Where to Eat in July
Welcome to Grub Street’s rundown of restaurant recommendations that aims to answer the endlessly recurring question: Where should we go? These are the spots that our food team thinks everyone should visit, for any reason (a new chef, the arrival of an exciting dish, or maybe there’s an opening that’s flown too far under the radar). This month: an uptown African classic’s new offshoot, a great-value omakase in Alphabet City, and Marc Forgione’s new-but-familiar surroundings.
Carnitas Ramirez (East Village)
The best seats in this eastside taqueria are at the meat bar. There, customers sit in front of a buffet of bronzed pork parts and watch cooks chop away on the ever-more fat-slicked wooden block. On opening night, cumbia and reggaeton streamed through the air, and a tiny mounted television played María la del Barrio for customers in the back room. While the food menu is only three items long (including sesadillas, or brain quesadillas, and tacos de papas y rajas for vegans), there’s enough carnitas to keep a pork lover occupied for months. To start, ten cuts of meat and offal, all fried in lard before a gentler, longer cook in the cazo. They’ll recommend novices go with surtida, a variety of cuts chopped together, which can’t be beat for the rapturous mingling of textures and flavors. Other choices include fatty cabeza (head meat), crispy chamorro (shank), tender lengua (tongue), lean and simple maciza (shoulder), and jiggly cuero (skin). The tacos came out so fast it’s like a sneak attack. “I almost don’t remember eating them,” my friend said, the table littered with greasy, crumpled napkins. So we went back for seconds to make sure we’d remember. —Chris Crowley
Yokox (East Village)
The best decision I made on a weekend when the temperatures refused to drop below 90 degrees was wandering into this omakase restaurant, where the 14-seat counter was a respite from both the heat and the din of Avenue B. The minimalist space, which opened in April, is operated by a Nobu 57 alum and, at $89 for 15 courses, offers one of the better omakase deals around. The meal included fatty tuna tartare topped with caviar and a snow-crab hand roll in a soy bean wrap. In between — from seared king salmon topped with yuzu soy miso, broiled sea eel, and a standout oyster sashimi — the freshness of the ingredients never wavered. —Edward Hart
Let’s Go Ya Souvlakia (Prospect Heights)
It can be difficult to keep track of the restaurants on the northern stretch of Flatbush Avenue, but hopefully Let’s Go Ya Souvlakia (yes, that’s the full name) will last longer than some other tenants. You can smell the meat roasting from the street outside, likely because there’s plenty of it to go around.These are some of the biggest portions I’ve seen all year: $10 gets you a pitogyro sandwich overstuffed with tender fries and Let’s Go’s homemade Ya sauce, which is a lemony white sauce. The absolutely massive Thrakopsomo sandwich is served on crunchy, crumbly bread that complements the smooth gyros distributed throughout. —Zach Schiffman
Zooba (Nolita)
Though Egyptian cuisine has a stronghold in the outer boroughs — Astoria’s Little Egypt in particular — it’s had a harder time cracking the Manhattan Mediterranean-food mainstream. Zooba, an international chain (one of its locations is in Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum), opened in Soho in 2019, but its fast-casual setup kept it relatively low-profile. You can still lunch-rush your taameya sandwich (as the Egyptians call their falafel, bright green with favas in place of the more familiar chickpeas), ordering on a pair of touchscreen setups at the front, but as of this summer, Zooba has added a small sit-down dining room and a larger menu worth a visit. Those taameya, coin-shaped rather than spherical and squiggled with hot-pink beet tahina, were crisp and lush. Newer to me was Zooba’s take on a roast chicken, bright and tart with a pomegranate molasses glaze, and served over vermicelli rice with a silver cup alongside a stew of chopped mallow leaves that tastes a bit like a cross between spinach and parsley. The stew is intended to be poured over the bird, but not everyone is going to go for that. “Some people don’t like the texture,” my server said. “I don’t even know how to describe it.” I’ll try: Imagine if tabouleh were bathed in hot oil, and you’re pretty close. After trying the chicken on its own and then swimming in sauce, I preferred the latter. —Matthew Schneier
Forgione (Tribeca)
Marc Forgione’s namesake restaurant has been a downtown mainstay for a decade and a half: Why go now? To start, it’s just moved across Hudson Street to a large, comfortable corner space. And then there is the 2008 of it all — right down to the gastropub-reminiscent font on the menu — which feels like a welcome change of pace among all the small-plates-everywhere wine bars. Squid-ink bucatini is dotted with Long Island escargots (not a euphemism; actual snails), halibut gets topped with a wafer of crouton’d white bread and placed over an artichoke-and-hazelnut stew, while hanger steak rolled in pastrami spice is the best kind of steak au poivre. It’s all presented in the tried-and-true, hopelessly uncool “app-entrée-dessert” format. Refreshing! Oh, and for dessert: Get the “cherries jubilee,” a round of olive-oil cake in a bath of kirsch-soaked Greenmarket cherries. It’s not flamed at the table, alas, but even that is in keeping with this restaurant’s commitment to a quieter kind of fireworks. —Alan Sytsma
Café Massawa (Morningside Heights)
Almost four decades after opening the original Massawa on Amsterdam Avenue, one of the oldest African restaurants in New York now has an offshoot. Café Massawa serves the same great house injera with a shorter, but sufficient, list of fixings. My favorite is dereq tibs, beef strips dry fried until caramelized on all sides alongside their potently aromatic awaze sauce with a side of shiro and salad. If you get there before 2 p.m., you will benefit from the breakfast menu as well. Ful toast comes with two slices of bread heaped with soft, seasoned favas, cherry tomatoes, a drizzle of yogurt, and a dusting of berbere. They also serve kitcha fitfit, a dish you rarely find outside of people’s homes, torn pan-cooked flatbread coated with berbere and clarified butter and topped with more plain yogurt. The café itself is rather small, but includes a covered patio that almost doubles the space, and is a great place to linger with a cup of quemem tea at the end of your meal. —Tammie Teclemariam