Where to Eat in November

Welcome to Grub Street’s rundown of restaurant recommendations that aims to answer the endlessly recurring question “Where should we go?” These are the places our food team thinks everyone should visit for any reason (a new chef, the arrival of an exciting dish, or maybe there’s an opening that has flown too far under the radar). This month: some date spots, some lunch spots, and yet more high-caliber Mexican that’s worth tracking down.

Salvo’s (Ridgewood)
Salvatore La Rosa was working as a courier when he started delivering sandwiches on a 1977 Puch Magnum. Over two years later, the musician and graphic designer has built a large enough following to ditch the wheels. It’s no surprise that his new corner spot on Forest Avenue is well designed, a charming blend of weathered and new. The tiled floor, tin ceiling, and one textured wall were left over; the rich mahogany bar, its four seats, and a Faema espresso machine are La Rosa’s touches. On a recent afternoon, the music — MJ Lenderman, not “Ave Maria” — played at a murmur. Caponata is scooped into a little silver ice-cream bowl, the chunks of eggplant still maintaining a bit of chew. There are a handful of sandwiches, including thinly sliced mortadella with burrata, pistachio pesto, and a real burst of lemon zest. Sausage, snuck in at the end of menu planning, is sliced and barely browned, resting on golden potatoes seasoned with rosemary and gremolata, with scattered leeks cooked a few degrees short of disintegration. It works because of some Gorgonzola crema — luxuriously funky and added with a delicate hand. The spot is lunch-only for now, but dinner should be arriving soon. —Chris Crowley

Cuna (East Village)
Chef Maycoll Calderón has taken over the restaurant inside the Standard, East Village. A coastal-Mexican menu is naturally seafood heavy, and a yellowfin-tuna tostada is a standout. A $9 beef taco arrives on a flour tortilla with a crisp layer of Chihuahua cheese cradling grilled slices of Wagyu. The room is blocked off from the street aside from an internal plaza, making you forget you’re steps from NYU’s campus; mezcal horchata distances you further. —Zach Schiffman 

Bar Tizio (West Village)
Among the salsa-verde-stained Jonathan Waxman devotees in my life, the Brooklyn outpost of Barbuto has excited the most anticipation, but the thinking man’s Barbuto offshoot is Bar Tizio, just down the block from the original. Tizio cribs what’s good about Barbuto (unfussiness, tagliatelle) and skips much of what’s a headache (crowds). The space, built around a horseshoe-shaped copper bar, looks like it’s still emerging from construction — ductwork and ACs make up a good amount of its décor — but the short, generally affordable menu and long, generally obscure list of wines by the glass or bottle are starting to attract a neighborhood crowd. A diminutive but very full bowl of bouncy, slightly gamy gumball-size meatballs is well worth the $18, maybe with a hank of baguette or, if the drinks date turns into dinner, a lobster pizzette. As the nearer West Village is colonized by the kids, Bar Tizio remains mercifully for the adults. —Matthew Schneier

Shifka (Noho)
More weekday lunch that won’t crush your soul: This small bright storefront has chain-in-the-making energy, but if that’s the case, we’ll all be better off for it. For $15 the other day, I got a warm pita filled with crisp-creamy eggplant, a soft-boiled egg, and a big dollop of aïoli that had been spiced with the pickled-mango condiment amba. That amba shows up in white-chocolate soft serve, too, but before you get to dessert, you can grab some za’atar fries, a big thing of labneh, or other pitas with fillings that include lamb kebab with peppers or crunchy chicken schnitzel with zhoug. —Alan Sytsma 

Little Grand (Williamsburg)
The $2 oyster happy-hour special makes this bar a solid option for early dates. It helps that, between the brass fixtures, wood paneling, and a massive three-paned arched window facing the sidewalk, the sepia-hued room is an Art Deco escape from East Williamsburg. Stay for more food, like sausage-stuffed fried olives or “fritti misti” of squash, sweet peppers, and purple-cauliflower florets as big and puffy as beignets. The skin-on fries are cooked in chicken fat, and the kitchen excels at fish, as in a dish of crisp-seared mackerel topped with cracked olives and thinly sliced scallions in a tangy orange dressing, which was my favorite of the night. —Tammie Teclemariam