The best comfort food dishes in NYC

This Nepalese restaurant in Woodside serves some of the best momos in an area where you can find plenty of options for the juicy Himayalan dumplings. At Momo Crave, there isn't dumpling we'd pass on: the crispy, deep-fried momos laced with aromatic garlic, ginger and a tangy spicy sauce or the plump jhol momos swimming in a fragrant chutney-like soup.

If you get one of warm, chocolate-webbed loaves fresh out of the oven at this Union Square bakery (our favorite of their multiple locations), you’re in for sweet-tooth nirvana. The bread is doughy yet flaky, and the chocolate is mixed with Nutella to create a rich, yet not-too-sweet filling. 

Your bowl of perfectly al-dente noodles sits in a bowl of broth that took hours to cook, but you’d slurp all the noodles between bites of the tender beef within minutes if you could. Our advice is to savor every bit while you also snack on the other small dishes of delicate tofu and hearty bowl of minced pork over rice.

Top Chef alums Jeff McInnis and Janine Booth brine Pennsylvania Dutch country chicken in sweet tea spiked with paprika and cayenne for 24 hours, giving it a distinct sweetness amplified by the dusting of dehydrated lemon powder the bird gets when it’s pulled golden and crunchy from the pressure cooker. A drizzle of Tabasco honey happily keeps that salty-sweet tug-of-war going.

It may be difficult to score a table at Missy Robbins's Misi, but once you're in, you'll want to devour every pasta on the menu. Riding the cacio e pepe train that has thundered through almost every Italian eatery in the city, this one is one of the best with perfectly al dente noodles in a velvety pool of cheese and pepper. We could go on and on about the handmade pasta, but we'd rather be stuffing ourselves silly with the most comforting of carbs.

The cupcakes may garner all the attention at Magnolia but come here for the perfectly tart and sweet banana pudding that wraps you in a blanket of nostalgia and comfort.

The cheeseburger at this kitschy Upper East Side haunt is a bite of a bygone era, simple griddled on a flattop and medium-rare juicy. The thick, eight-ounce burger arrives open-faced, peeking beneath a layer of melted American cheese on a pillow-soft, lightly toasted bun, with sliced tomato, crisp lettuce, red onion and dill-pickle chips on the side. Don’t bypass the bacon—the deep-fried tangle adds delicious textural contrast to the coarsely packed patty.

Compared with old guard like Katz’s and Second Avenue, the Montreal-inspired smoked-meat sammie may be “hipster pastrami” to some but the tender, peppery dry-cured brisket, served with whole-seed mustard on artisan rye, is no less satisfying than its Jewish-deli ancestors.

Murray’s Cheese Bar, an offshoot of the esteemed cheese shop a few doors down, knows its stuff when it comes to any cheese-filled dish. You can't go wrong with thethe iconic grilled cheese sandwich but we love the gooey mac and cheese.

At Levain Bakery the cookies are so huge, they might as well be your breakfast or lunch. These massive mounds are at times a bit underdone in the middle, making them a boon to cookie-dough lovers. Don’t miss the lush, brownielike double-chocolate number.