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Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart. If you're a foodie, New York could be the perfect city for you, but it's also an overwhelming city. There's a lot of places to eat and navigating can be tough. Google is saturated with listicles. TikTok has so many influencers with recommendations. If that all does sound overwhelming, Eater, the food website, has a solution. Earlier this week, Eater released an official guidebook aptly named The Eater Guide to New York City. The book breaks down the best eateries, the best supermarkets and food shopping adventures you can have in the city.

The book is split into seven sections and the guidebook has bite-sized overviews of Eater's favorite food spots. It's got things from longtime classics to new restaurants. The book is really a primer of the best food the city can offer. Here with us to talk about it is Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. Hi, Stephanie. Thanks for joining us. Oh, Stephanie, I think--

Stephanie Wu: Thank you for that lovely intro of the book.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, absolutely, Stephanie. I didn't hear you for a second, but hi, it's great to see you. We've got you now. Callers, we want to hear from you. You know what? Texters, I think we would love to hear from folks texting us. What is your favorite eatery in New York? Share a spot that's too good to be gatekept, or maybe you have friends coming to town, you want to give them the best food experience of their life. Send us your ideas, your questions, your recs. Text us at 212-433-9692 or give us a shout on social, we're @AllOfItWNYC.

Stephanie, let's talk about the book. You embarked on what I might call a Herculean task, because you're trying to compile all the best New York City restaurants into one book, but question at the top, Eaters is a website. Why a physical book instead of a digital thing?

Stephanie Wu: We felt it was time to extend our maps, which people have always come to us for, into the physical world. As much as we'd love being able to get everything at our fingertips at any given moment, I think for people who are traveling, for people who are visiting a place for a specific given amount of time, there's nothing quite like the feeling of holding a guidebook and being able to say, "Okay."

As you alluded to, there's so much information on the internet, what do I do if I just need this expert's guide? I want to be able to flip through it. There's a beginning. There's an end. I can carry it with me. I can read it on the subway and I can mark it up while I'm on my trip. There is just nothing quite like that feeling.

Kousha Navidar: Literally, you want a guide, a map to New York city that you can have even if the Wi-Fi goes out, even if your data plan shoots out and you've gone over your cap, if people still have caps. How did you use your existing resources to compile all that information? Was it just a free for all, all the staff going into it together? What was that process like?

Stephanie Wu: We're lucky that we had decades of experience between all of our team combined covering the city. When it came to, okay, how do we encapsulate what we feel the city is right now into a place in time, we had more than enough opinions weighing in and saying, "Here's what I think." We really set our reporter Emma Orlow onto the task of what feels right right now in terms of putting this into a book, highlighting it, and really sharing our favorites. Then the great thing is we've also got QR codes with every chapter. Say, you're reading this book in a few months from now, and you want to say, "Okay, this is great, but what else is there?" You can easily just go back to your phone and get the latest that way as well.

Kousha Navidar: That's wonderful. Let's dive into the book a little bit. You had mentioned that you had it split up into a bunch of different sections. You split the city up into seven sections. The first section is Downtown West. Now, that includes places like Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Meatpacking, Soho, Tribeca, West Village. Best describe this neighborhood to us. Why did you group these areas together?

Stephanie Wu: This is the area that I'm in and so this is an area that feels really special to me. This is where artists have always gathered. This is where NYU is and so the college students and the vibes are very youthful-feeling at certain parts of it. There's just a real energy to Downtown West, to the village and all the way downtown to Tribeca that that we feel like is where a lot of visitors immediately gravitate to, especially on their first trip to New York City.

Kousha Navidar: Part of the book that I found really interesting was how you include a shopping section in each of the seven neighborhoods. For food shopping in Downtown West, the guidebook recommends New York Cake, which is a warehouse of baking supplies, and McNulty's, which is a tea and coffee company and more. Are there any favorite food shopping spots that you recommend out there?

Stephanie Wu: I'm a big sucker for Murray's Cheese, which is that incredible cheese shop that doesn't just sell cheese, but also the accoutrements for your perfect picnic. I love that you called out the shopping section because we are well aware as travelers that, unfortunately, you can't just eat all day long. You need something to do in between your breakfast and your snack and your dinner. We really wanted to pepper some shops in there so that when you're in the neighborhood, you can easily look at the beautiful illustrated map that we've got and say, "Okay, I'm eating here. What's the closest shop that I could wander to? What are some of the nearby parks where I could just walk off this meal and get ready for the next one."

Kousha Navidar: We got a text from a listener with a suggestion from this area, Downtown West. On Sullivan street, pizza or Grandaisy never misses. Stephanie, you've also got dedicated sections like 'Bodega 101' or late night essentials that feels like the perfect primer for newcomers or tourists. Who did you have in mind when you were making this book?

Stephanie Wu: It's funny because as much as we did feel like those sections were things you absolutely need to know as newcomers, I'm someone who's lived in New York City for almost 20 years now, and I learned so much about just the history of bodegas and how they came to be. There's a really, truly something for everyone in this book and you can have lived here for ages and still there can be neighborhoods that you've never been to. Really even digging into neighborhoods of Queens and Staten Island and Bronx, where people who live here may not naturally gravitate to, but there is just so much discover even in your own backyard. As much as this is a travel guide for visitors, it is absolutely a travel guide for people who live here as well.

Kousha Navidar: I love that you brought up Queens because we did just get a text with a suggestion from Queens. It reads, "My favorite restaurant is Don Peppe in South Ozone Park, Queens. This is another section of the book. One of the most diverse boroughs in New York and in the country really is Queens. Your section on Queens, Stephanie, is full of delicious spots that capture the diversity of the neighborhood. Before we go to any specific places, how should foodies explore this borough and how is it maybe different than, say, Manhattan or Brooklyn?

Stephanie Wu: Oh gosh, and let me also say that we knew that it was an impossible task to sum up all the incredibleness of Queens into one chapter, but I think the amazing thing about Queens is you can take the subway and you can be in so many different neighborhoods and you can really get a breadth of what New York City has to offer all in one trip. It's hard to explain this to visitors, but the fact that you could easily spend a week in Queens and never eat through enough of it is just mind boggling. We always suggest, if you're flying in, you're likely coming in and out of JFK or LaGuardia. Spend some time. Don't hop immediately to your hotel in Manhattan or to Brooklyn and actually see what there is to do in Flushing or in Woodside or in Astoria. There is so much to explore.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, if you have a suggestion specifically for Queens, we would love to hear it. Text us for this segment. We're talking to Stephanie Wu, who's the editor-in-chief of Eater and we want to know what your favorite eatery is in New York. Right now, we want to focus specifically on Queens, so text us at 212-433-9692, that's 212-433-WNYC. Stephanie, you had mentioned Flushing, so let's go into that. How did you select the food selections for Flushing?

Stephanie Wu: Flushing is full of so many institutions that have been around for so long. Really, again, trying to balance, okay, what are the places that have been there that locals know and love? White Bear dumplings is one of my favorites that's in there. It literally feels like a hole in the wall, but it has, I think, some of the absolute best dumplings you can find in New York City. I don't think it's exaggerated to say some of the best dumplings in this country. You have a smaller places like that and then you have the bigger chains.

We put Haidilao, which is a hotpot chain in there, which I think is a really fun nod because it's not New York-specific, but the fact that you can have this experience in New York City, this all you can eat hotpot with entertainers, is really a one of a kind thing. It's encapsulating the diversity of a place like Flushing, having the new places, having the old, and really making an argument for, yes, Flushing should be part of your New York City itinerary.

Kousha Navidar: We've got a text reading 'ilpoeta'. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. It's in Forest Hills, incredible Italian food. Stephanie, let's go over a little bit into Brooklyn. The borough would be the third biggest city in the US if it were its own city. What you were saying before about this being very difficult to encapsulate, I think, comes through with so many sections of the city. Part of the reason why the book could be so helpful. You go straight to the section in the guidebook that encompasses Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, Flatbush, PLG, and Sunset Park. What is unique about this area of Brooklyn as opposed to maybe North Brooklyn, which you describe as Williamsburg in Greenpoint?

Stephanie Wu: Yes, and this was, again, a conscious decision, knowing that so many travelers who maybe based themselves in Manhattan or in Williamsburg, so often those neighborhoods are seen as encapsulation of all of Brooklyn, and we know that's not true. We know there are so many neighborhoods where people live and work and play, and the restaurants in the so-called rest of Brooklyn, as we've dubbed it, are just incredible and worth a visit in and of itself. Having that laid out in a map and being able to see where the clusters are and where you can go and really spend a day walking around, I think that's so helpful because, without that context, so many people wouldn't even know where to start.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, I saw that you included SYKO, which is a Syrian Korean fusion restaurant in South Park Slope. That's an incredible fusion spot. What do you like about that spot?

Stephanie Wu: I personally have not been, but I do think that it is, again, a fantastic example of something that feels very only in New York. You know, where else in the world can you find a Syrian Korean restaurant? For people who have maybe done a lot of traveling, who maybe have visited Korea, to be able to come to New York City and say, "I've tried something here that I couldn't even try in Korea." I think that's what really is the beauty of dining in New York City.

Kousha Navidar: We were getting some texts that I just want to read out. I'm looking at the clock, I want to make sure some folks get their calls out. Uma's in Rockaway Beach, Queens. Uzbek Food, delicious. We've also got Fiat Café's fresh cavatelli with broccoli rabe, hard ricotta and sausage is my favorite bowl of pasta in New York City. Callers, texters, thank you so much for sending us those texts and giving us the recommendations. Stephanie, as we look generally at this book and as the Eater's editor-in-chief, I'm sure you've been to so many American cities and tried their food scene, what to you makes New York special?

Stephanie Wu: It's really the fact that there are so many things here that you cannot get anywhere else in the world. That's not just the immigration patterns of people who have brought their food here from all over the world, but it's the places like SYKO where Syrian and Korean food come together in a way that you can't find anywhere else. It's the fact that you can, we say this in the intro of the book, but you can be on one block in the East Village and you can have Scandinavian coffee and Malaysian sweets and hotpot. You really can find so many things within spitting distance and there's just nowhere else in the world where you can do that.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, and nowhere else where maybe you could get the dedication of the texters that are texting us right now, because we have more texts than we have time for. I'm kicking myself because I want to read so many of them. Folks, if you didn't get your text read, hit us up on Instagram. We're @AllOfItWNYC. We've been talking to-- Oh, and of course, thank you for texting us. We all really appreciate it. We've been talking to Stephanie Wu, the editor-in-chief of the food publication Eater, their new book, The Eater Guide to New York City is out right now. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us.

Stephanie Wu: Thanks for having me, Kousha.

Kousha Navidar: That's our show today. Here's what's coming up on tomorrow's show. We'll speak with Farah Karim Cooper, the author of The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race. Plus a conversation with Carla Gutierrez, the director of a new documentary about Frida Kahlo. Thank you always, as always, for listening to us, calling, texting. We'll be here tomorrow. See you then.

 

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