Cheap Chow Now!

100 best and most inexpensive restaurants

A A A Comments By Robert Sietsema Tuesday, May 31 2005

You've probably never heard of most of these places, sprinkled throughout the five boroughs and Jersey, and distributed among three dozen different cuisines. That's because they haven't hired publicists—those seminal restaurant world figures who make sure that 1 percent of the restaurants receive 99 percent of the coverage. And, by the way: They'd love to see you spend $50 every night for dinner.

photo: Ofer Wolberger

Good day, Sunshine: Enjoying a Sri Lankan feast at New Sunshine on Staten Island (#65)

Details

Cheap Chow 2005 Box Score

Brooklyn 29
Bronx 6
Manhattan 35
New Jersey 4
Queens 20
Staten Island 6

More Cheap Chow 2005:

Ten champions from previous lists

Upper-end places worth the expense

Past 100 Bests

Original 100 Best and Cheapest Restaurants

100 Best Asian Restaurants

100 Best Latin Restaurants

100 Best Italian Restaurants

More About

For our fifth annual 100 Best, we return to the format of the very first year: absurdly cheap eateries where you can down a humongous meal, often for $5 or less. Think of this as restaurant affirmative action. Ethnicities that have been redlined by other publications are here included and afforded their proper respect. You'll find Haitian restaurants and African spots, Fujianese steam table joints and Egyptian hookah parlors, halal places and kosher dives, ancient coffee shops that still concoct stunning egg creams, and self-effacing specializers in dumplings and bureks and hand-forged noodles, made fresh daily. There are fusty old nuggets like Flushing's Everbest [#45], and shiny new places like Bay Ridge's Damascus Gate [#21]. Some I've mentioned before; many are appearing for the first time, the result of three solid months of bushwhacking the boroughs, sometimes inspecting a dozen places in a wild ride of an afternoon, steering with one hand while fumbling like Harry Potter in my book of clues with the other. Thank you, tipsters, bloggers, and bulletin boardists! And bless you, obscure publications picked up in ethnic groceries!

With a couple of exceptions, I've decided to exclude restaurants from previous 100 Best lists; you can view them at the links below. Though I would have enjoyed ranking the old places with the new, it would have made the list less fresh and useful. Every place on my list comes unhesitatingly recommended, often for a combination of food, ambience, and value. Sometimes even the name embodies the wonderfulness. How could you have a bad meal at a place called Rudy Pokes Tasty Dishes [#80]?

View the Full Cheap Chow 2005 List!

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