NYCGuide
Where To Eat And Drink In The Rockaways
photo credit: Noah Devereaux
NYC beaches might not be full of chartreuse-colored water, palm trees, and groups of ambitious snorkelers, but they have their own special, concrete-adjacent charm. For one thing, you don’t need a car to spend a summer day at places like Coney Island, Brighton Beach, and Orchard Beach. And, if you’re going to the Rockaways, you have the added perk of a glorious ferry ride accessible from lower Manhattan or Sunset Park.
The next time you take a trip to the Rockaways with your kids, some friends, or a person who loves hot dogs and fried clams as much as you do, prioritize these restaurants and bars.
THE SPOTS
Rockaway Bagels is on the north side of the island, within close walking distance from the ferry and the Rockaway Park-Beach 116 Street Subway. Therefore, it’s both convenient and logical to lay down a base of gluten here before your full day in the sun. The BECs are stellar, as are the plain old bagel sandwiches.
photo credit: Noah Devereaux
Tacoway Beach operates out of a shipping container in a fenced-off yard filled with picnic tables, and they’re only open during the summertime months. When you’re here, you should order fried fish tacos with the decisiveness of a person who only ever consumes fish tacos. Each order arrives with two tacos topped with cabbage slaw, chunky guacamole, and a spicy cilantro lime salsa. These are some of the best fish tacos in NYC, and we dream about them more than we dream about becoming retirees who look for buried treasure on the beach. Expect crowds on summer weekends.
Uma’s is a Uzbek restaurant, and it's one of the livelier sit-down spots in the Rockaways. They specialize in fresh pirozhki, filled with anything from green cabbage to beef and rice. Kebabs are another big fixture on the menu, in addition to a bunch of other dumplings, salads, and rice-based dishes. But more than anything, their yogurt sauce has a cult following, and for good reason. It adds a special tang to just about every dish, especially the baseball-sized manti and the hot pink borscht.
photo credit: Noah Devereaux
For all those looking for seafood on Beach 97th Street, don’t let Whit’s titular pizza stop you from coming here. Granted, they still make some of the best pizza you’ll find in the area, but most of the daily-changing menu is dedicated to seafood like scallops, tuna tataki, and a whole roast fish. Bring beer and sunscreen. It’s BYOB, and there isn’t much shade in their big backyard.
photo credit: Noah Devereaux
If you’re hanging out on the eastern end of Rockaway Beach, rely on Rippers for all of your standard beach cravings. Their burger is an essential order, but the cheese fries are also amazing, and you can get some beer or a cocktail as well. This place will keep you from having a heat-hanger meltdown while you walk the boardwalk or make your children bury you in the sand.
photo credit: Noah Devereaux
Cuisine by Claudette is a counter-service Mediterranean place on 116th Street, and it’s a great spot to pick up some food to bring over to the beach. They have a huge menu with everything from juices and smoothies, to loaded pitas, spinach-feta turkey burgers, and protein bowls. If you want to make your friends down at the beach worship you for the afternoon, add on an order of battered cauliflower wings and sweet potato fries.
photo credit: Noah Devereaux
This NYC staple has an outpost at the beach, located on the boardwalk at Beach 106th St. It’s a great place for a quick arepa, they have A+ frozen drinks, and you’ll probably make some friends in the busy picnic area.
Connolly’s is an old-school Irish bar steps from the beach hub of 96th Street. Their specialty is frozen drinks, which come in styrofoam cups—and if you’re coming to Rockaway, a Connolly’s piña colada needs to be part of your experience.
photo credit: Andrew Steinthal
Rockaway Roasters is a cool coffee shop by the Beach 90 Street Holland subway stop to remember when someone in your group gets cranky. In addition to caffeine boosts, they make excellent pastries, juices, and smoothies.
Sayra’s is a nice little Black-owned wine bar that also serves some great small plates. It’s one of the area’s slightly more upscale options. Grab a glass of wine or sangria and a jalapeño grilled cheese, and sit out back on their shaded patio. If we were trying to impress a date in Rockaway, Sayra’s would be our first stop.
If you’re momentarily uninterested in sunlight and you just want to eat ribs, drink a beer, and watch sports in a relatively dark room, go to RBQ. It’s a barbecue spot in the old Playland Motel space, and it’s perfect for when you want to eat something that’ll force you to take a nap on the beach afterwards.
Pico is a big indoor/outdoor sit-down Mexican restaurant. They make excellent margaritas, the space is great for big groups, and the Mexican food (which comes in large portions) will more than get the job done after a long day of sitting out in the sun.
Callie’s opened up right across the street from Pico in the summer of 2020, serving a menu of fish and chips, soft serve ice cream, and hot dogs. The most alluring part of this casual, counter-service spot is the big backyard, where you’ll see families and swaths of friends hanging out at picnic tables. That, plus they have regularly scheduled outdoor movie screenings that you can keep track of via their Instagram page.
While the beers are actually brewed in LIC, Rockaway Brewing Company has opened a cool tasting room on Beach 72nd Street. It’s a little further away from the main beach area, but it’s a worthy destination if you’re into craft beer and picnic tables.
POWERED BY
Post-Sandy, Bungalow Bar did a really nice job renovating their old space. They have an amazing setup on the bay looking out at the Manhattan skyline, the food is decent, and the crowd is pretty social. Hit this place for a drink overlooking the water.
photo credit: Thai Rock
Thai Rock is part Thai restaurant and part live music space with a huge patio on the water near the Cross Bay Bridge, making it one of the best hangs in the Rockaways. Stop by for a burger and a lychee martin adorned with fruit and flower petals, and you’ll feel like you’re much further away from the rest of the city than you are (even while you see it in the distance across the bay).
photo credit: Neha Talreja
Located on Jamaica Bay, The Wharf is a cash-only restaurant with a huge outdoor patio that’s perfect for brunch with the family or a drink at the bar. The menu is made up of the classics—benedicts at breakfast, burgers and the like—as well as some seafood specials like fish and chips and a pretty sizable lobster roll. The ideal place to sit with a group meal is on the covered portion of the deck that extends even further out into the water, but the shaded outdoor bar area is where you come for a long, leisurely drink with yourself or one other person.
photo credit: Boardwalk Pizzeria
Boardwalk pizza isn’t on the boardwalk, but it’s worth the walk up the road to grab a few slices of some of the best pizza in the Rockaways. We like the chicken parm pizza topped with lemon slices, and they also do a great grandma pie that would be right at home at a solid Brooklyn pizzeria. If you want to do a full sit-down Italian meal, there’s even a large selection of impressive red-sauce dishes you can eat in a packed shop that otherwise screams beach culture with blue walls and a big surfboard sign.
Margie’s is your spot for upscale beach town charm in the Rockaways. If you want to order a seafood tower and a bottle of wine after a day on the beach, do it here (the Rockaway Hotel’s main restaurant). They’ve got a big, bright dining room with nautical tones and a beautiful bar where even the food matches the aesthetic. Expect classic American items with playful twists like fried calamari with big shishito peppers in a sweet glaze, charred cauliflower steak with bok choy, and vegan sweet pea ravioli in pesto.
photo credit: Kyle Knodell
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This bar has views of the Atlantic just a few blocks from the beach, with an indoor space on one side and an outdoor terrace on the other. We’d tolerate mediocre rooftop fare in exchange for the ocean view—but the food and drinks here are actually great. A mason jar of the fattest sardines we’ve seen in a long time screams “by the sea,” and there's also a short taco menu with some pulled pork ones that we wouldn’t mind seeing on a regular taqueria menu. You’d think a rooftop by the beach would turn into Spring Break pretty quickly, but this place remains a calm, beachside daytime spot, even when they turn the music up and the bar fills up towards sunset.
photo credit: Team Infatuation
At this counter-service Dominican restaurant you can get a plate or to-go container and dictate however much yellow rice, chicken, pork, plantains, and empaguetadas (spaghetti on the beach, anyone?) you’d like piled onto it. Locals love this place enough to keep both locations—a mere five minute’s drive from each other—full of regulars.
photo credit: Team Infatuation
Go to Happy Jack’s Burger Bar hungry hungry. The burgers are big and chunky and come on anything from a pretzel bun to a quesadilla, with perfectly seasoned crispy onions on top and excellent housemade salt and vinegar chips on the side. But in addition to a burger, you need to get the Dublin eggrolls. These eggrolls have been famous around town since before Happy Jack’s came into being, when they lived on the menu at the owner’s previous restaurant just across the street (the now-closed Rockaway staple Dalton's Seaside Grill). They’ve got the same signature filling involving what are essentially all the ingredients of a reuben, inside a fat New York eggroll.
Beach 97th Street Concessions
photo credit: Noah Devereaux
Head over to the boardwalk at Beach 97th Street and you’ll find a large outdoor space filled with vendors, picnic tables, and occasionally live music. Here are our favorite places to pick up food and drinks there.
photo credit: La Fruteria
Nothing makes us feel more like the (faux) surfers we are in our dreams than getting down to La Fruteria for a late breakfast (hours after the actual surfers made it out to the water). We like to eat our breakfast sandwich—or avocado toast, if we’re keeping it light—with a turmeric-scented root juice and a coffee on the side. This counter-service place has particularly good bread and the best iced latte on the boardwalk.
The 97th Street beach bazaar has the widest variety of concessions on the boardwalk, including a location of this Red Hook-based lobster spot. They sell both cold, mayo-swiped Maine lobsters rolls as well as Connecticut-style versions with warm butter, plus some hot crispy fries that some nearby seagulls will rightfully be interested in stealing.
As far as we’re concerned, there’s almost no better beach food than cold, citrus-bathed fish. And since this Peruvian stall sells excellent, sub-$15 ceviche directly on the boardwalk, it’s extremely easy to realize your beach fish-consumption dreams here. We particularly like the refreshing ceviche mixto, which comes with big hunks of Peruvian corn, lime-marinated red onions, and tons of acidic white fish and squid.
Most of the concessions at Beach 97th Street don’t sell booze. And, like an airplane exit door, we find it important to be able to locate your nearest place to buy a margarita or cold beer when you’re spending a day at the beach. Sand Shark Bar is that place around this part of the boardwalk. You can even pre-order your drinks while you’re still on the beach (assuming your phone’s wifi is better than ours).
photo credit: Riis Park Beach Bazaar
Riis Park Beach Bazaar
Riis Park Beach Bazaar
The southern section of the Rockaway’s, Jacob Riis Park, is always fun and often crowded, and it's historically NYC’s most prominent queer beach. Even still, there aren’t as many eating and drinking options down here. Most of the restaurants and stalls are huddled together in Bay 9. There’s plenty of seating, with bathrooms nearby.
When the urge for cheese fries and chicken tenders becomes unavoidable around 3pm, walk up to this classic American beach spot and manifest your destiny. Unlike what you’ll find at a lot of places selling burgers on the boardwalk, The Dropout serves several vegan and vegetarian options using Beyond meat and the like. You can always take your beach takeout containers to the picnic area in front. There are plenty of places to sit.
After several hours or minutes on the beach, you’ll inevitably want ice cream. That’s why Oddfellows exists. Get several scoops on a cone, and start the race against the melting clock. Sometimes they have soft serve available.
