{"id":247108,"date":"2026-05-28T23:46:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T23:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/247108\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T23:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T23:46:07","slug":"how-new-yorkiness-shaped-list-of-the-best-n-y-c-restaurants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/247108\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018New Yorkiness\u2019 Shaped List of the Best N.Y.C. Restaurants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">I think that there is a certain scrappiness to the New York character, \u2013 Yes, yes, yes, yes. that, you know, if you\u2019re born here, you\u2019re born with it. If you move here, you have to have it \u2013 You better get it. to make it because \u2013 You better get some. this is the toughest crowd there is. This city. And to make it here, obviously, you have to go all in. So, I think that so many of these restaurateurs and chefs are working in tiny spaces. This is true low end to high end. \u2013 No matter, like, yes, yes, in incredibly small kitchens, \u2013 yes, yes, yes. underequipped, eking out miracles, and to me that is deeply New York. \u2013 So let\u2019s just, sort of, go, let\u2019s do some \u201cfor examples\u201d here. Right, like, \u2013 OK. can you talk about a place that\u2019s on the list that, like, you would enjoy thinking about as being, like, a New York restaurant, or like, has a New Yorkiness about it? So I also think singularity is part of this. So for me, Mama Lee, which is at No. 10, Taiwanese spot in Bayside. \u2013 OK. Mama Lee herself, Mei Lee, the chef. One person. Nobody else is there. Sometimes she gets her elderly mom to come in and help, but most of the time it\u2019s just her. She lives down the street. \u2013 This is a place in Queens. \u2013 This is a place in Queens, Bayside, Queens. It\u2019s bright and that\u2019s about it. There\u2019s no more. That\u2019s the ambiance, is that it\u2019s brightly lit. And if she\u2019s cooking, there\u2019s nobody up front. So there\u2019s a little bell, like the kind of old school bell that you would see at hotels. \u2013 I hate ringing a bell for service. You can ring a bell, if you need to. There\u2019s a rice cooker full of rice if you want more rice, which should always be available. \u2013 Does she allow you to help yourself? Or is she going to take care of that? \u2013 You can help yourself to the rice. And, when I tried to tip her at the end, she slapped my hand and said, \u201cI\u2019m the only one here. Save it for the college kids who are working at other restaurants.\u201d \u2013 \u201cMa\u2019am, I make the prices. All the money is coming to me. So what are we doing?\u201d Oh the other thing, though, is that, so I had reviewed her years ago for \u201cHungry City.\u201d I reviewed her spot, and then somehow she opened in Williamsburg and I thought did some investors swoop in, and what happened here? And then it closed, and I received a DM from a worried customer who said, \u201cI worry that she was taken advantage of, and I don\u2019t know what\u2019s happened.\u201d And then I heard that she had reopened back in her old space in Bayside. And so I asked her what happened to Williamsburg, and she said, \u201cThose kids eat so late at night. I want to go home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I think that there is a certain scrappiness to the New York character, \u2013 Yes, yes, yes, yes.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96584,96585,62670,1421,96582,9,56,63,65,64,96583],"class_list":["post-247108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-aa-bake-doubles-shop","tag-kabawa","tag-lysee","tag-mama-lee","tag-meju","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-shaw-naes-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}