Manhattan / Chelsea
Chelsea
Restaurants
Fifteen places from the High Line to Seventh Avenue, including the four Chelsea Market stalls actually worth the queue. Verified against each restaurant’s own site.
Checking which of these 15 kitchens are open right now…
- 15 verified spots
- 4 in Chelsea Market
- tacos from $5.25
- open till 1am
Looking for a drink deal instead? → Chelsea happy hours
The best restaurants in Chelsea right now are Txikito for Basque small plates and the $31 arroz meloso, Café Chelsea for $48 steak frites served from 7am to 11pm, Buddakan for the $80 Peking duck and a $45 dim sum tasting, Hav & Mar for the neighbourhood’s only weekday happy hour, and Los Tacos No. 1 for $5.95 tacos in Chelsea Market. I checked all fifteen against each restaurant’s own site in August 2026 — which turned up three Chelsea restaurants that other guides still list and that no longer exist. Chelsea Market is four of these fifteen, and their closing times are not the same as each other, which is the single most common way to get that building wrong.
The short version
- Best overallTxikito — Basque small plates, and the $31 arroz meloso is the dish.
- Best all dayCafé Chelsea — 7am to 11pm, seven days, inside the Hotel Chelsea.
- Only real dealHav & Mar — happy hour Monday to Friday, 5 to 7pm.
- Best in the marketLos Tacos No. 1 — $5.95 carne asada. Go before noon or after 8.
- Best lateCafeteria — kitchen to 1am Friday and Saturday, since 1998.
At a glance
Prices are from each restaurant’s own current menu. Where it says unpublished, the restaurant genuinely does not post one.
| Restaurant | Known for | Best for | Hours | $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Café Chelsea | Steak frites, $48 | Any hour, seven days | Breakfast from 7am daily · dinner to 11pm, Fri–Sat to midnight | $$$ |
| Cookshop | The brunch everyone books | Weekend brunch, 10am to 3:30 | Lunch Mon–Fri from noon · brunch Sat–Sun 10am–3:30pm · dinner nightly from 4:30pm | $$$ |
| Txikito | Arroz meloso, $31 | A counter and a bottle of txakoli | Sun–Thu 5–10pm · Fri–Sat 5–10:30pm | $$$ |
| Buddakan | Peking duck for two, $80 | A birthday, a group, a scene | Mon–Thu 5–11pm · Fri to midnight · Sat 4pm–midnight · Sun 4–11pm | $$$ |
| Shukette | Bread and dips, live fire | Dinner booked two weeks out | Mon–Sat 5–11pm · Sun 4–10pm | $$$ |
| Hav & Mar | Happy hour Mon–Fri 5–7pm | The one weekday deal in Chelsea | Open seven nights 5–10pm · happy hour Mon–Fri 5–7pm | $$$ |
| Crane Club | Charred lobster salad | A late-ish dinner, Thursday to Saturday | Mon–Wed 6–10pm · Thu–Sat 6–11pm · closed Sun | $$$ |
| Tía Pol | Tapas at a bar with ten seats | Weekend lunch, noon to 4 | Tue–Fri from 5pm · Sat–Sun noon–4pm and from 5pm · closed Mon | $$$ |
| Los Tacos No. 1 | Carne asada taco, $5.95 | Under $20 and out in fifteen minutes | Open daily 11am–10pm | $$$ |
| Los Mariscos | Fish and shrimp tacos, ceviche | The market at 11pm on a Friday | Mon–Wed to 10pm · Thu to 11pm · Fri–Sat to midnight · Sun to 9pm | $$$ |
| Cull & Pistol | Lobster rolls, oysters | A table, not a counter | Open daily 11:30am–9pm | $$$ |
| Very Fresh Noodles | Hand-pulled noodles | Lunch, and only lunch | Mon–Sat 11am–8pm · Sun 11am–6pm | $$$ |
| Empire Diner | Diner food in a landmark | Breakfast off the High Line | Open daily 9am–11pm | $$$ |
| Cafeteria | Mac and cheese, burgers | 1am on a Saturday | Sun–Thu 9am–midnight · Fri–Sat 9am–1am | $$$ |
| Sullivan Street Bakery | Pizza al taglio, by weight | Lunch under $15, standing up | Open daily 8am–7pm | $$$ |
Map: where these 15 restaurants are
Fourteenth up to Thirtieth, Sixth Avenue west to the Hudson. Chelsea Market and the southern cluster sit at 15th and Ninth; the C and E at 23rd Street is the middle.
Pins are numbered to match the table above – tap any pin for the order and directions.
The four that define Chelsea
A hotel bistro, a twenty-year-old neighbourhood room, the best Basque cooking in the city and the loudest dining room in the postcode. More citywide picks in our best restaurants in NYC guide.
Café Chelsea Open now
The verdict: the best all-day room in Chelsea, and it happens to sit inside the Hotel Chelsea, which is either a bonus or a distraction depending on how much Leonard Cohen you have listened to. Flat-iron steak frites $48, a 16oz dry-aged bone-in New York strip $98, the dark chocolate soufflé $24, cocktails $17 to $22. The local move: breakfast at 7am — it runs seven days and it is the calmest this room ever gets. The honest caveat: between 3:30 and 5pm the kitchen drops to a reduced midday menu, so that is the one window not to turn up hungry.
Cookshop Open now
The verdict: twenty years on Tenth Avenue and still the Chelsea brunch that people actually book rather than settle for. Seasonal American, which here means the menu turns over often enough that the restaurant tells you so itself. The local move: weekday lunch from noon, which is the same kitchen at a fraction of the wait and which the High Line crowd never finds. The honest caveat: between 3:30 and 4:30 on weekdays it drops to a limited menu, and Cookshop publishes its menus as external PDFs with no prices I can quote you.
cookshopny.com · See our best brunch in NYC
Txikito Open now
The verdict: the best cooking on this page and the one restaurant here a chef would pick. Alex Raij and Eder Montero have been doing Basque small plates on Ninth Avenue long enough that half of New York’s Spanish restaurants are downstream of them. Pulpo $21, arroz meloso $31, mendreska $32, and plates start as low as $6. The local move: order four plates and the arroz, not eight plates — the rice is the dish and it needs room. The honest caveat: dinner only, seven nights, doors at 5pm. There is no lunch here at all.
txikitonyc.com · See our best Mediterranean restaurants in NYC
Buddakan Open now
The verdict: twenty years on and the descent down that staircase into the double-height dining room still works. The food is better than the room’s reputation suggests. Whole Peking duck for two $80, charred filet of beef $64, glazed Alaskan black cod $44. The local move: the dim sum tasting for two is $45, which is the cheapest way into this room by a distance and which almost nobody orders. The honest caveat: it is dinner only, it is loud, and it shares an address with Chelsea Market — but it has its own entrance and it is not a market stall.
Worth booking ahead
Four more rooms, one of which runs the only weekday happy hour among Chelsea’s destination restaurants. See also our best Mediterranean restaurants in NYC guide.
Shukette Open now
The verdict: Ayesha Nurdjaja’s Levantine room on Ninth Avenue and one of the hardest reservations in the neighbourhood, deservedly. The bread programme alone justifies the walk. The local move: Sunday, when it opens at four — an hour earlier than every other night and by far the easiest table of the week. The honest caveat: dinner only, no lunch on any day, and Shukette posts only its wine list online — there are no food prices published anywhere on its site, so check Resy before you plan a budget around it.
shukettenyc.com · See our best Mediterranean restaurants in NYC
Hav & Mar Open now
The verdict: Marcus Samuelsson took a seafood restaurant and ran a Nordic-Ethiopian menu through it, which sounds like a pitch deck and eats like a genuinely good idea. The local move, and this is the most useful line on the page: there is a happy hour Monday to Friday from 5 to 7pm, which makes this the only confirmed weekday deal among the destination restaurants in Chelsea. Come off the High Line at five. The honest caveat: it is dinner only, every night, and it is on Eleventh Avenue — a proper walk west from the Eighth Avenue subway.
havandmar.com · See our Chelsea happy hours
Crane Club Open now
The verdict: the room that replaced Del Posto, cooking over wood, and the most ambitious new thing on this stretch of Tenth Avenue. Charred lobster salad, wood-smoked clams, beef short rib. The local move: Thursday, when it runs to 11 and the room has settled but the weekend crowd has not arrived. The honest caveat: there is no early dinner here — the doors do not open until 6pm any night — it is closed Sundays, and it publishes no prices on its own page. If you are looking for Del Posto, it is gone; this is what is there now.
taogroup.com · See our best restaurants in NYC
Tía Pol Open now
The verdict: a very small Spanish tapas bar on Tenth Avenue that has outlasted most of what opened around it, and the room is about ten feet wide. The local move: weekend lunch, noon to 4 — the only daytime service they run, and nobody books it. The honest caveat: closed Mondays, and at weekends there is a hard shutdown between 4 and 5pm. Its own website also advertises a 3pm happy hour on days its posted hours say it does not open until 5 — do not plan around that until you have called and confirmed it.
Chelsea Market — the four worth queuing for
Thirty-odd food vendors in the old Nabisco factory, and these are the ones a local would eat at. Note the closing times — they are not the same. More in our best cheap eats in NYC guide.
Los Tacos No. 1 Open now
The verdict: the best cheap food in Chelsea and the single most reliable thing in Chelsea Market. Tijuana-style, tortillas hand-pressed to order. Adobada $5.65, carne asada $5.95, the fried especial quesadilla $9. The local move: go before noon or after 8pm — this is consistently the longest line in the building and the queue at 1pm on a Saturday is genuinely twenty minutes. The honest caveat: there is no seating at the stall. You eat standing at the counter or you carry it to the communal tables and fight for a spot.
lostacos1.com · See our best tacos in NYC
Los Mariscos Open now
The verdict: the Los Tacos team doing Baja seafood, with its own bar, and the answer to the question of what is still open in Chelsea Market when everything else has shut. Fish and shrimp tacos, ceviche, aguachile, beer and margaritas. The local move: the aguachile and a michelada, which is a better order than the tacos and which people walk straight past. The honest caveat: it keeps the latest hours in the building — midnight on Friday and Saturday — but it still closes at nine on Sunday, which catches people out at the end of a weekend.
Cull & Pistol Open now
The verdict: run by The Lobster Place next door, and the one place in Chelsea Market where somebody brings food to your table. That sounds like a low bar and in this building it is a genuine service. Lobster rolls, fish and chips, seared scallops, a proper oyster bar, wine and cocktails. The local move: sit at the oyster bar rather than a table — it is faster and the shucker will tell you what came in. The honest caveat: it shuts at 9pm seven days, and it publishes no prices online, so this is not a budget decision you can make in advance.
Very Fresh Noodles Open now
The verdict: noodles pulled and slapped by hand in front of you, which in a food hall full of things assembled elsewhere is the whole point. Biang biang style, wide and chewy, with chilli oil. The local move: watch the pull before you order — it takes ten seconds and it will change what you ask for. The honest caveat, and this is the one that catches people: it closes earliest of anything in the market — 8pm Monday to Saturday and 6pm on Sunday. Turn up for dinner and it is shut.
veryfreshnoodles.com · See our best ramen and noodles in NYC
All day, late, and cheap
The dependable ones. Two run fourteen hours a day and one goes to 1am. See also our best brunch in NYC guide.
Empire Diner Open now
The verdict: the chrome Art Deco dining car at 22nd and Tenth, which you have seen in a dozen films and which is a functioning restaurant rather than a set. Fourteen hours a day, same hours every single day, which in this neighbourhood makes it unusually dependable. The local move: breakfast right off the High Line — the stairs come down almost at the door and at 9am you will have the room. The honest caveat: it publishes no prices online, and you are partly paying for the building. Go in knowing that.
empire-diner.com · See our best brunch in NYC
Cafeteria Open now
The verdict: twenty-eight years on Seventh Avenue and it is still the answer at one in the morning. The mac and cheese and the burger are what people order and there is no reason to argue with them. The local move: go after midnight on a Friday, when the room turns into something more interesting than its brunch reputation. The honest caveat, and this one is practical: the real website is cafeteria-nyc.com. The lookalike domain without the hyphen is a parked for-sale page and will send you nowhere. Book on Resy.
cafeteria-nyc.com · See our best late-night food in NYC
Sullivan Street Bakery Open now
The verdict: Jim Lahey has been baking Roman-style bread and pizza al taglio since 1994, and the Ninth Avenue counter is the cheapest good lunch in Chelsea. Pizza by the slab, cut and weighed, plus sandwiches, bread and the bombolini. The local move: the potato pizza, which is the one thing here that people cross town for and which sells out. The honest caveat: it is a bakery counter, not a restaurant — there is no real seating — and it closes at 7pm every day, so this is a daytime proposition only.
sullivanstreetbakery.com · See our best pizza in NYC
Chelsea restaurants: FAQ
What are the best restaurants in Chelsea NYC?
Txikito on Ninth Avenue for Basque small plates. Café Chelsea inside the Hotel Chelsea for a French bistro that runs 7am to 11pm. Cookshop on Tenth for seasonal American and the best brunch here. Buddakan for the big room. Shukette for Levantine cooking, if you can book it.
What should I eat in Chelsea Market?
Los Tacos No. 1 — adobada $5.65, carne asada $5.95 — is the best of it, with the longest line. Los Mariscos for Baja seafood and the latest hours in the building. Cull & Pistol is the only sit-down table-service restaurant inside. Very Fresh Noodles for hand-pulled noodles, but it closes at 8pm weekdays and 6pm Sunday.
Is there a happy hour in Chelsea?
Hav & Mar at 245 Eleventh Avenue runs one Monday to Friday, 5 to 7pm — the only confirmed weekday deal among Chelsea’s destination restaurants. Tía Pol’s own site advertises a 3pm happy hour on days its posted hours say it opens at 5, so call before planning around that one.
What is open late in Chelsea?
Cafeteria on Seventh Avenue runs to midnight Sunday to Thursday and 1am Friday and Saturday. Buddakan goes to midnight Friday and Saturday. Los Mariscos in Chelsea Market goes to midnight Friday and Saturday too. Empire Diner closes at 11pm, seven days.
Which Chelsea restaurants have closed?
Del Posto at 85 Tenth Avenue is gone — Crane Club occupies the space. Trestle on Tenth is closed; its domain now serves an unrelated website. Blossom’s Ninth Avenue location no longer appears on the brand’s own site, which lists only its Columbus Avenue restaurant. Guides that still list these are out of date.
Last updated: August 2026. Menus, prices and hours change – confirm with the restaurant before you go. Spot something out of date? Let us know.
