The Dish: Pastrami Sandwich. Katz’s is touristy, but it is not for tourists. That’s an important distinction. The famous Lower East Side Jewish deli is, first and foremost, for New Yorkers who need a mountain of the city's finest pastrami. Per square inch, the version at Katz’s is one of the finest foods on the planet. Warm, thick, salty, and smoky, the pastrami pulls apart like a fresh croissant and leaves a grease stain on anything it touches.

The Dish: Cheeseburger. J.G. Melon’s cheeseburger used to feature regularly on "Best Burger" lists across the city’s finest publications. Then, something changed. Maybe the city’s best burgers got better. Maybe J.G. Melon’s burger—flipped on a grill that’s been accumulating grease since 1972—got worse. Despite all that, the nicotine-stained walls of this UES tavern still call to us, and the burger still satisfies.

The Dish: Pineapple Pork Bun. When we hear the words “edible gold,” we’re not thinking about ingestible metal, we’re thinking of Mei Lei Wah’s pineapple pork buns. For decades, the Chinatown bakery has been pumping out these pillowy buns with crackly yellow crusts on top. Break one open and you’ll find a mixture of char siu and pineapple inside, sort of like an al pastor stew, and a pile of crumbs underneath. The line can get long, but these $2 buns are absolutely worth 15 minutes of your time.

The Dish: Square Slice. Sold by the slice or pie, the upside-down pizza at L&B Spumoni Gardens has sweet sauce baked onto the top and cheese underneath, which melds with the dough in such a gooey way that it almost seems raw. But it’s not raw. It’s L&B. Eating a square slice followed by a drip-down-your-hands spumoni cone on the patio at this Gravesend spot is a New York rite of passage, similar to walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, or being yelled at by someone for doing nothing wrong.

The Dish: Black-and-White Cookie. With the exception of the almighty bagel, the black and white might be the most quintessential New York City baked good to emerge from an oven anywhere in the five boroughs. (Sorry, cheesecake.) And this Upper East Side bakery—with a second location on the Upper West Side—has had plenty of time to perfect its recipe since opening in 1946.

The Dish: Potato Pierogi. These stuffed dumplings at Veselka have kept the party going, soaking up booze in the East Village since 1954. But this Ukrainian diner's pierogi aren’t just drunk food. They’re just as life-giving when eaten in the morning, alongside a big plate of pancakes and your third refill of perfectly weak coffee. The dumplings come with a few different fillings, but you can never go wrong with classic potato.

The Dish: Mutton Chop. Like the remarkable artifacts on display all over the Midtown restaurant, including the playbill Lincoln was supposedly holding when he got shot, this protein is a holdover from a different time. Mutton, the meat of adult sheep, was a lot more common when Keens opened in 1885 than it is today. Their mutton chop is 26 majestic ounces of year-old lamb saddle—a thing of fatty, flavorful beauty—served with sautéed escarole.

The Dish: Thinly Pounded Yellowfin Tuna. This light yet decadent starter is a constant on the menu at French seafood titan Le Bernardin in Midtown, and we hope it never leaves. First, yellowfin tuna is pounded thin, until it resembles stained glass, or possibly the world's most expensive Fruit Roll-Up. The translucent fish is draped over a precise rectangle of toasted baguette spread with foie gras mousse, and finally brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with chives.

The Dish: Sfogliatella. There aren’t a lot of places where you can get handmade sfogliatella in New York, but Fortunato Brothers is one of them. The Williamsburg bakery, around since 1976, is a vestige of the old Italian neighborhood here, and you can taste a hint of that history in their sfogliatella. Filled with a ricotta and almond pastry cream with a touch of lemon, the pastry crunches like a stack of Pringles as you sink your teeth into it.

The Dish: Chocolate Egg Cream. This Upper East Side diner and luncheonette is one of the few places you can still get an egg cream made right in front of you, the old-fashioned way. A pint glass gets a pump of whole milk, a squirt of bubbly seltzer, and a pump of chocolate sauce. It’s essentially a refreshingly carbonated chocolate milk, made using equipment that's probably been around since the place opened in 1925.