Instead of cooking from familiar ingredients already in your fridge tonight, you’re trying something new. Now you’ve invested in a $9 jar of tahini and a bundle of dill that doesn’t quite go with anything else you have. By the time you added olive oil that isn’t from a plastic jug and chicken that doesn’t smell weird, you are pushing restaurant prices without restaurant pleasure.
In Manhattan, Punjabi Deli will hand you chole over rice for under $10. The chickpeas are slow cooked until tender, stained dark with cumin and coriander, spooned over fluffy basmati that’s seasoned with no new spice rack required.
In Brooklyn, go to Noodle Pudding in Brooklyn Heights and order the spaghetti pomodoro for about $18. It comes glossy with olive oil and sweet tomato, finished with torn basil that’s not dead in your crisper drawer. By the time you buy good canned tomatoes, real Parmigiano Reggiano, fresh basil, and decent olive oil, you are halfway there financially and nowhere close in flavor.
In Queens, go to Birria-Landia in Jackson Heights and order the birria tacos, about $4 each. The crispy tortillas are dipped in chile-stained beef fat before hitting the griddle, then folded around shredded, stewed beef that has cooked down for hours. You dunk each taco into a cup of rich consommé that tastes like time and effort.
In the Bronx, hit La Morada for the pollo con mole, around $23. The sauce is dark and layered, faintly bitter from chocolate and dried chiles, poured generously over tender chicken with rice and warm tortillas on the side. Mole takes hours and a long list of ingredients. Dried chiles alone can run you $6 to $10 a bag.
On Staten Island, Lakruwana’s weekday lunch special is about $16.95. You get Sri Lankan curries arranged across the plate with coconut sambol, lentils, spiced chicken, papadam that shatters on contact, plus rice to soak it all up. The spice slaps you in the face and burns your nosehairs a little on the way in. You could easily spend $40 stocking turmeric, pandan, curry leaves, and coconut milk for a one night experiment and still not hit that depth.
If you live in (by all measures) one of the world’s top food capitals you’re eating mediocre, that’s on you.
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