The nearby non-profit bakery teaches immigrant women how to become professional bakers, and here the international breads and other baked goods, plus the laid-back coffee shop, are worth a stop for beverages, pastries, and sandwiches.

Offering a fine slice, better than most neighborhood joints, and an even superior Sicilian square, Sam's represents for the long-running Italian presence in the neighborhood, of which the most famous exemplar is the unattainable Rao's.

This ancient, too-brightly-lit storefront specializes in fried pig parts with a Puerto Rican perspective that fill you up your stomach like a storm drain in a hurricane.

At this Mexican bakery on Third Avenue, the pan dulce fly from the oven fresh on an hourly basis and you can nearly always get something warm.

This phenomenal street stand covered by a bright blue tarp employs four cooks at once to make tacos, sopes, tlaycoyos, and other masa-borne treats, of which the best is the mind-bogglingly good potato-and-chorizo gordita – a big fat corncake split longitudinally, smeared with a pink paste of sausage and spud, drenched in fiery salsa verde, heaped with greenery and mellowed with dairy.

At the heart of the menu here is al pastor, which can be seen twirling in the window, but the suadero and oreja (ear) tacos are easily its equal. Bonus: Taco Mix is open until 5 a.m. most nights.

The Dominican soul of El Barrio is Sandy, a long-running lunchroom where most of the menu is displayed in the windows or on the steam table.

Founded in 1933 by Pasquale "Patsy" Lancieri, this place is one of the city's sainted coal-oven pizzerias, and one of the last vestiges of what was a thriving Italian neighborhood 80 years ago.