The Best Restaurants In Jackson Heights

Birria-Landia makes the city’s best birria, full stop. This Tijuana-style truck certainly didn’t invent birria, and it wasn’t the first NYC place serving it—but this place gave birria the headliner status it always deserved. There’s always going to be a line outside of their brightly-lit trucks, located in a few neighborhoods across the city besides this Jackson Heights original. The menu is tight, focused, and flawless. Order a few of the tacos on broth-dipped tortillas, and dunk them into a cup of the mysteriously rich consome. First, you’ll taste lime, then tender meat, then adobo, then dripping fat, with everything melting together in your unworthy mouth.

Mariscos El Submarino has several great raw seafood options, but a meal at this Mexican restaurant isn’t complete without an order of the aguachile negro. The smoky seafood dish gets its color (and name) from a blend of charred green and red chiles that you’ll see flecked in the loose water-and-lime-based sauce. Pair it with a classic michelada, and the whole meal will mentally transport you to a chill beachside seafood shack in Puerto Escondido, when in fact you’re in a space that has the look of a fluorescent lunch counter with cartoons on the walls. (There's a second, more grown-up looking location in Greenpoint.)

Walk into Nepali Bhanchha Ghar and you’ll see a few tables and an open kitchen with someone making sel roti (circles of sweet, fried rice flour bread). If you don’t want to eat one of those after watching as they’re cooked, you probably need to do some thinking about your life priorities. This Nepali restaurant is right by the Roosevelt Avenue subway station, and also makes some excellent momos and thali plates. Come with a group and sit in the full-service dining room downstairs.

Located a block away from the Junction Blvd. stop, this cash-only chalupa stand typically only operates from 6-11pm on Friday-Sunday, and it’s worth planning your entire weekend around. The tortillas are cooked on a charcoal-fired comal in pork lard, and then get doused with both salsa rojo and verde, shredded pork, and onions. The tortillas are heavily sauced, browned on the bottom, and each bite tastes wildly porky from the lard. When stacked into a tower for consumption, these make a perfect meal for $10.

Few restaurant experiences combine sparklers and handrolls, torched tuna topped with chili garlic crisp, and the level of sake-fueled fun that you’ll find at Sushi On Me. There are four nightly seatings, each of which last around an hour. For $99 (cash or cash apps only), you’ll get 15 pieces of nigiri, a couple of appetizers, and unlimited sake. A meal here doesn’t so much feel like a typical omakase experience as it does a brief, reckless basement party. You can also visit the newer, pricier location in Williamsburg, but we prefer the original.

By the time your server brings out the show-stopping goat dum biryani at Angel, there’s a pretty good chance that your party will already be planning your second visit to this Indian restaurant. As they cut open the bread balloon on top of the dish, revealing fragrant layers of rice and goat, you’ll be sending out calendar invites. Bring a group, so you can also eat their sizzling tandoori platters, spicy curries, and Indo-Chinese appetizers. The restaurant is tiny and there’s always a wait, but it’s worth it. They do take limited reservations online or by phone.

A meal at this Indian-Nepali restaurant can happen in one of two ways. For a super casual experience, sit on the first floor of a bright room on 74th Street, next to a buffet line of pakoras, simmering goat, and chana masala. Down a flight of stairs, however, there’s a full bar, purple nightclub lighting, and a TV blaring music videos. The extensive menu in both dining areas is the same, though. Most of it features Northern Indian staples, like a clove-heavy chicken curry and palak paneer. But don’t leave without trying food from the Indo-Chinese, Nepali, and Tibetan sections—in the form of tangy cauliflower manchurian or the beef and chive momos.

This Bangladeshi food truck is always parked outside of the Duane Reade on 73rd Street, and it’s where you should be going to eat incredible fuchka. Each order is served with a wreath of puffed puri that’s been filled with boiled yellow peas and potatoes and topped with raw red onions and shaved egg yolks. There are two other fuchka carts on the street that are also very good, but we’re partial to Tong’s extra sour tamarind water. In case you’re closer to Jamaica, Queens, Tong also has a brick and mortar location there.

It probably goes without saying, but at Arepa Lady, you should be eating arepas. There are a few different kinds, like the grilled and stuffed arepas rellena and the thinner, folded arepas de choclo. Both of those are solid choices, but be sure to get at least one arepa de queso. These are thick, fluffy, and filled with melted mozzarella, plus a meat of your choice. You can also add guacamole for a couple extra bucks. If you don’t order one, you might lie awake at night and wonder how you could have done things differently.

Al Naimat is the sort of place where we’d unironically stick a “Good Vibes Only” sign on the wall. Everything about the bustling dining room, with its chalkboard full of colorful illustrations, and sparkly glass case of sweets makes this place a good hang. Start with some crispy pakoras and chaat before moving on to a kebab roll, daal gosht, and falooda with kulfi for dessert. Adding to the fun is a fusion menu with things like chicken tikka tacos and naan burgers, which consist of two adorably small rounds of fluffy naan with a beef patty between them.

The next time you need a kebab roll at 5am, make your way to this tiny Pakistani counter spot on Broadway and 72nd. They’re open 24 hours, serving Pakistani staples like rich nihari, flaky chicken patties, and our favorite chicken kebab rolls in the neighborhood. It comes with tender chunks of meat, lettuce, and onions wrapped in a naan that easily soaks up all of the juices. Most of the shop is taken up by the kitchen behind the counter, so there’s only room for about two and a half people inside, but they’ve got an outdoor dining shed with plenty of seating.

Michelada House II in Jackson Heights has perpetual party energy. This is, in large part, because they serve about a dozen varieties of cartoonishly large micheladas. Their family-style Mexican dishes could very well feed the majority of a subway car, and the dining room is decorated as though a sparkly green, white, and red firework exploded inside. Be sure to get the 15-inch taquitos, chilaquiles torta, and at least one of the dozen varieties of the restaurant’s titular drink. Remember Michelada House II the next time you need a fun place to bring seven people.

This Jackson Heights Indian restaurant has been around since the 1980s. Hilary Clinton and Harrison Ford have both eaten here, alongside all the taxi drivers, local business owners, and commuters who’ve been coming forever. Though we’re still mourning the loss of their famous lunch buffet, the restaurant is still a solid spot for splitting some biryani and chicken lajwab with a big group. The one-room space is gigantic, the dishes are generously portioned, and most of them are in the $15-20 range.

The Queensboro doesn’t have a motto, but if it did, it would be something like: “Salad and chicken? We’ve got that.” This Jackson Heights spot serves pizza, pasta, and vegetable sides, as well as some entrees like steak and a burger. Thrilling? Not so much. Useful? Very. As an added bonus, the big space has potted plants and leather booths. Try this spot for brunch, when there will most likely be a ton of babies running around, so no one will hear you and your family fighting over the dessert order.

This Tibetan restaurant is up a flight of stairs in a two-story building just across the street from Lhasa Fast Food, and—as much as we like that spot—this place is even better. (It also has a much longer menu.) Start off with some steamed or fried momos, then try the tsak sha la kor hot. The broth is just slightly creamy, with a little bit of spice from the dried chilies and Szechuan peppercorns, and it comes with a big pile of beef and radish. Get the blood sausage and the Lhasa fried noodles, too. That might sound like a lot, but just text some friends. The same team has another great restaurant in the neighborhood called Trisara Restaurant and Bar.

This is a Colombian counter-service spot that’s part bakery and part diner, and it has a few different locations in Queens. You can come here for anything from a whole cake to some empanadas with a rich beef filling, and there’s also a bandeja tipica plate with rice, beans, steak, chicharron, two types of sausage, a rice cake, avocado, and a fried egg for $12.50. If that sounds like a lot of food, that’s because it is.

If you look in the window of Taqueria Coatzingo, you can see flames coming off the grill, and the dining room might even be a little smoky. Take this as a very good sign. The kitchen here is big and constantly busy, and it produces some very good tacos (that come with a lot of meat). If you want something else, there’s a long menu with a lot of other options like huaraches, enchiladas, and bigger dishes like pork chops and steaks. There are also a lot of tables in the big back dining room, where you can simultaneously listen to music and soccer announcers on TV.

Los Chuzos is perfect for when it’s midnight and you realize that, more than anything else in the world, you want some very good meat on a stick. It’s a tiny Colombian spot that’s open super late and has a very short menu of things like chuzos (skewers of meat) and arepas. As much as we like both of those things, though, our go-to order is the big, crispy chorizo. It’s exactly what you need when you have a few drinks, then start thinking about food like it’s your job—but it’s also great for a grab-and-go snack any time of day.