Where to Eat Near the High Line NYC (Skip Chelsea Market)

As a New Yorker who lived in the city for six years, I have walked the High Line more times than I can count. With out-of-town friends. On dates with my husband before he was my husband. Once, memorably, in a downpour with a soggy pretzel I still think about. And every single time, the exact same thing happens around 16th Street. Someone in the group says, “okay, I’m starving, let’s just do Chelsea Market.”

No. We are not just doing Chelsea Market.

Here’s my problem with it. Chelsea Market is a genuinely cool building and a genuinely miserable place to eat when you’re hungry and it’s 1pm on a Saturday. You will stand in a Los Tacos line that wraps past three other counters, get elbowed by a stroller, pay eighteen dollars, and eat standing up in a hallway that smells like everyone else’s lunch. I’ve done it. It’s fine. But the ten-block stretch on either side of the High Line is packed with better options that nobody’s fighting you for, and after about forty walks of this park I’ve figured out exactly where to send people. Let me save you the elbowing.

Two hands holding up a bright red and an orange chili-dusted paleta with the High Line and a brick building behind them — Two paletas from a High Line food cart, the classic grab-and-walk move on a hot afternoon.

I’ve split this the way I actually think about it in real life. There’s the grab-and-walk category, for when you want to keep moving and eat with your hands on a bench above 10th Avenue. And there’s the sit-down category, for when the walk is over and you’ve earned a chair. Chelsea Market is not in either category. Chelsea Market is the thing we are politely walking past.

Grab and Walk

The High Line is a walking park, so honestly the best meals near it are the ones you can carry. Here’s where I load up before I climb the stairs.

Los Tacos No. 1 (yes, but do it my way)

I know, I know. I just told you to skip Chelsea Market and now I’m sending you to the taco counter inside it. Hear me out. Los Tacos No. 1 at 75 9th Avenue makes an adobada taco that I would genuinely cross a river for, and the trick almost nobody uses is that there’s a street-facing entrance right on 9th Avenue. You do not have to march through the entire crowded market to reach it. Walk up from the sidewalk, order the adobada with the green sauce, take it to go, and you’re back on the High Line in ten minutes flat. That’s the whole loophole. The tacos are the best thing in that building and you can grab them without ever setting foot in the tourist scrum.

Adobada and carne asada tacos on soft corn tortillas in paper trays with guacamole and lime at Los Tacos No. 1 — Adobada and carne asada tacos from Los Tacos No. 1, grabbed to go from the 9th Avenue side.

Fair warning though. There’s basically no seating, which is the point. These are walking tacos. Eat them within four blocks or the tortilla gives up on you.

Two carne asada tacos in white paper trays topped with guacamole, salsa, onion and cilantro on a metal counter — Carne asada tacos loaded with guacamole and salsa, best eaten on a bench above 10th Avenue.

Sullivan Street Bakery

A block north at 236 9th Avenue, Sullivan Street Bakery is my quiet favorite of this whole list and it’s the one people always thank me for later. Jim Lahey’s Roman-style pizza bianca is a flat, blistered, olive-oiled slab of bread that costs a few dollars and eats like the best snack of your day. Get a square, get a chunk of their crusty bread if you’re feeling it, and go. Open daily until 7pm, so it works for an early High Line evening too. This is what I hand people who say they “don’t want a whole meal.” A warm square of pizza bianca is not a whole meal. It is a religious experience with a napkin.

Rustic baguettes and crusty artisan loaves displayed on a black iron rack against exposed brick at a Chelsea Market bakery — Fresh baguettes and rustic loaves on the rack, the kind of grab-and-go bread that beats a food-hall line.

Intelligentsia at the High Line Hotel

You want the coffee that comes with a courtyard. Intelligentsia lives inside the High Line Hotel at 180 10th Avenue, and there’s a sunken garden behind the lobby that is one of the most peaceful spots in West Chelsea. I’ve hidden here for an hour with an iced latte and a book while the whole neighborhood roared outside. Open 7am to 5pm daily. Grab your cup, sit in the ivy for a minute, then hop up onto the High Line two blocks away. It’s a damn fine flat white and the setting does a lot of the work.

Sit Down (You’ve Earned the Chair)

The High Line dumps you out at Gansevoort in the south and up near 34th in the north, and both ends are shoulder to shoulder with real restaurants. Here’s where I actually book a table.

Pastis

If you exit the south end near Gansevoort Street and you want the movie-version of a Paris bistro, Pastis at 52 Gansevoort is it. Keith McNally’s mosaic floors, the mirrors with the specials chalked on, steak frites, moules marinières, a martini that arrives cold enough to hurt. My husband and I come here for the steak frites and stay for the people-watching, which in Meatpacking is a competitive sport. It gets loud and it gets pricey. That’s the trade. But there is no better place to land after the walk if you want to feel like you’re in a scene from a film about being young in New York.

Cookshop

Directly across from a High Line entrance at 156 10th Avenue, Cookshop is the one I’d send a friend to without a second thought. It’s a bright, plant-lined, greenmarket-driven room that’s been reliable for twenty-some years, which in this neighborhood is basically forever. Weekend brunch runs 10am to 4pm and the patio is the play in warm weather. Their brunch has this energy of everyone at every table being genuinely happy, which sounds like nothing until you’ve eaten somewhere that doesn’t have it. Get the eggs, get a Bloody, sit outside. Confession time folks, this is where I take my own mom.

The Mermaid Inn

Steps from the High Line at 227 10th Avenue, The Mermaid Inn is where I go when I want oysters and I don’t want to spend a fortune to get them. The move is the daily happy hour, 4:30 to 6:30, when oysters drop to $1.25 each (six minimum, which is not a hardship), beer is $6, and cocktails and wine are $10. Time your High Line walk to end at 4:30 and you look like a genius. I’m not a huge seafood person, if I’m being honest, but a half dozen briny ones with a cold beer after a long walk is exactly right.

Shukette

At 230 9th Avenue, Shukette is Ayesha Nurdjaja’s loud, glowing Middle Eastern room, and the reason to go is the bread. The blistered laffa comes out puffed and hot and you tear it into a spread of dips until you’ve somehow eaten a whole meal of “just appetizers.” It’s dinner-only from 5pm, and it books up, so this is a plan-ahead spot rather than a walk-in. Order too much bread. That’s the only wrong move here, and it’s the right one.

Two more for the Spanish-food people

If you and your table are in a small-plates mood, the corridor has two I love. Txikito at 240 9th Avenue is a Basque pintxos bar from Alex Raij and Eder Montero, recently back from a hiatus that I mourned publicly. And Tía Pol at 205 10th Avenue is a tiny, dark, wonderful Spanish tapas bar that seats about eleven people and pours the kind of wine that makes you cancel your evening plans. Both are dinner spots. Both are worth the squeeze.

So What About Chelsea Market?

Look, I’m not saying never. Chelsea Market is a beautiful old Nabisco factory with a wonderful colorful-ribbon clock and the Artists & Fleas market tucked inside, and if you want to browse and gawk, go browse and gawk. It’s a good rainy-day wander.

The rainbow-colored ribbon installation and vintage round clock hanging from the industrial ceiling inside Chelsea Market — The rainbow-ribbon clock inside Chelsea Market, worth a look even when the food halls are packed.

What I’m saying is don’t make it your meal plan, especially on a weekend. The eating experience in there at peak hours is a stressed-out slog through lines and crowds, and everything I’ve listed above is within a few blocks, costs about the same or less, and comes with a seat or a sidewalk instead of a corridor.

A crowd of shoppers browsing artwork and prints at the Artists and Fleas market inside Chelsea Market — The weekend crowd inside Chelsea Market, the exact scrum I plan my meals around.

Here’s my honest downside for the whole neighborhood, since I promised myself I’d be straight with you. West Chelsea and Meatpacking are not cheap, and the sit-down spots especially will run you up a bill fast. If you’re watching your money, lean hard on the grab-and-walk list. A pizza bianca from Sullivan Street and a paleta from a High Line cart is a genuinely great lunch for under fifteen bucks, and you get to eat it on a park bench forty feet above the traffic. That’s the New York I’d sell you every time.

My cheat-sheet order of operations

When my husband and I do this walk with visitors, here’s the actual sequence. Coffee and a courtyard sit at Intelligentsia. Up onto the High Line at 20th. Walk the whole thing, stopping to grab a paleta or a to-go taco on the way. Come down hungry around 4:30 and slide into The Mermaid Inn for dollar-and-a-quarter oysters, or book Cookshop’s patio if it’s a proper meal. Chelsea Market gets a five-minute look at the clock and nothing more.

That’s the corridor, minus the tourist trap. If you want to keep exploring the neighborhood after, I’ve got a whole rundown of the best brunch spots in Chelsea and a list of the most charming Chelsea coffee shops for the mornings you want to slow down. Head a little south and you’re in the best West Village restaurants territory, and if you’re just after the cheapest possible way to eat well down here, my guide to cheap eats in New York City under $15 covers a few of these same corners. Taco obsessives, you’ll find more of my favorites in the best food carts and street food in NYC.

Now tell me what I missed. There’s a taco stand or a wine bar down there I haven’t tried yet, I can feel it. Which High Line spot do you swear by? Drop it in the comments and I’ll go eat my way through your list.

Happy walking (and snacking),

Antonina