If you’re dining in the Financial District, it is likely that you are visiting Wall Street on a field trip, work in the area, are going to a doctor’s appointment, or live in one of the many new luxury towers sprouting up. The area has a long way to go to be known as a paradise for good food, but these days, luckily, there are more options than ever. For a map of Fidi lunch spots under $20, head here.
Read MoreThe Best Restaurants in Fidi
Ball out like a banker
Metropolis by Marcus Samuelsson
Located inside the new $500 million Perelman Performing Arts Center near One World Trade is celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson’s new restaurant. As the name suggests, the restaurant takes New York City itself as inspiration, hoping to approximate the various boroughs’ culinary traditions, remixed in a fine dining context, such as an oyster dish nodding to Flushing.
Best Sicily Bottega
The first time you step into Best Sicily Bottega, you might wonder if you’re in the right place: The store is stacked from floor to ceiling with imported Italian foods. There are red and green pestos, panettone left over from the holidays, and at least six kinds of olive oil. In the middle of the shop, there’s a small pastry case. That’s where you’ll find the softball-sized arancini. The selection seems to change, whether they’re stuffed with beef ragu and green peas, or eggplant and tomato. The place is more of a lunch stop, but it’s open until 8 p.m. weekdays and 6 p.m. Saturday.
Le Gratin
Le Gratin is a “Wall Street hangout where charm still prevails,” writes Eater critic Robert Sietsema. Here, Daniel Boulud — one of the city’s most prolific providers of French restaurants — focuses on his roots in Lyon, France, in a space once home to Keith McNally’s Augustine. The move here is the restaurant’s namesake dish: the cheesy potato gratin.
Pisillo Italian Panini
Good bread and an impressive selection of high-quality Italian cured meats, from sopressata to mortadella, have earned this sandwich shop a following. The portions are almost laughably generous: a single sandwich can easily feed two or more diners. Pisillo isn’t perfect — a sandwich might be marred by a wan winter tomato, or call out for some sort of dressing to moisten it — but the fundamentals of a quality deli are there.
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Dim Sum Palace
Unlike its late-night Chinatown sibling on Division Street, this location of Dim Sum Palace only stays open until 10 p.m. But it is an ideal pick for group dining, especially without a reservation. Find Cantonese dim sum classics here like shrimp shumai dumplings, rice rolls, and more.
Kesté
Got a big group? Roberto Caporuscio’s cavernous restaurant has plenty of seating in cozy booths and tables where it’s not too loud. Caporuscio is one of the Italians who, back in the ’90s, helped fuel a national obsession for Neapolitan pies. They’re still very good here (in Keste’s last Manhattan outpost), but don’t miss the arancini, the Sicilian salad with fennel and orange, and the montanara, a variation on fried pizza.
Manhatta
Sixty floors up, Danny Meyer’s Manhatta offers some of the best dining views in the neighborhood. Its dining room looks out onto the East River, the Manhattan Bridge, and Brooklyn, and behind the walnut and granite bar, the rest of downtown Manhattan is visible. The restaurant has changed since it initially opened. Today, it offers an a la carte menu and a $275-per-person tasting menu.
Fish Market
Fish Market, located across from Pier 17 and the Tin Building food hall, is a holdover from another time. Part dive bar, part restaurant, it’s one of the few places in town where a whole lobster comes with a free shot of vodka. This isn’t the place to take your client out to dinner: The glass in the front window has been shattered for years, and the selection of drinks here ranges from bottled Bud Light to cans of White Claw. All the same, it’s a beloved haunt in the area that happens to serve shrimp puffs, dumplings, and scallion pancakes. .
Pearl Diner
Pearl has stood out since the 1960s in the high-rise-ridden Financial District, serving up big breakfast plates in a tiny, quintessential diner space. During the week it opens at 8 a.m., and nearby office workers start filing in soon after for a morning meal. The menu offers more than 40 burgers, but stick to a classic cheeseburger or bacon burger, with fries. Don’t expect frills.
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Xpizza
XPizza is a pizzeria and “multidisciplinary platform” curiously located near the South Street Seaport, of all places, where you can dance to some actually good DJs, and be in bed by 10 p.m. if you want to — preferably with a slice in hand. The crowd features spillover from nearby Dimes Square. At night, there’s dancing, but the space is tiny. Be ready to bump shoulders.
Crown Shy
70 Pine Street is restaurateur James Kent’s tower of fine dining. At the ground level is Crown Shy, a restaurant that opened in 2019 that manages to hit notes of special occasion dining while not feeling fussy. Pastry chef Renata Ameni’s desserts — like the orange satsuma ice cream — are as important to try as its main courses. Upstairs, the same team operates Saga, a tasting menu restaurant on the building’s 63rd floor, and Overstory, its sibling rooftop cocktail bar.
Serafina Vino e Cucina
From the people behind Serafina, Vino e Cucina, serving lunch and dinner, merges Serafina’s Italian favorites with Italian wines; each menu item has a wine pairing. The newly opened 75-seat restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating offers antipasti, pizzas, pastas and more.
Tin Building by Jean-Georges
Eight years in the making, celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten opened the Tin Building — a massive complex complete with several restaurants and retail shops — in 2022. Stretching 53,000-square-feet, and several floors, one could spend a whole day in the space alone trying dishes from all over the world. In an era of food hall overload, the Tin Building puts its own luxury spins on the genre.
Fraunces Tavern
There are hundreds of whiskeys, beers, and ciders to select from at this long-running tavern with a storied history that dates back to 1762. Ownership has changed hands many times through the years, and at times, its fate has hung in the balance. But it’s still kicking, offering booze and tavern fare like fish and chips, steak, and a slow-roasted chicken pot pie in a low-lit, dark-wooded space.