The New York Giants & Jets Playbook

Molly Tavoletti

Chef Vijay Kumar's unapologetic South Indian cooking earned a Michelin star and the New York Times' number-one ranking in the city in 2025 — heritage Tamil dishes at full volume, no rounding-off for anyone.

Reservations: SevenRooms — tables drop 14 days out; no tables are held for walk-ins, but 12 bar seats are, and they're your realistic way in

A subterranean 40-seat prime rib den that has somehow gotten harder to book every year since 2016. Dark wood, low ceilings, old New York in a room the size of a subway car — the single most coveted reservation in the city, which is saying something here.

Reservations: Resy — tables drop 21 days out at 9 AM, with priority to verified regulars; the realistic play is lining up outside by 3 PM for a walk-in seat at 3:45

Courtesy of Katz's Delicatessen

Hand-carving pastrami since 1888 and still the room every first-timer should walk into once — hold your ticket, work the counter, and eat the sandwich that defines the category. Opens at 8 AM daily and runs all night Saturday.

Reservations: Walk-in only — grab a ticket at the door and don't lose it

Open since 1885 with 50,000 churchwarden pipes hanging from the ceilings — Babe Ruth's and Teddy Roosevelt's among them. Still one of the hardest weekend books in Midtown, and a ten-minute walk from Penn Station, which makes it the natural post-game dinner for anyone training back from the Meadowlands.

Reservations: Resy — releases 30 days out; weekends book up fast, so reserve the moment your game weekend locks

Mark Weinberg

Anthony Mangieri has spent thirty years chasing the perfect naturally leavened Neapolitan pie, and rankings keep calling this the best pizza in the country. Open Thursday through Saturday only — which happens to be exactly your game-weekend window.

Reservations: OpenTable — tables drop 14 days out at 9 AM; walk-ins are accepted for drinks and dessert only, so book it

Broiling porterhouses under the Williamsburg Bridge since 1887, and still the steakhouse every visiting fan has heard of. The room is beer-hall bare, the waiters are lifers, and the dry-aged beef program remains the reference point the city's newer steak rooms get measured against.

Reservations: Resy — releases 30 days out at midnight; weekend tables go fast, so book the moment your game weekend is set, or aim for a weekday lunch

Michelin-starred Italian-and-beyond in the landmark Puck Building, and the grandest production in the Carbone family tree — a huge, glamorous room that has stayed one of the city's hardest bookings since 2022.

Reservations: Resy — tables drop 30 days out at 10 AM and clear in seconds; the 12-seat walk-in bar takes parties of one or two if you're in line by 4:15 PM

Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli's Italian-American jewel box has been packed since 2017 and was just ranked among the three most in-demand reservations in the entire country. Modern red-sauce cooking with real ideas, in a corner room that glows.

Reservations: OpenTable — tables drop 7 days out at 9 AM and are gone in minutes; set the alarm the Sunday before your game weekend, or line up for a handful of walk-in bar seats before 4:30 PM

The Four Horsemen team's Italian follow-up across the street, and the hardest new table in Brooklyn — a 2026 Michelin Bib Gourmand pick, seasonal and inventive, with nothing else in the city cooking quite like it right now.

Reservations: Resy — tables drop 14 days out at 8 AM sharp; all bar and counter seats are held for walk-ins, so line up by 4:30 PM for the 5 PM open

Kwame Onwuachi's Afro-Caribbean-meets-New-York showpiece inside David Geffen Hall — the New York Times' pick for the best restaurant in the city in 2023 and still one of its five hardest reservations three years later.

Reservations: Resy — tables drop 4 weeks out at 12 PM sharp; a six-seat bar takes walk-in parties of two, and the no-show list moves if you arrive by 4:30

A Michelin-starred collision of Korean barbecue and American dry-aging — smokeless grills in every table, a 1,200-bottle cellar downstairs, and the loudest, most fun steak dinner in the city. The group-dinner answer for a football crowd.

Reservations: Resy — releases 29 days out; prime times vanish fast, so late seatings (they serve to midnight Thursday-Saturday) are the realistic window for four or more

The sit-down cafe of the appetizing shop the Russ family has run on Houston Street since 1914 — smoked fish, blintzes, and caviar in a room that turns breakfast into an event. The Saturday-morning move before a city day.

Reservations: Walk-in-first — arrive by 9 AM on weekends to beat the wait; opens 8:30 daily

Sam Yoo's Chinatown diner runs American classics through Korean and Cantonese instincts — chili crisp wedge, katsu sandwiches, and pancakes people cross boroughs for. The neighborhood diner, current-generation edition.

Reservations: Resy — releases 30 days out at midnight; weekend brunch waits run 45 minutes-plus without a reservation, weekday mornings walk right in

Billy Durney's corner tavern in maritime Red Hook pairs an old-New-York bar room with a burger that launched a thousand pilgrimages — and the wedge salad, croquettes, and pork chop behind it are why people stay for a full dinner.

Reservations: OpenTable — tables drop 14 days out; bar seats, window counter, and outdoor tables are walk-in only, and the line forms by 4:30 PM

Brooklyn's gaslit landmark dining room, opened 1879 and gloriously revived in 2021 — cut-glass chandeliers, red velvet, and a chophouse-and-seafood menu cooked with modern chops. Heritage that still books out weekends on merit.

Reservations: OpenTable — book 2-3 weeks ahead for weekend dinner; the upstairs Sunken Harbor Club takes its own reservations for tiki-leaning cocktails

Greenpoint's wood-fired Mexican standout has held a Michelin star since 2019 — everything touches live fire, the tortillas are nixtamalized in-house, and the plant-filled room stays one of north Brooklyn's toughest weekend books.

Reservations: Resy — book 2+ weeks out for weekend dinner; weekend lunch from 11 AM is the quieter door into the same kitchen

Ranked the best bar in North America in 2023 and still among the world's elite — two rooms, one playful, one precise, where cocktails are engineered to taste like dishes and somehow always work.

Front room (Free Range) is walk-in, loud, and fun; the back Coop is reservation-only and hushed with intent. Both fill by 7.

Reservations: Walk-in for the front room; the back Coop books via Resy 6 days out at midnight, limited to parties up to 6

A Mexican-American cocktail party ranked among the best bars in the world — bright, loud, and serious about flavor under all the fun. The East Village's current center of gravity.

Packed and celebratory by 6 PM most nights — more fiesta than speakeasy, by design.

Reservations: Resy — table reservations drop 2 weeks out at midnight; walk-ins before 5:30 PM or the bar area are the calm window otherwise

Masahiro Urushido's Japanese-American highball den is a fixture on the world's-best-bars lists and somehow still a neighborhood joint — two floors, zero pretense, perfect ice.

Izakaya energy: loud-ish, friendly, and easier to get into than its rankings suggest. Weeknights you can often just sit down.

Reservations: Walk-in-first; they hold most seats for whoever shows up

A tiny art-deco aerie on the 64th floor of 70 Pine with a 360-degree terrace and a spot among the world's best bars — the single most spectacular cocktail view in the city.

Intimate and buttoned-up, with a per-person minimum for reserved seats — this is the dress-up stop of the weekend.

Reservations: Resy — releases 28 days out at noon; $75/person F&B minimum for reserved seats, book the week your trip locks

Pouring since 1854 — sawdust floors, coal stove, Lincoln-era memorabilia, and two house ales served in doubles. New York's oldest continuously operating saloon and still cash only, still perfect.

Communal tables, tourists and regulars shoulder to shoulder, no music, no TVs worth mentioning — conversation and ale, as designed.

Reservations: No reservations; walk-in

James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem's little Williamsburg wine bar earned a Michelin star and a James Beard award for its wine program — the room that made natural wine a New York genre, still ahead of everyone chasing it.

Warm wood, great sound (obviously), and a 30-day 7 AM Resy drop that vanishes — but they genuinely hold space for walk-ins at 5:30.

Reservations: Resy — tables drop 30 days out at 7 AM; arrive at opening for a walk-in seat, or wait next door at their bar Nightmoves

A honky-tonk dive with free live country music every single night until the small hours — Willie Nelson on the walls, sawdust underfoot, and the most reliably great no-cover night out in Brooklyn.

Packed, twangy, and joyful — pedal steel at midnight, dancing by accident. Open noon to 4 AM daily.

Reservations: No reservations; walk-in

The brewery that put New York hazy IPAs on the national map, poured at the original Brooklyn taproom where the can-release lines started it all. Garage doors up in good weather, TVs on for the games.

Industrial-casual with communal tables — beer nerds, strollers, and jerseys coexisting peacefully.

Reservations: No reservations; walk-in

Twenty-two floors above Williamsburg atop The William Vale, with the definitive straight-on Manhattan skyline panorama — the postcard moment of a New York football weekend, one elevator ride from the neighborhood's restaurant row.

Rooftop-glam but not stuffy; sunset is the rush, reserve a table or arrive at opening for the rail.

Reservations: Book via Tablz for sunset slots; walk-ins take the bar and rail

A three-level, multi-hundred-seat pub machine two blocks from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, with screens covering every sightline and enough space to actually book a table for a full NFL Sunday. The utility watch room of the Penn District — and the natural staging area before the train to the Meadowlands.

Big, loud, and built for volume — jerseys of every franchise, all the games on, and a downstairs that swallows groups whole.

Reservations: Resy — reserve for Sunday slates and MSG event nights, which fill it wall to wall

The city's premier soccer pub — Premier League supporters' clubs pack it from 9 AM Saturdays — that converts seamlessly into a serious NFL room by afternoon. The character pick of the watch-room set: a bar where the crowd actually lives and dies with what's on.

Scarves in the morning, jerseys in the afternoon; expect a cover on the biggest match days and singing either way.

Reservations: Walk-in for most days; big matches run a cover at the door

An Upper West Side wings-and-screens institution that Jets fan groups have long used as a rotating watch-party home — as close as home-market Manhattan gets to a green-leaning room. Projection screen, wall-to-wall TVs, and wings worth the trip on their own.

Neighborhood-loyal and unpretentious — game days are loud, communal, and half the room knows each other.

Reservations: Walk-in; arrive before the 1 PM window on NFL Sundays for a table

A shoebox of a sports bar — ten stools, a dozen taps, screens in every corner — that regulars quietly call the best sports bar in New York. No food, no music, no nonsense: just games, good beer, and a room that treats every fanbase like family.

Tiny, friendly, and genuinely communal — free bagels and hot dogs appear on big football days, and strangers leave as group chats.

Reservations: No reservations; walk-in