San Antonio natives Krystiana Rizo and husband Dave Rizo opened Yellow Rose late in 2020, pandemic be damned. Their laser focus is on Central Texas, with bean-and-cheese tacos served on flour tortillas made on the premises, vegan chili con queso, and some interesting salads and sandwiches — including one featuring wild boar. The interior is plastered with historic photos and posters, some recalling the area’s hippie era.

The East Village has lately been the site of new Thai restaurants that stretch the public’s idea of the cuisine. The food of the Chinese community within Bangkok was one example, as also seen at Noods ‘N Chill in Williamsburg and Tong in Bushwick. Soothr showcases koong karee, a colorful dish featuring shrimp in egg sauce. Other highlights 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, only hiked up a notch or two. Goat biryani is one highlight, and so is a saag paneer with cheese made in-house, a fish fry from Amritsar, and a ramped-up tandoori chicken.

Five years ago owner Bobian Demce opened this narrow Albanian cafe in a former tailor shop. It offers all the usual Balkan specialties, from flaky byrek pies stuffed with spinach and cheese to the grilled and skinless ground beef sausages qebapa, which arrive smothered in cream sauce. There are also vegetable-heavy casseroles, grilled kebabs and chops, and desserts like baklava. This being the East Village, a conventional hamburger is also available.

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. Known for its bargain omakase menu of traditional nigiri sushi, the daily fish assortment often holds surprises. A kitchen at the rear of this handsome semi-subterranean space with a backyard of private nooks offers the usual Japanese appetizers, mains, and side dishes, including teriyaki, fried chicken, tofu in kelp broth, and chawanmushi.

While most Chinese restaurants in the East Village specialize in noodles, soups, dumplings, and other budget-friendly dishes, Uluh offers a contemporary Chinese menu that could as easily be found in Flushing...or Beijing. Sure, there are Sichuan dishes, but diners will find ones originating in several other Chinese regions.

Modern Vietnamese restaurants are growing in number, and deeply flavored dishes such as fish sauce chicken wings, caramelized pork ribs, fried rice with prawns and pork sausage, and a huge 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.

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 offered, but a sleeper hit is the giant platter piled high with pierogi, meat-stuffed cabbage, and beet horseradish salad. Go at any hour (breakfast starts at 8 a.m.) for comforting nourishment and a slice of NYC life.

Dhom, named for chef Soulayphet Schwader’s childhood nickname, is probably the city’s first Laotian restaurant — though it specializes in small dishes and drinks, and calls itself a tapas bar. A paste of pork and eggplant is one distinctive dish, to be scooped up with sticky rice — in fact, sticky rice should be ordered with most dishes. For snackers, the brochettes of skirt steak, duck hearts, or chicken thighs are just the thing, while more substantial appetites might try the the fish salad.

There are currently four branches of this Chinese chain in the metro area, including one in Jersey City, specializing in Hunan cuisine and each a little different. Century egg and eggplant is a good bet here, featuring the two ingredients coarsely squished together, amplified by fresh green chiles. The fish head is probably the cuisine’s most desirable dish, and here it comes with more flesh than usually found in this “eat-everything including the cheeks and eyes” delicacy.

This enduring Jewish Kosher luncheonette — open since 1938 — is now owned by Polish-Catholic Ola Smigielska and Egyptian-Muslim Fawzy Abdelwahed and remains a pescatarian and vegetarian highlight in the neighborhood. Dishes include tuna melts on challah, cheese pierogies, omelets, and berry filled 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.

This burrito spot, serving little else, caused a sensation when it opened right on St. Marks last year and did something rarely seen in NYC — putting french fries in its burritos, San Diego style. Squish, squish. Burritos are divided into those intended for breakfast (any time of the day), and those that aren’t. A favorite is Johnny Utah, filled with carne asada and shrimp. Tacos also available, but little else.

Finally, as if Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood were transplanted to downtown Manhattan, the East Village has its own Portuguese barbecue restaurant. With a colorful mural extending across the interior, this place features 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.

Recently moved across the street into bigger digs, Cadence is one of the newer additions to Ravi de Rossi’s East Village vegan empire. Award winning chef Shenarri Freeman concocts unique and often delicious versions of soul food using no meat or cheese — which is no mean feat, and her deep fried lasagna has become the stuff of legend.

Da Radda is a new Argentinean restaurant and wine bar with an appealing wine list that also includes Chilean vintages. It’s owned by Sergio Raddavero, and focuses on the country’s Italian-influenced cuisine, rather than the steaks that characterize nearly all NYC Argentinean restaurants. That means an emphasis on a few pastas — some of them not widely seen here — as well as antipasti, risottos, eggplant and veal parms, and some rather unusual pizzas. The dulce de leche panna cotta is killer.

Deeply flavored and dramatically dark Taiwanese beef noodle soup is the focus of owner Richard Ho’s .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.

Normally, one might have to sojourn to Flatbush or at least Harlem to find Jamaican food of this caliber, but be forewarned, Lily’s doubles as a wild cocktail lounge as the sun sets and the corner of East Seventh Street and Avenue A becomes the most tumultuous scene in the East Village. Via chefs Kahari Woolcock and Andre Fowles, crisp codfish fritters, a version of pepper shrimp saucier than its beachside prototype, and jerk chicken are all recommended, and even the simple rice and peas are moist and flavorful.

Once an Italian bakery before it was taken over by a Pueblan family in the mid-90s, Downtown Bakery eventually eschewed baked goods and went on to mount an impressive menu of southern Mexican and Mexican-American standards. The owners are the sister-and-brother team of Olivia Marin and Manuel Marmolejo. Their epic adobo sauce based on guajillo chiles is the Pueblan equivalent of birria, available with chicken or over enchiladas. Breakfast tacos, Austin-style, and Mission-style California burritos are other fantastic options.

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. As the name suggests, the focus is on shredded green papaya salads prepared in a mortar with optional add-ins that include the raw blue crabs, but there are also incredibly spicy larbs, as well as deep-fried chicken thighs, grilled coconut-milk-marinated pork, and sour pork sausages.

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.

The tiny premises belies the sprawling menu at this Burmese restaurant that started out as a closet in a Queens subway station run by family owners Thidar Kyaw, Tin Ko Naing, and Yun Naing. The Burmese cuisine is unique, with many ingredients not often found in other Southeast Asian cuisines as presented here. A tea leaf salad flavored with fermented leaves is a case in point, and so is chicken paratha — a rich soup with rafts of floating flatbread.

Adela Fargas, who passed in 2018, founded this Puerto Rican institution in 1976, making it the longest-running restaurant in Alphabet City. The rotisserie chickens — visible through the front window kicking like a chorus line — have been a carryout magnet, but roast pork, fricasseed chicken, steak with onions, and Cuban sandwiches were equally as alluring. For the cash strapped, a plate of rice and beans often suffices.