Spring flowers and vaccinations freed the city from hibernation. Pete Wells shared his favorite place to open when many of us stay at home.

Kokomo in Brooklyn is an island resort for those who cannot travel. Image source... Clay Williams for The New York Times

With the advent of spring, the sidewalks of New York were crowded with people. Their bodies are full of vaccine-induced antibodies, and their heads are full of the urge to enjoy city life again. The restaurant business is faltering, but it has never stopped. If you cook at home in the past year, you will be surprised how many new places have sprung up. The following are some of my favorites, all open during or before the pandemic, and all provide outdoor seating. I reviewed five of them last year, and at the time I didn’t believe anyone was paying attention. I checked out and liked other people, but decided to put the money in my back pocket in due course. They are here now.

If you have a fixed idea about the appearance of the dim sum restaurant—the waiter pushes steel carts between round tables large enough to accommodate the Yankees’ starting lineup, etc.—forget them. AweSum DimSum is trying to quickly casualize this type. You ordered your hello and siu mai at the counter behind the concrete and golden wood dining area. Then, you place the tray with the bamboo steamer basket on a small table near or outside on 23rd Street. Each basket is big enough to hold three or four dumplings, and the fillings are exposed through translucent wrapping paper that is taut like saltwater toffee. The rest of the menu is not that great, but the dumplings are little miracles, better than the dumplings in some famous Chinatown banquet halls.

160 East 23rd Street (Third Avenue), Flatiron District; 646-998-3313; awesumdimsum.us.

Although the graffiti-like signs on the doors advertised "Palestinian street food", there are more fascinating hummus and falafel in other places in Brooklyn Bay Ridge, such as the superb Al-Aqsa Bakery on Fifth Avenue & Restaurant. Ayat's expertise lies in the more complicated Levantine family cooking canon. Kousa is a small hollowed out Persian pumpkin, again filled with rice and onions. Mussakhan piled sumac chicken and fried onions on a bread pillow that served as a plate, and served as a second course. Mansaf is a deep-dish mix of yellow rice, stewed lamb, roasted almonds, and spiced saj, a thin pancake made on a domed baking pan in the front window. All meat is halal and comes from a small regional farm that also serves an Eastern Mediterranean grocery store across the street, which has a joint owner with Ayat.

8504 Third Avenue (86th Street), Brooklyn Bay Ridge; 718-831-2585; facebook.com/ayat.nyc.

Restaurants on the Rockaway Peninsula are usually divided into historic bistros lit by neon beer signs, locals in baseball caps talking about boats, and people in shorts for day trips talking about sloppy new places with coffee grinders . Bar Marseille is another matter, a faint Provence date night venue at the foot of high-end apartment buildings. The menu switches back and forth between things you might find on the Côte d’Azur, such as French fish soup, mussels and olive sauce with the aroma of Pastis, and holiday foods such as tuna burgers. But the cold French white wine and rosé wine are authentic enough, the grilled oysters in the warm seaweed butter pool are easy to slip, and the expansive terrace is dotted with propane heaters to prevent the cold evening breeze from the Atlantic Ocean, one block away .

190 Beach 69th Street (Rockaway Beach Boulevard), Arverne, Queens; 718-513-2474; barmarseille.com.

After Bilao used outdoor dining rules to annex the sidewalks and set up a picnic tent on First Avenue, a small Filipino canteen that was supposed to be open all day turned into an outdoor Filipino party. It is true that this is a special kind of outdoor party, where a considerable number of guests are dressed in medical uniforms. A bet that this location and a well-versed in the classic kitchen will help attract many Filipino medical staff working in the Upper East Side Hospital, and they are right. Just like diners, Bi Lau will make anything on the menu at any time of the day. If you want teppanyaki sisig, which means putting a pile of pork nuggets on a hot plate, then the first thing in the morning is that you have come to the right place. If it’s getting dark and you want stubby longan sausage or sweet cherry red marinated pork belly with single-sided eggs and a bunch of garlic fried rice, Bilao has it for you.

1437 First Avenue (75th Street), Upper East Side; 212-650-0010; bilanyc.com.

The newly opened Hunan restaurant in New York is always worthy of attention, but just before the outbreak, the appearance of Lanliu in Midtown was a major event. This restaurant is run by the same owner and the same chef as the Hunan Cafe in Flushing, Queens (formerly known as the Hunan Pavilion). The restaurant has been the city’s best practitioner of the dazzling spicy cuisine of Hunan Province for at least ten years. . They provided a warm, soft-lit interior space for the Manhattan outpost; it looked like the decadent westernized restaurant aimed at by Hunan's most famous son Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution. He may not be crazy about the indifferent braised pork named after him. But the whole steamed sea bass with spicy red bean paste is spectacular. The ginseng longevity chicken soup tastes like a grandmother in a room watching it. The cocktails are so well done you can’t believe you are drinking them in a plywood box across the street from Trump Tower. Inside.

40 West 56th Street (Avenue of the Americas), Midtown; 212-213-2299; bluewillownyc.com.

New Yorkers associate the Japanese island of Hokkaido with excellent sea urchins. However, the people of Hokkaido associate it with lamb. Dr. Clark ("New York's first Hokkaido restaurant and karaoke bar", according to its website) offers you both, but not necessarily on the same plate. Sea urchin bibimbap, stuffed into squid belly; heated with shaved bottarga to make noodle sauce; and used as a condiment for French fries. However, although lamb is actually lamb, it has become the focus of attention. It has more than a dozen methods, but almost everyone at Dr. Clark ordered jingisukan, a kind of marinated lamb cooked with bean sprouts and onions on a domed roasting pan, which is said to be a descendant of Genghis Khan’s helmet. This is a group meal. It is even better if you put it on the sunken kotatsu table outside. The table has a built-in heater and blanket, so you can enjoy it on a cool night.

104 Bayard Street (Baxter Street), Chinatown; 917-426-4454; drclarkhouse.com.

After losing a physical store in the pandemic, Empanology may have found a permanent home in the backyard of the Mott Haven Bronx Brewery, under the regular tracks of freight trains and Acela coaches. Empanadas are palm-sized, with thin, flaky wrappers, but they are already stuffed. The filling changes frequently, and on a recent weekend, Empanologists' products ranged from mozzarella cheese ("pizza slices") with tomato sauce and garlic to banana Foster pockets with graham cracker dipping sauce. There are also tacos, burgers and sandwiches, including vegan shredded cheese that truly reflects the terroir. For the kitchen in the improved storage container raised on the tire jacks, the cooking is impressive; it easily keeps up with the leftist concept of the brewery, such as the IPA that tastes like mango lassi.

856 East 136th Street (Walnut Avenue), Mott Haven, the Bronx; 718-402-1000; thebronxbrewery.com.

Masa is still the Achilles' heel of the Mexican food scene in New York. For All Things Good, a cafe in Bedford-Stuyvesant, learned to make it from ancient Mexican blue, purple, and yellow corn varieties in the first few months of the pandemic. The masa rolled into different shapes is the center of almost everything on the menu: half-moon quesadillas, grilled or fried for quesadillas doradas; tender and thick sopes under Spanish sausage and fried beans; Salsa verde and soft melted chihuahua cheese are located in an isosceles triangle masa called tetela; a crunchy round volcano covered with the same fillings as tacos. Cooking tends to be lighter and somewhat Brooklyn-like, which means that vegans can use the menu more easily than regular tripe and tongue taqueria.

343 Franklin Avenue (Greene Avenue), Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn; 929-204-4154; forallthingsgoodbk.com.

Mixing Italian and Japanese cuisine requires light hands, not a paste. In Kimika, that hand belongs to Christine Lau. Her pizza, with things like shaved mozzarella and stracchatras, is more airy than fried pizza. A dish called "caviar caviar spaghetti" uses four kinds of fish eggs to make a sauce, skimming the ocean without drowning. Ms. Liu even found a clever new use for Lycoris, stuffing them into soy-enhanced Italian sausage before frying. The themes are brought into smart combo cocktails, such as Bar Goto's Sakura Martini with a few drops of salt water as the focus.

40 Kenmare Street (Elizabeth Street), NoLIta; 212-256-9280; kimikanyc.com.

The Caribbean journey, which was almost impossible to go in the past year, has come to us, with Palapas, palm trees and rum drinks set across the waterfront of Williamsburg in Kokomo. This is New York, where people who eat there tend to wear nightclub clothes rather than cabin clothes. But the food is transported and interesting: wings in a sweet and spicy sauce; flatbread with lots of Jamaican rasta pasta; chicken and waffles with raw coconut cream and pungent Scottish hat hot sauce. Even vegetarian dishes are rich, such as deep fried lentil balls with coconut curry. The haze of the pandemic is not obvious, and no one seems to miss it.

65 Kent Avenue (North 10th Street), Williamsburg, Brooklyn; 347-799-1312; kokomonyc.com.

The menu starts with the Arabs’ imprinting of Latin American food and then mixes everything into a new, cumin-flavored form. Sumac lamb is turned into tortillas; carnitas is put into shawarma sandwiches; falafel enters the waffle iron and appears in the form of "fawaffles", of course, it later becomes a partner for fried chicken. It may be that the kitchen prank is executed with real cooking ribs, which is a more seasoning concept. Migrant Kitchen is undoubtedly one of the most original restaurants in Stone Street's history, especially because it doubles as a charity; for every $12 spent, a free meal is given to New Yorkers in need.

45 Stone Street (William Street), Financial District; 917-747-5601; themigrantkitchenennyc.com.

If you’ve been to Kyungmin Hyun’s first restaurant, Thursday’s Kitchen, you’ll know that she has a rare talent to let her imagination fly, and then put it back on earth when needed. At Mokyo on the corner of San Marco, she proved this again with a series of brand new aerobatics. The flavors of sidewalk vendors are wrapped in wonton filling. Basil leaves and Brazil nuts bring a twisted pesto sauce to Taiwanese linguine noodles in Sichuan Chile oil. She wanders about Korean cuisine, but always seems to have time to quickly travel to Maine, Louisiana or Spain. Her original intention was to make Mokyo an expressionless younger brother, but she had to adapt to an epidemic life, which is why her second, more serious restaurant will give you a luminous cocktail in a plastic bag.

109 St. Marks Place (Avenue A), East Village; 646-850-0650; mokyony.com.

Last year, a floating Myanmar pop-up store called Rangoon NoodleLab took root in Prospect Place in Brooklyn and shortened its name to Rangoon. There are still plenty of noodles in the picture; mondi thoke, cold vermicelli enhanced with chickpea flour, is an ayu soup with rice noodles and lacy onion fritters, like mohinga. But Yangon also has curries with densely overlapping layers of spices and a modern interpretation of the classic Burmese tea salad lahpet thoke, with crackling sounds of roasted seeds and nuts. The small restaurant was not built for the era of social distancing, but with a charming backyard and all-white shuttered platform on the street, one should enter the Pandemic Architecture Museum one day.

500 Prospect Place (Classon Avenue), Crown Heights, Brooklyn; 917-442-0100; Yangon.nyc.

In Simone Tong’s newest restaurant, Silver Apricot, the Hudson Valley’s farm-to-table approach is fully intertwined with Chinese concepts. In autumn, thin Chinese sausage coins stick to caramelized brussels sprouts in a sweet and spicy maple glaze. With the advent of spring, she began to eat grilled asparagus and hardhead trout, and had a sweet and sour treatment. However, the same sensitivity also exists, as does the spiral-shaped puff pastry seasoned with sauce from northern China, which is a savory sauce more commonly found in noodles. All wines are produced in the United States, and many are made in a gentle, less exaggerated style of the past two decades. There are many discoveries, one of which is that these wines complement Ms. Tong’s cooking.

20 Cornelia Street (West Fourth Street), Greenwich Village; 929-367-8664; silverapricot.nyc.

Ann Redding and Matt Danzer hope that Thai Diner will become the casual sister of Uncle Boons, one of the most iconic restaurants in the city in the past decade. Then they closed Uncle Boons permanently during the pandemic. This painful loss in New York was partially offset by the survival of some of the main dishes in the newer places, such as the powerful khao soi and simple fried rice made with enough crab meat to silence the Baltimores. There is also fresh comfort. Because this is a small restaurant, you can have breakfast, such as an egg sandwich filled with sai oua, or a regular American hamburger with wrinkled fries for lunch. The candy display definitely exceeds the classic dinner gift, a bowl of dusty pastel mints and a spoon. However, the dish that might give you a reason to hang out on Mott Street is pink chopped liver, sprinkled with red curry sauce; spread it on a piece of grilled meat with some fried shallots on top.

186 Mott Street (Kenmare Street), NoLIta; 646-559-4140; thaiidiner.com.

Kub klaem or kap klaem is what Thais eat when they don’t really eat—whiskey snacks. A few years after Andy Ricker’s Whiskey Soda Lounge tried to make kub klaem a thing, four Thai-American restaurant employees worked in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Tong tried again. Chef Chetkangwan Thipruetree listed a lot of snacks: Mom, a fragile and rich beef liver sausage; Isan-style beef tartare with chili; banana flower fritters, which are unfolded when they are fried and look soft. Shell crab; grilled octopus and red pepper topped with a lime juice and balsamic vinegar of fresh herbs. Some cocktails sound like fruit salads with alcohol, but to pay tribute to Manhattan’s Old Pop, only orange blossom water.

321 Starr Street (Cypress Avenue), Bushwick, Brooklyn; 718-366-0586; tongbrooklyn.com.

Tex-Mex is probably the most disrespected of regional cuisine in the United States. Part of the reason is that, like some politicians in Texas, once they leave the state, it does not always withstand scrutiny. Yellow Rose is a rare case of New York’s Tex Mex taqueria, which pays tribute to the tradition of remaking pintos, salsa tatemada and most importantly flour tortillas. In order to avoid triggering an interstate war, let us ignore cheese made with cashew cheese. Instead, we focus on delicious fresh tortillas and tacos based on them: chicken stewed in salsa until olive green; beef cheeks; fried potato wedges heated in ranchero sauce; using Texans ( Almost only Texans) call it "chili gravy" beef stew. If you buy a dozen, it costs $50, and then you can put them in a pizza box so you can free up one hand for a jug of margarita.

102 East Village Third Avenue (13th Street); 212-529-8880; Yellowrosenyc.com.

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