Stacks of freshly made jerky sit under a heat lamp.

Must-try: Crispy shrimp heads, Manila clams with vinho verde.

Restaurateurs Nialls Fallon, Nick Perkins, and Leah Campbell, the folks behind the Fly and Hart’s in Brooklyn, are reasonably new entrants to Canal Street, but the focus on maritime fare - is there any part of New York with more fish markets? - puts the space in conversation with the great Cantonese seafood spots nearby.

It’s also a completely different culinary experience for those who want a one-plate meal, like a lamb burger with a few anchovies on top to jack up the funk even further. Cervo’s is also a casual vermouth and sherry bar, a place to stop by for a first date or an after-work rendezvous to sip something bitter and slurp down some oysters. One could grab a bar seat - right in front of the chefs - and concoct a short tasting menu out of shrimp heads, fried oysters, golden rice with rock shrimp, and Manila clams with vinho verde. It serves up the type of non-exorbitant and strongly flavored small plates that seem harder to come by in an increasingly unaffordable city. Must-try: Chocolate croissant, sesame sourdough loafĬervos, open since 2017, is a gem of a Spanish Portuguese seafood restaurant, a wood-paneled space where patrons cram themselves in as tightly as a tin of Iberian sardines.“I want everyone to know.” - Luke Fortney “I’m proud of who we work with,” she says. While some chefs closely guard their trade secrets, Allen is taking a different approach: All of her suppliers are listed online, while several of her loaves are named after friends in the industry, whose baking formulas she’s used. The following is more than deserved: All of Mel’s baked goods are made using local heirloom grains, which might sound like a lot of fuss until you spend a few minutes talking with owner Nora Allen, who occasionally emerges from the bakery’s basement with a tray of chocolate croissants in hand, usually wearing a pair of slip-on rainbow Crocs. This corner bakery is one of the newest businesses on this list, but it’s already found fans in the neighborhood: A few doors down at Ling Kee Beef Jerky, one of the owners can sometimes be seen eating its blueberry muffins, and Cervo’s, across the street, is one of few places you can find a loaf of the bakery’s sourdough after 3 p.m. Of a different sort, and anchoring this street’s eastern dead end, is Mel.

Walk west to east along Canal Street and you’ll no doubt encounter a half-dozen or more bakeries, most serving egg tarts, sponge bread, pineapple buns, and other Chinese fare. Our goal was simple: Dive deep into Canal Street and share a tiny bit of the stories that make this area a vital part of NYC. Many of the establishments, big and small, rarely get covered even though they’re vital to Chinatown. In our own celebration and support of the area, the Eater NY team made it a point to visit every restaurant along Canal Street. But a surge of support also swelled: New Yorkers began to realize that one of the most vibrant sections of the city would not survive without people dining in restaurants, shopping at independent businesses, or simply showing up they seemed to say that Chinatown wasn’t going anywhere.

Restaurants, old and new, closed one by one, and there was no Lunar New Year parade. The streets in this neighborhood, where generations of Chinese families settled, could have been mistaken for a ghost town at times. A combination of the pandemic and anti-Asian racism hit Chinatown hard. Just two years ago, however, this thoroughfare became eerily quiet. Lifelong residents and tourists often find themselves elbow-to-elbow while passing fruit vendors, souvenir shops, jewelry stores, people selling knockoff designer bags - and, of course, restaurants. Making your way along this main artery that runs through one of the country’s oldest neighborhoods can feel head-spinning sometimes. Canal Street is synonymous with Manhattan’s Chinatown.

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