Work your way through the tangle of highway underpasses and overpasses to find this docked flying saucer that was once a kiosk at the 1939 World’s Fair. In 1946, it was put on a flatbed and dragged to the bottom of a hill beneath the Jersey City Heights. The counter inside is as circular as the exterior, and wondrous cheeseburgers are cooked there, along with hot dogs, fries, onion rings, and slender sandwiches of an ancient nature, including Taylor ham (aka pork roll), the national meat of New Jersey.

Pittsburgh’s Rick Easton is the impresario of Italian baked goods, both sweet and savory, at this rare scenester spot in the Heights. Sure, there are thick-pizza-like focaccias, some smeared with tomatoes, some with more elaborate toppings, and there are also cookies, tarts, custard-squirting bomboloni, and other pastries, as well delectable sandwiches — a Roman-style mortadella sandwich is often available. Bread & Salt is a quirky and unpredictable establishment that also sells Italian groceries. Only open Friday through Sunday.

Open for six years, Golconda Chimney — named after a Hyderabad landmark that was once the seat of a sultanate and center for the diamond trade — offers the food of the high-tech city, including biryanis, Indo-Chinese dishes, tandoori specialties, and street snacks as well as vegetarian and non-vegetarian main options. The kitchen does wonders with goat — roasting, stewing, skewering, currying, and even using the animal’s feet in a goat paya soup. Other menu highlights include chicken gongura and Malabar fish curry.

Helmed by Kamal Arora, Mithaas is a vegetarian Indian restaurant that concentrates on the food of the South, with the usual freshly prepared dosas, uttapams, and composed rice casseroles like bisi bele bath. Every day a thali is prepared, the name designating a composite meal of curries, chutneys, dals, and breads served on a round metal tray. But Mithaas doubles as a sweet shop, and glass cases are filled with milk-based treats in a rainbow of colors, some flaunting gold- or silver-leaf decorations.

There’s nothing better than barbecue from a butcher shop, and that is just what Minar does. In the back, there’s a selection of raw halal chicken and goat, and lots of frozen imported fish from Bangladesh, like hilsa, pomfret, and rohu. In the front stands a wooden shack housing Minar Kabab and Tikka Corner, where meat sizzles on a charcoal grill. Ground lamb and chicken kebabs are available on flatbread or over rice, along with chickens, fish filets, and mutton kebabs. Tandoori items find their way into the vertical clay oven.

Jersey City has its own iconic hot dog counter, in this case it’s bright yellow and also selling the conventional gritty drinks of NYC institutions like Papaya King. But Jersey dogs don’t come topped with sauerkraut and caramelized canned onions, rather there’s a meaty topping often described as chili, even though it’s really an onion-y Greek meat sauce. Currently owned by John Bardis, whose father Speros bought the narrow place in 1962, Boulevard Drinks has been around since 1937.

Jersey City has a handful of Egyptian seafood restaurants exhibiting a cooking style that originated in the Mediterranean port of Alexandria. There are whole fish grilled or fried, depending on the coarseness of the flesh, served with salad, baba ghanoush, fried rice, and french fries. (If grilled, the skin comes out black, and should be pulled off and discarded.) The menu also includes other Mediterranean dishes, such as red-sauced seafood pasta and fried squid. Decorated with nautical motifs, Morgan serves incredibly fresh seafood at prices that put Manhattan restaurants to shame.

Elma Santander, who came from Manila, opened Philippine Bread House in 1979 and it grew into a mini shopping complex in one of the two Filipino neighborhoods in Jersey City (the other is way south in the West Bergen neighborhood). The prominent red building, seen as you climb the hill toward Journal Square on Newark Avenue, is foremost a bakery. When you step inside, many pastries and breads gleam with purple ube. In the rear, find a steam table with hot dishes, many featuring pork and fish and tangy with vinegar. Kare kare is a stew of oxtails and green beans thickened with peanut butter. Desserts include halo-halo, the Filipino crushed ice dessert.

Newport is an unexpected location for one of the metropolitan area’s best Hunan restaurants, with lots of fiery choices and pleasing ingredients like smoked bamboo, pickled chiles, pork belly, eggplants, and yes, the cuisine’s signature fish head. The menu also offers Sichuan fare and plenty of vegetarian dishes, but skip the steamed dumplings.

In common with Morgan Seafood, Samakmak is another of Jersey City’s distinctive Alexandrian restaurants, offering a menu of simply grilled or fried fish, a half dozen species per day. The front of the premises is a fish market, but go through the door at the rear to find the restaurant, decorated with a skyline of Alexandria. In fact, you can grab your fish in front and carry it to the back to be cooked. Shrimp or calamari, fried or in tomato sauce, are also available. For dessert, don’t miss kanafa or rice pudding.

While long-running, red-sauce Italian spots like Joe and Pat’s (featured in the Sopranos) and Dante have closed in Jersey City, newfangled, more modern places have opened, and Pasta Dal Cuore is one. It was founded by Elena Cartagena, an Italian-Uruguayan, in 2014. Check out the freshly made pastas in the glass case as you enter, but the menu goes way beyond noodles. A meal there might feature a seafood faro salad followed by a chicken cutlet milanesa, but you can also stick with pastas, of which the lasagna shown here is one of the richest in town.

Normally, you’d have to go to Ironbound to get Brazilian food. Tamborim (“tambourine“) is located right on the mall portion of Newark Avenue, where crowd watching is almost a contact sport. The bean-filled cauldron of feijoada, stuffed with plenty of pig parts, is spot on, while Afro-Brazilian cuisine is well represented with the dende-laced bobo de camarao. Finally, snacking is encouraged with a menu of fritters and baked goods such as pao de queijo, an irresistibly bouncy cheese bread made with yuca flour.

Owned by Adnan Kwara, a nephew of the Mamoun’s founder Mamoun Chater, Ibby’s has been a dining resource of the Historic Downtown neighborhood for 25 years. Favorites on a fundamental Lebanese-Syrian menu include lamb shawarma and falafel sandwiches whose chickpea-bearing orbs are notably fried to order. Vegetarians will do spectacularly here, with a fattoush salad filled with crisp toasted pita, or a platter of baba ghanoush and foul — the garlic-stewed fava beans. This remains a budget option in a neighborhood with an upscale restaurant collection.

A Mexican restaurant appeared in the back of a gas station on bustling Grand Street, a largely industrial neighborhood of warehouses and factories. The owner and chef is Mexico City native Roberto Islas, and the menu at this small spot decorated with huge art murals on Mexican themes is a compendium of dishes found locallly, from tacos, tortas, and quesadillas to more ambitious creations like mixiotes. And this is one of the few places I know of to offer lamb birria, though not always available.

While most of the dozen or so Philippine restaurants on the West Side are of the steam-table cafe sort, Jayhan’s is a thoroughly modern hang that attracts a young crowd. Brunching? The congee-like goto, laced with seafood, makes a great weekend repast, and dishes like kare kare often arrived stylishly deconstructed. And if you’re not into a giant meal, plenty of dumplings, fritters, and other small snacks are available.

Fourteen-year-old Bistro La Source is tucked away in a residential neighborhood near the Colgate clock. Its strength lies not only in its comfortable interior and parking-lot outdoor dining area, but in its conventional bistro menu. The scaled-down bouillabaisse and hopelessly rich cassoulet are good examples, but one is also free to dine more lightly on bone marrow and chanterelles or French onion soup.

A rather grand restaurant along the Hackensack River waterfront, with views of Newark across the water, Mamak House offers a deep dive into Malaysian cuisine with a few Chinese and Indonesian flourishes. For an introduction to the cuisine, try nasi lemak, a rice-based dish topped with a dark chicken curry and anchovy relish. Okra with fermented belacan sauce is another highlight, and so is Hokkien char mee — thick wheat noodles slicked with a dark fragrant sauce and topped with crisp fried shallots.

HIdden midblock in a residential neighborhood not far from the warehouses that line the northern reaches of Newark Bay, Laico’s is typical of the old-guard Italian restaurants that once dotted Jersey City. The cudgel-size pork chop parmesan covers the plate, while the eggplant rollatini — stuffed with scintillatingly fresh ricotta — is just like Italian grandmas used to make. The wine list offers plenty of bargains, and there’s a postage-stamp-size parking lot adjacent to the restaurant.