By Marco Shalma
If you’re landing in New York for the first time and your plan is to “eat like a local,” relax. You won’t. You’re not built for that. You’re built for laminated menus, algorithm-approved lines, and meals curated by whatever influencer shouted into your feed at 2 AM. This guide exists to help you get it wrong with confidence.
Start the morning with a bagel, but not a real one. Seek out the bagel shop with the most aggressively lit rainbow cream cheese display. If the schmear looks like it belongs at a child’s birthday party, you’re close. Make sure the line wraps around the block even though there are at least six better bagel shops within an eight-minute walk that don’t require a wristband system. Real New Yorkers get their bagels fast because we have jobs, kids, drama, deadlines. You’re on vacation. Take your time. Stand there for an hour like the city owes you a carb experience.
Next move: breakfast dessert. TikTok convinced you that you need a croissant cube or a cronut or a donut that’s been torched, stuffed, dipped, re-torched, and served with a flavor pipette. New Yorkers tried that a decade ago. We survived. Our digestive systems evolved. You? You’ll be filming an unboxing video on the sidewalk while pigeons judge you.
