The immaculately renovated Victorian townhouse that houses the Sugar Hill Bistro is lovely to look at, but at this early date, the restaurant's eagerly anticipated gourmet menu is mostly a mess (flat-tasting blackened salmon, chewy beef dishes, and tepid soups). Jimmy's Uptown remains the Toots Shor's of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, complete with shimmery nylon lampshades, luminous half-moon banquettes, and weirdly successful hybrid dishes like filet mignon and grits. The place for real pan-fried chicken, the neighborhood cognoscenti agree, is Charles' Southern Style Kitchen, although I always seem to miss the fabled Wednesday buffet, and never can get a table the other times I come. Instead, I end up standing on the sidewalk, gnawing my chicken from a flapping Styrofoam container. If it's a weekend night, you won't have much better luck fighting your way into Max SoHa, the new closet-size outpost of the East Village Italian joint, although the superior house ravioli are big as flapjacks, and it beats trying to bum rush your way into Rao's.

Want to tackle a wide range of the neighborhood's traditional delicacies in a single sitting? Travel up Lenox Avenue to Miss Maude's Spoonbread Too and order the mammoth sampler: $14.95 for a tasting of ribs, collard greens, smothered chicken, etc. For less traditional neighborhood dishes like soft corn tacos (more than ten varieties, including spicy pork, beef tongue, and tripe) and cheesy platters of chilaquiles (chicken or beef with salsa, served on strips of corn taco), drop into El Paso Taqueria, on the corner of 104th and Lexington. If you happen to be loitering around East 119th Street before lunchtime, indulge in a platter of juicy suckling pig at a little storefront establishment called El Rincón Boricua. The proprietors, Carmen and Luis Serrano, guard their singular pork recipes (fried pig tails are another house specialty) like the family jewels but say they are willing to sell out for a price. "I'm looking for the right deal," Carmen told me, as she ladled a heap of boiled cassava onto my plate. "My dream is to get into fashion. Cooking is just to pay the bills."