From Steinway Street to Strip House Steakhouse, New York

A thick seared strip steak on a white plate with a whole roasted garlic head and a sprig of rosemary, dishes of creamed spinach and bone marrow on the white tablecloth behind, with a wine glass and a lit candle.

New York is a city where you can eat anything, the amount of choice always feels overwhelming. But wherever you pick always seems to work out.

The best meal was at Kabab Cafe on Steinway Street in Astoria, where Ali El Sayed has been cooking there solo since 1989. It feels like you're in his living room, there's no menu, and if you ask for one he will ask whether you would ask your mother for one. He cooks from what is at the market. You sit on cushions against a wall with artwork he's made himself, and old family photos. I forgot it was cash, so had to beg and borrow from strangers then wire it. New York has a thousand great places, but it felt like a real adventure to travel all the way out to Astoria and be transported to Egypt.

Blue and orange cushions and patterned kilim bolsters propped against a bare, worn plaster wall, with a dark table below holding part-eaten plates of hummus, a stew of carrots and aubergine, flatbread, and a floral-edged plate with a fork resting on it.

Strip House was the opposite proposition. Deep red lighting fills the room, round tables, waiters in white, but it still feels really casual. The best bit was their 1000 layer potatoes cooked in goose fat with a romesco sauce.

A rectangular block of finely layered potato, crisp and bronzed at the edges and scattered with chopped herbs, lying on a white plate beside a spoon of red romesco, with a second paler layered piece and a smear of sauce behind.

Thai Diner quickly served their chicken schnitzel with papaya salad on a snake-rimmed plate to us over the bar. Flavoured vodka shots and drunken dumplings were all amazing.

A large craggy breaded chicken schnitzel on a hammered silver charger with a sprig of coriander, a small pile of shredded papaya salad, a lime wedge, and a metal pot of orange dipping sauce, a steak knife laid across it and an empty snake-rimmed oval plate on the bamboo mat behind.

Steak tartare under a mountain of crisps at Pony's was so decadent. They add aubergine to their recipe, which makes it even silkier, and they do a really good ice cream with banana liquor and a rye crumb.

A mound of chopped beef tartare flecked with herbs and piled with salted crisps, on a brown-striped plate set on a silver charger at the edge of a dark polished wooden bar ledge.
A scoop of pale ice cream heaped with rye crumb in a silver footed coupe, on a brown-rimmed saucer on a round black bar stool, crumbs scattered across the surface in low red light.

Street eating an everything-bagel from Tribeca Bagels, salmon and cream cheese, foil peeled back, starving after walking for hours, feels obvious but is a must.

A hand holding a seeded everything-bagel filled with smoked salmon and thick cream cheese, the foil and paper peeled back over a brown paper bag, on a dark street at night with a parked bicycle and a red tail light blurred behind.

A croissant and a tahini chocolate chip cookie from L'Appartement 4F, eaten on a bench in the sun with the autumn leaves blowing around, which Gautier and Ashley Coiffard started out of their own apartment in lockdown.

Looking down into an open white bakery box holding a tahini chocolate chip cookie and a flat, sugar-dusted croissant, a cup of black coffee beside it on a dark bench in low autumn sun, with fallen leaves on the ground.

A city where a ten-seat room with no menu sits forty minutes on the subway from dining rooms with white tablecloths, both a perfectly reasonable idea on the same day, and it asks nothing of you except a good appetite.