Monday is one of the best nights of the week for dining out. The chaotic Thursday-through-Sunday crowds have died down and grabbing a walk-in seat at popular restaurants is usually easier to swing, even at peak dining times. It’s an off day for a lot of restaurants — especially with industry-wide staffing shortages — but plenty of places keep their doors open for peers in the hospitality industry, who might have the day off, and regulars in the neighborhood looking for a bite to eat. Here are some of our favorites right now.
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19 Restaurants Open on Monday in New York City
Rotisserie chicken, late-night dim sum, and maximalist Italian

Cafe Luxembourg
There are no shortages of French brasseries in the city, but few restaurants can boast Cafe Luxembourg’s scene. On any given night, the dining room and bar are a gathering spot for longtime Upper West Side residents, New York Philharmonic performers, Broadway actors, and all sorts of creative types, from poets to architects. The menu offers reliable standards like strip steaks and pan-roasted salmon, but it’s the buzzy downtown energy (and dim lighting) in a room full of regulars that makes hanging out here feel like a night out.
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Bad Roman
Maximalist restaurant Bad Roman injects some fun into the city’s regional Italian and Italian American restaurant scene, a Buca di Beppo version of a fern bar meets White Lotus-level decadence in a massive dining room one story below the three-Michelin-starred Per Se. Look for dishes like garlic babka and tiramisu ice cream cake on the menu — without going off the rails.
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Ruta Oaxaca
When a meal on Monday calls for mole, as it should, Ruta Oaxaca checks that box and then some. The brightly colored Mexican restaurant in Astoria serves multiple varieties of mole blanketed over chicken and slow-cooked short ribs, as well as crispy fish tacos, chipotle-marinated shrimp with pineapple salsa, and baby-back ribs coated in a guava chipotle glaze. Eater critic Robert Sietsema found the restaurant to be excellent in an early review.
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Chi Restaurant & Bar 棋酒吧餐厅
From the duo behind Spy-C Village in Forest Hills, comes Chi, a very good Hell’s Kitchen Chinese restaurant, from chefs Tom Lei and Tom Lo, the latter a doctor by day, chef by night, who runs an anesthesiology practice in Queens. You might call it fancy, because its sleek decor, or hand-crafted cocktails, or a beef tendon and caviar dish that happens to have been inspired by Wylie Dufresne. Don’t miss the mushrooms with duck egg yolks.
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Ci Siamo
Chef Hillary Sterling, on the James Beard long list for best chef in New York, has turned this restaurant opposite Hudson Yards into a destination, one of those places that get better month over month. Get the onion torta, any of the wood-fired vegetables (smashed potatoes, smoked carrots, Brussels sprouts) and braised beans, followed by rapini agnolotti. And if meat is in your meal plan, consider the whole trout, braised lamb, or bistecca.
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Heritage Grand Bakery
Located in the heart of Bryant Park, Heritage Grand Bakery focuses on varied grains and milling techniques. Look for dishes like branzino with pistachio chermoula or Tunisian chicken, as well as thin, tavern-style pizzas.
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Little Mad
If you’re looking to start the week off with a bang, Koreatown’s Little Mad is a more energetic option for early weeknight dining. For an extra fee, caviar, uni, and truffles can be added to anything on the $75 set menu, which is overseen by Le Coucou alum Sol Han. One of the restaurant’s early hits, a beef tartare dotted with smoked tofu puree, arrives at the table with a large, light green maesangi chip and a wooden hammer for diners to smash it into tartare-scooping bits.
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Çka Ka Qëllu
Critically praised Çka Ka Qëllu is an impressive display of Albanian food and culture that keeps expanding at a steady clip. The menu at the rustic, relatively new Murray Hill outpost, like its siblings in the Bronx and Connecticut, features platters of smoky grilled sausages, ground veal-stuffed dumplings, and slices of dense, crepe-like fli paired with a block of tangy feta.
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Chama Mama
Georgian stalwart Chama Mama can get slammed on the weekends, but Monday diners are rewarded with shorter wait times and faster access to tangy pickled vegetables, plates of hefty, broth-filled khinkali, and the fan-favorite blistered cheese vessels known as adjaruli khachapuri.
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Buvette New York
The all-day cafe from Jody Williams and Rita Sodi doesn’t disappoint, whether you’re there early for a piping hot croissant for breakfast or in the evening for an old-school order like coq au vin or cassoulet.
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Roscioli NYC
Long anticipated Rome import Roscioli has Monday seatings for its tasting menu that’s $105 and includes Italian wine pairings; there’s also the Taste the Legends of Wine dinners will allow for wine education. The alimentari (Italian provisions shop with cheese, meats, and other goods), will open after Labor Day.
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Lord’s
Look for gutsy British fare inspired by London’s power duo, Rochelle Canteen (of the acclaimed Margot restaurant) and Fergus Henderson (St. John). A nod to Patricia Howard and chef Ed Szymanski, the duo behind Dame, for cooking the type of food that coursed its way through New York’s gastronomic zeitgeist more than a decade years ago — hay-smoked trout, pig head terrine, monkfish, sweetbreads — and keeping New Yorkers coming back for more.
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Superiority Burger
Industry folks with Mondays off can hit up vegetarian Superiority Burger, with its namesake dish and terrific desserts, provided they’re willing to wait in the crushing lines or give it a go later at night. Waits are hitting up to two hours on the weekends but notably shorter on this off day. Head to the back bar as you wait for generically named cocktails and homemade salty snacks that reside in an old-school gumball-style 25-cent machine with a stack of paper cones on the side.
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Foul Witch
The Roberta’s team debuted this Italian restaurant and wine bar in the East Village with a menu of small plates of beans and tripe with pasta mains like veal tortellini or the garganelli with braised goat. While Roberta’s fine dining restaurant Blanca remains closed, this is a more casual a la carte sibling.
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Dim Sum Palace
This chain restaurant with seven locations across Manhattan opened the Division Street restaurant after another location of Dim Sum Palace closed due to a fire last spring. Particularly noteworthy is that this location is open late. The dining room, and the menu, are vast.
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Rolo’s
This Ridgewood restaurant is a favorite with industry workers — and actors who play them. The restaurant takes reservations, but in our experience, it’s always been possible to walk in here with a wait on a Monday night. The restaurant is popular for its straightforward menu anchored by a wood-fired oven, which turns out polenta breads, charred head-on shrimp, and one of the borough’s best burgers.
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Place des Fêtes
This French-sounding bar specializes in Spanish wines and seafood in a cozy subterranean Clinton Hill dining room from the Michelin-starred Oxalis team in Prospect Heights. Look for small plates from sardine toasts to fancy ham or a Castelfranco salad with hazelnuts. Wines by the glass start at around $15.
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The Fly
The Fly comes from the folks behind neighborhood restaurants Hart’s, around the corner, and Cervo’s, on the edge of Chinatown and the Lower East Side, both of which are also open for dinner on Monday. The specialty at this corner spot, the youngest of the trio, is rotisserie chicken and sexy vibes. Reservations are accepted, but the large dining room and curved bar make it possible to walk in here at peak hours.
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Red Hook Tavern
Remember Red Hook Tavern? The restaurant, open since 2019 and hiding in Red Hook ever since, still draws a crowd for its popular burger, now served with cottage fries instead of wedges. It stays open on Mondays with a portion of its dining room set aside for walk-ins.
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