The Best West Village & Tribeca Restaurants On Caviar

If the only context you give when asking for a restaurant recommendation is “something delicious on the West Side,” we’d tell you to head to 14th Street, and start walking south with your head up. While the cobblestone streets and fancy fragrance stores may inspire you to use more descriptive language, the real reason we’d send you there is because some of the city’s best Italian and Brazilian spots, as well as great options for burgers, sushi, and dessert are all within a few blocks. And now that a bunch of our favorite places in those neighborhoods are offering delivery, you only need to walk as far as your front door.

The Spots

Deciding whether or not to go to Via Carota usually requires some cost-benefit analysis. On the one hand, waits tend to be as long as a transatlantic flight on a Concorde, but on the other hand, all of the food - from ’nduja-stuffed arancini and various salads, to arguably the best cacio e pepe in the city - is absolutely phenomenal. Now that this West Village Italian spot is offering delivery, your analysis is much simpler.

If NYC restaurants received medals for their cumulative pizza and burger scores, Emily would be at the top of the podium. They serve the same crunchy, thick, molten Detroit-style pizzas as Emmy Squared, as well as a dry-aged double-stack burger that oozes sauce and melted cheese out of a soft pretzel bun. Order both, and be grateful how few steps you need to take before you’re horizontal on your couch.

Just like people who only went to a Fountains Of Wayne concert to hear “Stacy’s Mom” missed out on “Hey Julie” and “Hackensack,” those who go to Magnolia Bakery just for banana pudding end up ignoring delicious red velvet cheesecake and double fudge brownies. With that said, the banana pudding absolutely needs to be part of your order from this West Village dessert spot.

When Faicco’s opened its doors, William McKinley renewed his lease on The White House, and one of the best chicken cutlet sandwiches in existence moved into the West Village. This legendary deli has been operated by the same family ever since, and the massive chicken cutlet is still one of the absolute best sandwiches around.

You don’t just order from 4 Charles when you’re in the mood for some meat. You order from this small, impossible-to-get-a-reservation-before-10pm steakhouse when you’re in the mood to share maple-coated thick-cut bacon and a french dip sandwich as appetizers, before dolloping horseradish cream onto a bone-in prime rib. When you’re in that kind of mood, there’s no spot in the neighborhood, or maybe the entire city, like 4 Charles.

While the West Village has about as many pasta spots as Centro Storico, you’ll need to order from I Sodi if you want the best of the best. Get perfectly simple pappardelle al limone, or housemade lasagna with bechamel and meat sauce layered between 26 sheets of pasta any day between 4:30-9:30pm.

If there’s a real miss on the menu at Hao Noodle, then it shies away from the spotlight more than Prince Harry. You certainly won’t complain if you just order shrimp and pork dumplings, and dan dan noodles with minced pork, but it’s particularly worth keeping in mind when you’re with a few friends, and can share a bunch of different soups, noodles, and family-style entrees.

There’s exciting, then there’s mildly intriguing, then there are about a dozen levels of mundane, and then there’s going to a counter-service spot for grain bowls every day for lunch. That is, unless the grain bowl spot is Berber Street Food, a pan-African spot in the West Village. Then you could eat completely different things every day of the week, rotating rice choices between turmeric, djolof stir-fried, and daily specials, while topping them with things like jerk chicken, vegetable coconut curry, or spicy tomato sauce with jackfruit.

L’Artusi launching takeout would’ve been big news on its own, but like Jay-Z with “Reasonable Doubt,” they debuted with a bang, AKA their first-ever burger. It’s topped with taleggio cheese and pickled chili aioli, and it should be part of your order from this West Village Italian spot. The burger - as well as two and four-person dinner packages that include pastas, entrees, and wine - are available for delivery from 12-9:30pm daily.

Raku’s gyunan udon is what you want on the table after a long day of work, and the tantan udon with spicy pork broth is what you want when a quarter of that day was spent troubleshooting screen sharing. No matter which type of day you had, order udon (and fried chicken with spicy mayo) for delivery any day but Monday.

As you might expect from any self-respecting French bistro (let alone one of our favorites in NYC), Frenchette makes some great fries, which you should order in some combination of the steak frites, duck frites, and pommes frites. Even if that pushes you to your potato threshold, make sure to get the gnocchi as well - it’s made with pastry dough rather than potato, and it’s one of the best things here.

The marinade in Llama San’s scallop ceviche is so good that you’ll wish you could order it by the bottle. Unfortunately, that’s not an option, but small-production wines and nori-infused cocktails are excellent consolation options, especially if you pair them with this Peruvian spot’s seafood-topped jasmine rice or creamy basil udon with tonkatsu.

Take a bite of the smoky, pork-heavy feijoada from Berimbau, and you’ll realize this is the best Brazilian spot in the West Village. Then try the slightly sweet moqueca with four types of seafood, and you’ll see why this is the best Brazilian spot in Manhattan. After polishing off both of those stews, and the crispy, chewy pão de queijo, you’ll be ready to call it the best Brazilian restaurant in NYC.

Carbone is one of the toughest places to get a reservation in the city, so offering delivery is kind of the equivalent of Yo-Yo Ma making himself available to play background music while you work. You won’t experience the servers in red tuxedos preparing caesar salads tableside, but eating the spicy vodka rigatoni or veal parmesan in your apartment whenever you want makes up for it.

The headliner at Jeju is ramyun (Korean ramen), and while it’s certainly worth the price of admission - especially the version with rich pork broth and housemade porchetta - the most memorable part of any order here is one of the opening acts - chicken wings. The crispy, juicy wings are coated in umami powder - a blend of dried mushrooms, seaweed, nori, and kombu - that sends your mind reeling for answers even before you dip them into the tangy chili-yogurt dipping sauce on the side.

Price-wise, Sushi Katsuei is on the low end of the higher-end sushi spots. What that means is that you can get an omakase that’s good enough to make your Friday night or make up for your Monday afternoon for $65. It comes with nine pieces and a handroll - and there are a bunch of a la carte options as well.

Choosing a pasta from Fiaschetteria Pistoia is like choosing how to break the ice with someone who’s clearly into you - it’ll be tough in the moment, but in the end, you’ll realize there was no way you could’ve gone wrong. Order dishes like cacio e pepe with hand rolled spaghetti, pappardelle al ragu, or housemade tagliatelle topped with a mound of black truffle from either of their two locations in the West Village.

Getting crispy crab and duck dumplings, and crispier pastrami egg rolls is one way to guarantee a successful delivery order from this West Village Chinese spot. But it’s not the only way. Others include a whole Peking duck with hand-rolled pancakes, or multiple orders of Pac Man-shaped shrimp dumplings.

Minetta is the kind of place where you gesture for another martini with one hand while holding a billy club-sized rack of bone marrow with the other. And that’s just the appetizers. By the time you finish the fantastic black label burger or the bone-in NY strip at the restaurant, you feel a mix of joy about the food, and dread about standing up to leave. But if you order them to your apartment, you’ll never have to leave.

Most of the dinner menu at this Lao spot in Tribeca consists of large plates - like curry noodle soup with pork, chili prawns with ginger scallion toast, and a whole black sea bass with vermicelli noodles - so it’s ideal when you’re with a few people who don’t mind sharing. Their day-time menu, however, is tailor-made for a solo lunch, with a few different bánh mì, and DIY market bowls with things like chili caramel king salmon and crispy pork belly over various choices of rice, salad, and noodles.

The Middle Eastern dumplings at Kubeh are filled with things like lamb or fish, they have the texture of matzo balls, and they’re served in soups. In other words, you should be eating them in the near future. You can do so any day by ordering delivery between 11:30am-10pm.

Brunch at Buvette typically entails the purchase of a new audiobook as you wait two hours for a table outside on Grove Street. You’ll have no such issues when you order their perfectly fluffy steamed eggs, or BEC waffle sandwich for delivery.