As a food writer who has lived in New York for six years, I have a confession. I love the US Open, and I resent the US Open, in roughly equal measure. I love the tennis. I love the electric buzz of a night session in Arthur Ashe. And every single year, I stand in a Food Village line, do the math on a $23 Honey Deuce, and feel something cold settle in my stomach that has nothing to do with the vodka.
The 2026 tournament runs August 23 through September 13 out at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows. My husband and I have made the pilgrimage more times than my bank account would like to admit. So this is the guide I wish someone had handed me years ago. What to actually eat on the grounds. And the move almost nobody makes, which is riding one stop on the 7 train to the best Chinese food in the city for one-third the price.
First, the Honey Deuce math (and why I still buy one)
Let me be honest with you. The Honey Deuce is a marketing masterpiece and I fall for it every year. Grey Goose vodka, lemonade, a float of raspberry liqueur, and three honeydew melon balls speared to look like little tennis balls. It photographs like a dream. In 2025 the tournament sold more than 740,000 of them, and the price sat at $23 with the souvenir cup included.
Here is the thing. The souvenir cup is the whole trick. You are not really buying a cocktail, you are buying a cup that happens to arrive full. And I will buy exactly one, early in the tournament, because the cups genuinely do sell out before the finals and I am not immune to a keepsake. One honest caveat. If you order a Honey Deuce for every set, you will spend more on drinks than you did on your grounds pass. Buy one. Nurse it. Take the photo. Move on.
What’s actually worth eating on the grounds
The Food Village has genuinely leveled up. This is not stadium hot-dog territory anymore, and a few stalls are worth the walk and the wait even at event prices.
Fuku. David Chang’s fried chicken outpost, and the one I steer people to first. The original spicy chicken sandwich is a real sandwich, not a sad concession approximation. Get it with the jalapeno waffle fries. If you are going to spend event money on one hot thing, spend it here.
COQODAQ. Simon Kim’s fine-dining Korean fried chicken concept downsized into nugget form for the Open. The Korean-style nuggets travel well between sets, and there is a black-bagged secret Black Truffle Sandwich floating around the food court for the people who know to ask. I am telling you so now.
Oyamel by Jose Andres Group. The taco de chilorio is the sleeper. Slow-cooked pork, real char, and it holds together while you speed-walk back to your seat. Tacos at a tennis tournament sound like a mistake. This one is not.
Red Hook Lobster Pound and Pat LaFrieda. A lobster roll and a filet mignon steak sandwich, respectively. Both are splurges, both deliver. If it is your one big night session and you want to eat like the ticket cost you real money anyway, these earn it.
What to skip? The generic pizza and the wilting pre-made salads. Every year someone in our group grabs one out of impatience and every year they regret it out loud. San Matteo runs a legit Neapolitan pie if you must have pizza, but honestly, save the appetite. Because here comes the actual point of this whole guide.
The move: ride one stop to Flushing
The US Open station is Mets-Willets Point on the 7 train. What almost nobody does is get back on the 7 heading east and ride a single stop, about two minutes, to Flushing-Main Street. You step out of the station and you are standing in the largest, best, and most gloriously chaotic Chinatown in New York City. Not the tourist one downtown. This one.
Do the math the other direction now. A $23 cocktail buys you a full, staggering meal in Flushing with change left for the train. My husband and I started doing this a few years ago, ducking out during a long changeover or a rain delay, and it has completely reorganized how we do the tournament. Eat cheap and brilliant in Flushing, drink one souvenir Honey Deuce for the ritual, watch the tennis. Everyone wins.
A quick honest caveat before you sprint for the turnstile. If you have a stadium ticket and want to be back for a specific match, budget your time carefully. Flushing on a summer weekend is packed, and the good spots have lines. This works best during a long break, a doubles match you do not care about, or a Fan Week afternoon when grounds admission is free anyway. Which brings up a genuinely useful fact.
The 2026 Open has eight days of free grounds admission, including all of Fan Week from August 23 to 29 and the “Open for All Day” on September 10. On those days the entire calculation changes. Free tennis, then a $12 feast a subway stop away. That is the best-value day in New York sports, and I will die on that hill.
Where to eat in Flushing (the short, opinionated list)
Nan Xiang Soup Dumplings. 39-16 Prince Street, a few minutes’ walk from the station. This is the one I send everyone to first. Michelin has recommended it for years, and the xiao long bao are the reason. Order the classic pork, get the crab-and-pork if you are feeling flush, and mind the soup. It is molten. I learned that one the hard way, and I have the tiny scar on the roof of my mouth to prove it. Vinegar and ginger on the side, one dumpling at a time, take the little bite to release the steam first. Do not be a hero.
White Bear. 135-02 Roosevelt Avenue. A tiny counter that does one thing at the level of genius. Order the number six, the wontons in chili oil. You get a dozen doughy, pork-and-veg wontons swimming in chili oil with pickled vegetables and charred chiles piled on top, and the whole thing costs about ten dollars. Ten. For a dozen. Heat, acid, funk, and enough leftover cash to buy the person next to you a set too. If there is a better ten-dollar plate of food in this city, I have not found it.
Joe’s Steam Rice Roll.
136-21 Roosevelt Avenue, tucked into Landmark Quest Mall. Cantonese cheong fun made to order, those silky broad rice noodles rolled around shrimp or beef or egg and drizzled with soy. Light, fast, cheap, and it will not weigh you down for the trek back to your seat. This is my “I only have twenty minutes” order.
New World Mall food court. 136-20 Roosevelt Avenue, on the lower level. If you brought a crowd with opinions, this is your answer. More than thirty vendors under one roof doing hand-pulled Xinjiang laghman, Chongqing noodles, mala tang, bubble tea, and desserts, so the person who wants Sichuan and the person who wants Vietnamese can both be happy without anyone compromising. It is loud, it is fluorescent, it is perfect. Just know it fills up fast and seating is a contact sport.
If you want to build a proper roving feast out of it, I have a whole separate rabbit hole on the best cheap eats in New York City under $15 and the best food carts and street food in the city, both of which lean heavily on Queens for exactly this reason.
Drinks, if you skipped the Honey Deuce
Flushing does not do craft cocktails, and I mean that as a compliment. What it does do is bubble tea, at a level Manhattan can only imitate. Grab a brown-sugar milk tea to walk with, the kind with the caramel streaking down the inside of the cup. It is a fraction of a Honey Deuce and, controversial opinion, more fun to drink. If you want the real citywide ranking, I have opinions on the best bubble tea in New York City that will start arguments.
And if you are the type who genuinely came for the beer and not the tennis, the Open’s on-grounds beer lines are long and the pours are expensive. I would rather point you at my roundup of the best breweries in New York City for a proper post-match pint somewhere with room to sit down. Flushing itself is more of a tea-and-noodles town, and I love it for that.
How to actually do a US Open food day
Here is the plan my husband and I have landed on after years of trial and a fair amount of error. Get to the grounds. Do the tennis you came for. Buy one Honey Deuce, take the photo, keep the cup. When there is a natural break, a rain delay or a match you are lukewarm on, hop the 7 east one stop to Flushing-Main Street. Eat like royalty for the price of a stadium beer. Ride back. If you time it around one of the eight free-admission days, you have essentially spent nothing on entry and everything on the good stuff, which is the food.
The grounds food is better than it used to be, and Fuku and the Oyamel tacos genuinely earn their keep. But the smartest bite of your US Open is the one you eat two minutes east of it, standing in a fluorescent food court with a dozen wontons and no regrets. If you only remember one thing from this whole guide, remember the number six at White Bear. It ruined stadium food for me forever, and I could not be more grateful.
Now it is your turn. Which Flushing spot did I leave off that you would fight me over? Are you a Nan Xiang loyalist or a New World Mall chaos agent? And has anyone actually finished a Honey Deuce and not immediately wanted a nap? Tell me your order in the comments. I read every one, and I am always looking for the next place to sneak off to during a changeover.
See you on the 7 train,
Antonina
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