This classic cafe — owned and operated by Omar Bailey just down the block from Montefiore Medical Center in the Wakefield neighborhood — provides great renditions of soul food standards. The whiting sandwich is piled high with crisp filets (catfish is also available), the mac and cheese crusted with extra cheddar, and the banana pudding every bit as good as Magnolia Bakery’s. And the fried chicken is to die for.

This long-running Albanian coffee shop owned by Marjan Kolnrekaj makes one thing, and that one thing extremely well: the flaky, rotund pie known in the Balkans as burek, a stacked mass of phyllo stuffed with cheese, meat, or spinach. A wedge makes a full meal; an entire pie feeds a family. The coffee’s good, too, at this anchor of the Pelham Parkway food scene.

Named after an ancient Middle Eastern queen loved in several religious traditions, Queen Sheeba (not to be confused with Queen of Sheba restaurant, a Hell’s Kitchen Ethiopian staple) is a 19-year-old Yemeni restaurant hidden in Harlem. The compact kitchen serves forth a wealth of halal lamb and chicken entrees, plus stellar soups like shorba — wherein cracked barley stands in for ground meat — and molokhia, a soup brimming with greens. And Middle Eastern standards like baba ghanoush are some of Harlem’s best.

Way down south in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, this recently arrived barbecue establishment owned by Robin Hudson might just as well be located in a small town in Texas. It boasts a far-ranging beer selection, making ita good place to sit down and drink some suds. The barbecue is worth the trek even if you don’t live in the area much, and the prices are a better deal over some of the more well-known spots. Favorites included a substantial brisket sandwich with a definite smoke ring and smoky taste, and a passel of pork ribs with just the right consistency — tender, but not falling off the bone from sitting around too long on a steam table.

Lately, great Thai restaurants have appeared in many neighborhoods that never had them before. This modest establishment in a wide but shallow space just off First Avenue on the Upper East Side excels at small dishes, such as a lemongrass-scented chicken soup laced with coconut milk, a simple salad of shredded green papaya, fried shrimp in triangles of paper-thin dough fried crisp, and a chicken larb second to none in Manhattan — it can be assembled just as spicy as you want.

Beef birria — hearty, chile-braised meat folded into a tortilla that has first been dipped in meat juices — has enjoyed a wildfire popularity here. In the best versions of this dish, which originated in Jalisco using goat, but was adapted in Tijuana and Los Angeles with beef, a consomme is provided on the side for dipping the taco as you eat it. Chofi Taco, founded by Kim-Martin Flammia and Patrick Flammia, started out as a Smorgasburg booth, but then moved to a residential neighborhood in Union City, New Jersey.

King of Falafel and Shawarma is a Palestinian restaurant a stone’s throw from the Broadway stop on the N and W trains, which descended from a truck launched by Fares “Freddy” Zeideia in 2002; it turned into a restaurant in 2016. The falafel is indeed some of the best in town, big and cylindrical, with a crust that makes an emphatic crunch and an herby soft interior. Another favorite is qudsia, a plate of hummus with a reservoir of stewed fava beans in the center, and an unforgettable green sauce. “What’s in it?” I asked. “It’s a secret,” the server replied. Note that the shawarma is just okay.

Located among the new condo shopping centers springing up around Prince Street in Flushing, this Taiwanese spot excels at meal-sized soups. Beef and tendon soup is so spicy that the broth is bright red, and the tendon comes in big hunks, utterly satisfying for the fiery food addict. Other specialties include sesame oil chicken soup, pork knuckle rice, noodles with soybean paste, and side dishes (called “luwei”) which include kelp knots, pig’s ear, and braised bean curd. 

Nurlan is one of the few Uyghur restaurants in the city, presenting the food of an ethnic minority in far northwestern China. The menu might remind you of Middle Eastern and Central Asian fare, with its kebabs, pastas, and rice pilafs, but then there’s also the fabled big tray of chicken or lamb. The charmingly decorated cafe is run by Adil Nurdun and Arkin Ali, and you might be surprised to find that the kebab list includes that most New York of meats — the hot dog.

This West African café just west of the United Nations boasts a Ghanaian owner (George Quainoo) and a Nigerian chef (Margarete Duncan) and the menu is a pleasing collection of culinary commonplaces from both countries. Suya is a fistful of peanut-crusted beef kebabs, while egusi is a sauce of greens and ground pumpkin seeds that looks something like scrambled eggs. And you can never go wrong with the vegetarian peanut sauce, served with mashes such as white yam fufu or the fermented cornmeal loaf called kenkey.

This northern Indian restaurant in Jackson Heights comes from an Adda alum, and recently added meat and poultry to a menu that had been vegetarian. Chef Amrit Pal Singh still makes a vegetarian version of Adda’s signature dish, dum biryani, Lucknow-style with a dough crust across the top. There’s also paneer khurchan (paneer cheese stir-fried with tomatoes and peppers) and pani puri (a snack of small pastry globes to be cracked on top and filled with chutney) that are popular here. Most dishes are made to order.

The menu of this small but elaborately decorated Mexican restaurant originates from chef Adela Arias-Galvez’s native Guerrero and its surrounding states. The best thing, though, is off-menu: a red and moderately spicy mole de Guerrero that may engulf chicken or spare ribs (pick the ribs). Other spectacular dishes include a red pozole, pork chops in salsa verde, and overstuffed tacos on soft corn tortillas that run to steak, pork carnitas, and crumbly sausage. The delicate little tacos placeros are head and shoulders above many other examples in Queens.

Many New Yorkers love Superiority Burger’s great vegetarian burger. Fewer know about the alu tikki burger at the strictly vegetarian USHA Foods. A grilled potato patty stuffed with peas and other vegetables is brushed with a sweet tamarind sauce and is pressed with lettuce and tomato inside a sleek wraparound bun, which delivers a crunch. Other savory bites run to chaats, paratha rolls, and dosas, including one cryptically dubbed a Chinese dosa.

This cafe — flying the flags of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, reflecting the shifting Latin population of its East Village neighborhood — has been around since at least the late 70s, when it was called the National Café. Check the chalkboard outside for menu recommendations, which may include stewed pig’s feet, paprika roast chickens, a codfish casserole, and roast pork pernil that’s available every day. Don’t miss the braised pork ribs, where the meaty bones are cooked with the classic Caribbean Creole flavors of onion, green pepper, and garlic. 

Gui kui, a popular street food, is a stuffed flatbread invented in Shaanxi, perfected in Hubei, and now popular in Sichuan, Shanghai, and Singapore. In the form that landed on Greenwich Village’s hopping Macdougal Street, an oblong flattened dough is stuffed with pork, pickled mustard greens, chicken, or — best of all — spicy beef with Sichuan peppercorns, and then poked in a tandoor-like oven and baked till golden brown. Chefs Michael Zheng Chen and Zhuobu Zheng round out their menu with a few dim sum classics, including pork dumplings and shrimp rice noodle rolls.

Via Pueblan owners Pompeyo and Maria Martinez, this narrow grocery store in the East Village — its shelves are stocked with dried chiles, fresh tomatillos, Mexican beers, and tortillas by the kilo — has a few tables. Check out the display by Zaragoza’s register for the daily taco and burrito fillings, which may include chile-laced chicken, steak, dried beef cecina, and goat barbacoa. On weekends, there’s sometimes a fine pork pozole served with two avocado-topped tostadas, and specialties of the house run to chicken or potato flautas and meatballs with a quail egg planted inside. Grab a cold one from the refrigerator case, and enjoy.

This tiny cafe just south of Tompkins Square specializes in the street food of Bangkok, with a limited menu of full meals that will make deciding what to eat easier. Karuna Wiwattanakantang and Norawat Margsiri previously owned a Thai restaurant in Boulder, Colorado, and the best dish on the current menu is basil chicken, with ground poultry cooked down to a rich mixture served with rice, a poached egg, and boiled sweet potato. For vegetarians, there’s a very nice pad Thai.

The days when the streets of Greenpoint were lined with the small Polish cafes labeled obiady (“meals”) are now long gone, but a few remain. One of the best is Pyza (“dumpling”), a sparsely furnished dining room with a counter in one corner where orders are placed. When the cook, seen through the kitchen window, finishes your selection, the name of the dish is called and you pick it up. Most meals cost around $10, including stuffed cabbage, potato dumplings with meat, hunter’s stew, and schnitzels galore. The portions are so big that leftovers are almost always a sure thing.

Owner and chief sandwich maker Co Ut Tran opened this new banh mi shop north of Canal Street not long ago. There are two other Vietnamese sandwich shops in close vicinity — both good — so why pick this one? The sandwiches tend to be overstuffed: the No. 4, for example, begins with the usual cavalcade of pate, cha lua, and salami, but then adds a bonus slice of very fatty Virginia ham. What a combo! The vegetarian banh mi made with baked tofu is also good, redolent of lemongrass, and the kitchen staff ably turns out a modest collection of more ambitious dishes, which include a very well-priced bowl of pho, and the wonderful tapioca dumplings called banh bot loc, which come wrapped in banana leaves and glow translucently like amber.

This compact Guyanese bakery with a lovely mural of the namesake waterfall delivers not only freshly made tennis rolls (a sweet bread), butter flaps, and pine tarts, but a full range of savory meals. Look for curries of lamb, duck, and red snapper served with white rice, roti, or dhal puri, or smaller savory dishes such as pepper shrimp, chicken in ruff, or fried banga mary, a freshwater fish. Finally, find a full menu of Guyanese-Chinese fare, mainly chow mein, fried rice, and lo mein, including the wonderful jerk pork fried rice.

This restaurant just above the South Street Seaport, owned by Abdul Ahat Bakri, put in a surprise appearance in the middle of last summer, peddling Uyghur standards — charcoal kebabs, rice pilaf, meat-bulging samsa pastries, and fist-sized dumplings — in a totally unexpected location. Normally, one would go to Brighton Beach or Flushing for the like, though an overlapping menu can be found at Uzbek spots. The floppy round spaghetti called lagman are made in the kitchen from scratch, and for fans of lamb, multiple dishes are available. Two more tips: The entrance is on Pearl Street, and all the meat served is halal.

You can’t go wrong with the simple pork gyro at this Ridgewood budget-friendly Greek restaurant (there’s another branch in Astoria). This overstuffed wonder comes rolled in an outsized pita with tomato, purple onions, and a white lava-like flow of thick, garlicky yogurt. Other pita-borne meats are similarly opulent, including the orange-scented sausage loukaniko. Beer is available, and don’t miss the herb-dusted french fries.

Maybe this spot on the Hackensack River facing Newark is not the first place you’d look for great Malaysian fare. But Mamak (the name is an honorific that can be used to refer to a maternal uncle, or any shopkeeper) delivers in all categories in a building that boasts two big dining rooms with a lively carryout operation in between (for the neighborhood, it also functions as a Chinese restaurant). Check out the nasi lemak, a multi-item meal featuring a boiled egg, chicken curry flavored with pandanus, a sambal (spicy relish), cucumbers, and yellow rice. Plenty of vegetable dishes on the menu are worth checking out, too, along with thick noodles and meal-size soups.

Step up to the order counter at the rear of Santa Ana Deli — one of the first Mexican taquerias in Bushwick, owned by Polo Teco and family, including wife Benita and daughter Blanca — above which a hand-lettered sign offers tacos, tortas, cemitas, hand-patted quesadillas, huaraches, sopes, and memelitas, in addition to plate meals. Don’t miss the taqueria’s namesake santanero burrito, or tacos Arabes — flour tortillas wrapped around a filling of pork carnitas laced with chipotle sauce and guacamole.

Sure, you can find pupuserias that make their own Salvadoran pupusas, sometimes hand-patting the masa or rice dough, but this new establishment from Guillermina Ramirez takes the process one step further. Its pupusas are of larger circumference, juicier, and stuffed right when you order with a choice of 10 fillings. Some, like broccoli and cheese, are rarely seen, but neophytes should first try cheese and loroco, a pickled flower that resembles oregano, and revueltas, which combines pork rind, beans, and cheese. Add some of the slaw called curtido, first moistened with hot sauce, in the pupusas for more crunch.

Borough Park, near the border of Sunset Park, was ripe for a Jamaican restaurant when Unique J’s opened there recently. Though no seating is available, there are benches in the park directly across the street. The steam table displays luscious and pristine versions of oxtail, curry goat, mac and cheese, and callaloo. Meanwhile, a smoking oil drum outside promises great jerk chicken, heavy on the jerk coating (ask for the jerk sauce on the side since it’s incendiary). As an added bonus, Jamaican breakfasts are also available featuring dishes like saltfish and ackee (shown). Your hostess, Joan, also does most of the cooking.

There is no better spot for an introduction to Chinese charcuterie that the spread that features prominently in the lap mei served at Roast 28, which also boasts a branch in Flushing. Go inside to find a series of backlit menus that offer nearly 100 choices, including three types of roast duck and five variations of roast chicken. In addition, parts like chicken wings, pork stomach, and “country-style squid” further fill out the menu. All the meats can be served by itself, or over rice or noodles. Congee and rice noodle rolls are also available at this spectacular Sunset Park place.

Located across the street from a mosque up a steep hill that will put you out of breath if you hike from the Staten Island Ferry, New Asha, founded by Vijayakumari Devadas in 1999, is a funky sort of place with affordable and excellent Sri Lankan food. A glass case displays heavy tubular fritters that are good for snacks, but why not sit and chow down on mutton or jackfruit curries, poured over rice and served with yellow dal and a chopped vegetable salad? All the meat is halal.

As far as I know, Lagman House — named after the signature noodle of Central Asia, and owned by Damirzhan and Gulshat Azimova — is the only restaurant in town serving the food of the Dungan people, who are ethnic Chinese living in Central Asia. Compared with the Uzbek menus more commonly found in New York, there are more Chinese and fewer Russian influences on Lagman House’s menu. There’s no plov, for example. The salad section is substantial, each focusing on one vegetable like mushrooms, eggplant, or cucumbers. Dapanji is one of the best chicken stews you’ve ever tasted. 

Hey, where do you go for the best khachapuri — the Georgian bread boat brimming with cheese, a raw egg, and a surfeit of melted butter — in town? Not to a restaurant, but to the city’s best Georgian bakery: Berikoni Brick Oven Bread. The bread just mentioned, adjaruli khachapuri, is only one of seven types available (shown here is the beef-stuffed kubdari). Other Georgian recipes such as kebabs, khinkali dumplings, and baked dishes like chicken tabaka are also available at bargain prices.