one of the scene’s leaders. Owners Yen Vo and chef Jimmy Ly preside over an agreeable space with white brick and cushy banquettes, with a delivery cyclo installed in the front window.

A New York City icon, Veselka has been serving Ukrainian diner fare to the neighborhood since 1954. Pierogi are an obvious order, available in flavors like potato, cheese, and short rib. Other Ukrainian specialties like borscht and veal goulash are also on offer, but a sleeper hit is the giant meat plate, piled high with pierogi, meat-stuffed cabbage, and beet horseradish salad. Go at any hour for breakfast and for comforting nourishment and a slice of NYC life.

Kenka is one of St. Mark’s most colorful establishments, serving typical izakaya fare like curry and takoyaki, as well as more surprising offerings such as bull penis with mayo that one suspects are to be eaten on a dare. (We’ve tried it, and it’s not very good, stringy and tough.) The decor is pornographic, and there are fun details like free serve-yourself cotton candy at the exit, though that feature has been on hiatus during the pandemic. This has always been the hippest and goofiest Japanese spot in the East Village, so be prepared for a wait.

Owner Tamika Gabaroum hails from Chad and formerly worked for the United Nations, but most of the food on Green Garden’s buffet might be described as pan-African. In fact, much is also vegetarian, with African style cook-ups of ingredients like collard greens, okra, eggplant, and various yams, supplemented by a single flesh-bearing dish, often chicken. The output, which gleams on a steam table, is sold by weight so you can try a little of everything.

This enduring Jewish Kosher luncheonette — open since 1938 — is now owned by Polish-Catholic Ola Smigielska and Egyptian-Muslim Fawzy Abdelwahed and remains a stalwart in the neighborhood. Dishes include tuna melts on challah, pierogies, omelets, and blintzes. And let’s not forget its amazing vegetarian soups — mushroom barley, cabbage, and matzoh ball are favorites. Served with homemade challah, they’re bargain lunch mainstays. The tuna melt’s not shabby, either.

Finally, as if Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood were transplanted to downtown Manhattan, the East Village has its own Portuguese barbecue restaurant. This one, with a colorfully muraled interior, extends the definition somewhat with a range of marinades (including the eponymous piri piri, an Angolan hot pepper sauce), as well as a choice of wings and other chicken parts, chicken nuggets, and whole or partial chickens. Salads, sandwiches, and a series of vegan grilled items round out the menu.

Brooks Headley’s tiny counter-service stop (along with a newly opened branch across the street) proves that vegetarian fast food can be truly exciting. Beyond the excellent burger, there’s a vegetarian sloppy joe and rotating specials every day. Fridays have been popular for supremely soft focaccia, via baker Rick Easton. No matter what, do not leave without some sorbet and/or gelato, which rotates through flavor combinations such as lemongrass mango and corn tortilla, guava peach and black sesame, or rhubarb and rye toast.

Founded by Rivka Orlin in 1983 a stone’s throw from Tompkins Square, Cafe Mogador was a pioneer in the East Village dining scene back in the day when options were mainly limited to Italian, Eastern European, and Latin restaurants. The menu was a novelty, focusing on the cuisine of the Moroccan Jewish community, which meant a plethora of small appetizing dishes based on vegetables and yogurt, and mains that focused on tajines and couscous — all served in a laid-back, coffeehouse ambiance.

Chef and owner Brian Kim is among the leaders in NYC’s modern Korean food movement, serving exciting fare at Oiji like long island duckling with kimchi fried rice, a mushroom salad featuring shiitakes and maitakes lightly fried, and a truffled seafood broth. One of NYC’s best desserts is here, vanilla ice cream topped with sticky, salty, and sweet honey butter chips, shown below. Check the cocktail list, which changes regularly.

Co-owner and chef Dai Watanabe (the other co-owner flea market maven Yudai Kanayama) presides over a menu of izakaya (Japanese pub) classics, hiked up a notch in quality from the usual menus around town. Some of Eater’s favorite dishes there include candied smelts with flavored mayo and lemon, yellowtail sashimi fresh as an ocean breeze, and a perfect fried pork cutlet, all of which may be washed down with a distinguished and quirky sake selection.

Normally, you’d have to go to Queens to get some of the Malaysian specialties on Medan Pasar’s menu, including cucur udang, a wonderful round fritter embedded with whole shrimp that comes with a sprightly dipping sauce. Other standards of the cuisine are well represented, including nasi lemak, a set meal that features chicken curry or beef rendang, rice, cucumbers, dried anchovies, and a fried egg. The modernistic decor features a giant terminal that lets you alter various aspects of every dish as you order it. The owners and co-chefs are Chao Chen and Chuan Tan, who previously operated restaurants in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Deeply flavored and dramatically dark Taiwanese beef noodle soup is the focus of chef-owner Richard Ho’s uber-tiny Ho Foods. The soup, available with two types of noodles, is the main attraction, nicely rounded out by garlic cucumbers, lu rou fan (minced pork over rice), and housemade tofu with a century egg. There’s also Taiwanese breakfast on the weekends.

Some of NYC’s spiciest Thai fare can be found on Avenue A, where Somtum Der has spotlighted the food of the Isan region of Thailand since 2013, and become one of the city’s most distinguished Thai restaurants. As the name suggests, the focus is on shredded green-papaya salads prepared in a mortar with options that include the classic raw blue river crabs, but there are also incredibly spicy meat salads called larbs, as well as deep-fried chicken thighs, grilled coconut-milk-marinated pork, and sour pork sausages. The owner is Thanaruek Laoraowirodge.

Founded by jazz musician Shigeto Kamada, Minca is a tiny shop that ranks among the best ramen-yas in a neighborhood that has many. The level of care put into the composition of each bowl makes it a destination not to be missed. The Tokyo tsukemen, a deconstructed dipping ramen dish that Eater highly recommends, is a good bet here, although any of the roughly 15 options on the menu are well worth exploring.

This snug lunch and dinner counter in Alphabet City specializes in two things: simple Southern fried chicken and lighter-than-air biscuits. There may be Texas Pete’s hot sauce and a squeeze-bottle of honey on every table in the restaurant, but the chicken here doesn’t need either. It’s brined overnight in sweet tea, then dredged in milk, flour, salt, pepper, and a handful of mystery spices that owner Keedick Coulter has kept secret since opening in 2012. If the timing’s right, go for Bobwhite’s happy hour, when the restaurant’s beers come with a free piece of fried chicken.