Dubbed the Queen of Soul Food, Sylvia Woods founded her landmark café in Harlem in 1962, having migrated from Hemingway, South Carolina in the 1940s. The Sylvia’s Restaurant complex now includes two plush dining rooms, a banquet hall, and an annex, but the best place to eat is still at the original lunch counter, right in the middle, where the strains of an electric blues combo drift in from the dining room.

The fried chicken is justifiably famous, and the cornbread is rich and crumbly and served with margarine, as it’s been done since the ’60s. The servers will hook you up with beer, wine, or a cocktail, which is unusual for a soul food joint, but then Sylvia’s has become a veritable temple of ancient African-American fare. I’d skip the ribs if I were you (too sweet for my tastes), in favor of the fried catfish, smothered pork chops, or chicken livers, and don’t miss the collards or mac and cheese. Sylvia passed in 2012 at the age of 86.

The oldest French bistro in the city — dating to 1937 — is Le Veau d’Or (The Golden Calf), just down the block from a French Huguenot church of colonial vintage. Though the townhouse premises is grandly faced with polished red granite and a gilt calf head, the interior feels every year of its age, with a red leather banquette running along its margins. Very nice watercolor landscapes of France line the walls. At lunch the place is occupied by theater and literary types, and being a regular counts for something here. Persevere and you’ll have a wonderful meal for $30 to $35, which includes three courses.

The onion soup is thinner than usual, and at some point the idea is likely to strike you that the cuisine minceur of the 1970s must have had a lingering impact. If you like hearty, go for the coarse-textured pate or the leeks vinaigrette. The lamb stew accompanied by potatoes au gratin is particularly enjoyable, and the tripe served in the traditional lidded metal casserole so abundant, two could share. Neither does the dessert course lag — the oeufs a la neige (“floating island”), zigzagged with caramel, can be the high point of a meal.

The area on lower Lexington known as Curry Hill is one of the New York region’s great Indian shopping strips, of which 74th Street in Jackson Heights and Jersey City’s Newark Avenue are other examples. Founded in 1976 with a name calculated to popularize the cuisine to a wider audience, Curry in a Hurry was the original anchor of Curry Hill. This and the international food store Kalustyan’s formed a nucleus around which stores selling groceries, saris, jewelry, books, and kitchenware coalesced. Today there are around 20 restaurants on these blocks.

Curry in a Hurry offers a range of Indian cuisines; indeed it was one of the earliest places in town to make South Indian uttapams and dosas. Clay-oven breads, tandoori chicken, Mughal vegetarian dishes, the occasional Gujarati choice, milk-based Bengali sweets, and mainstream curries became part of its ambitious purview. When it moved to its current corner in the early ’90s, it added an elegant upstairs dining room offering panoramic views of the neighborhood.

There’s no place quite as much fun as Bamonte’s. Founded in 1900 by immigrants from Salerno, Italy, just south of Naples, Bamonte’s is one of the city’s oldest continuously operating restaurants, and it shows every year of its venerable age. You can still see bouffant hairdos in the front barroom, and the tuxedo’ed waiters are nearly all old-timers. The sprawling dining room, sometimes containing tables of priests in their collars, ends in a glassed-in kitchen.

The menu is the perfect evocation of Italian-American cuisine, including a spaghetti with meat sauce and meatballs that could serve as a model for cooking schools. The baked clams are a “don’t miss,” and so is the chicken francese, putting on French airs for a working-class constituency. The pork chops with peppers (sweet or hot) is the city’s best version of that recipe.

Isolated in its little corner of Chinatown on lower Mott amid other senior establishments like Wing On Wo & Co., Wo Hop is the city’s second oldest Chinese restaurant, founded in 1938. (Only Nom Wah Tea Parlor, originated in 1920 but recently restored, is older.) The secret of Wo Hop’s longevity? Both the reliability of its Chinese-American fare, which seemingly uses no ginger, garlic, or soy sauce, and the small, subterranean nature of the real estate it occupies.

Sweep down the red stairway into a small square room plastered with snapshots of its enthusiastic patrons. Communicating with each other in Cantonese, the stately waiters wear starched, light blue shopcoats and don’t miss a move as they pass around massive platters of chicken chow mein, sweet-and-sour pork, subgum egg foo young (in the section “Chinese Omelettes”), and beef chow fun. Bring a crowd and share several dishes for maximum enjoyment.

It’s a wonder Brennan & Carr — founded in 1938 — still exists. The solid brick structure with the Tudor trim and rustic wood signage was around when this part of Sheepshead Bay was still rural farmland, as the location beside Gravesend Neck Road, one of Brooklyn’s earliest thoroughfares, also attests. The specialty of the house is Irish roast beef, served with its own juices on sandwich or platter in much the same style as Los Angeles’ popular french dip.

There are only a few other things on the bill of fare: burgers, onion rings, chicken breast sandwiches, beef broth, pie ala mode, and — as a tribute to its maritime location — clam chowder, served with oyster crackers. The dining room is dark, beer is served, and you can also order from a window on the Avenue U side of the building.